Online & social

This piece, originally curated by maxOz applies to your overall content marketing strategy whether you're creating or curating content.

Excerpt:

The ‘if you build it, they will come’ approach to online content creation is no longer enough when it comes to developing a truly engaged audience online [Simon Edelstyn - http://bit.ly/LolvDj , European managing director at Outbrain] and content amplification has a key role to play.

For marketers, as the online environment continues to grow, it is no longer a case of simply creating content and hoping for the best. It has become increasingly important to ensure the right audience is discovering this content.

How to amplify the value of this content and get it seen by the right audience, amidst a sea of irrelevant content: http://bit.ly/LokPOl ;

Here are some takeaways:

1. Produce more engaging content

Develop educational or entertaining content in several different formats

2. Earned media is content

3. Amplify your efforts

In the B2B arena, content discovery is emerging as a new way to help the right people find the right content for them, while allowing marketers to amplify and build relevant communities around these assets.

Because of the nature of the majority of B2B content, its audience is targeted, and content discovery can help reach targeted relevant and interested users.

Content marketing and engagement doesn’t necessarily translate directly into immediate ROI or sales conversions, online or offline.

However, it is a way to make customers aware of your existence, demonstrate credibility and build brand loyalty via deeper engagement.

Content marketing is not a sprint, it’s a marathon – you need to be patient before your audience will be ready to move to consideration or purchase.

With so much content already out there, you need to make yours relevant and engaging, to help the right eyes reach it.

Source: http://bit.ly/LokPOl ;

“Being Professional and Personal” is the key to his highly influential identity. This means all you need to do is be yourself and connect with others personally not professionally.

After building an online identity, we always think of increasing our online influence.

This Infographic by Reformation Designs, visualizes 5 basic tips on increasing your online influence:

http://bit.ly/M8U8io ;

Robin Good: Cory O'Brien writes on his blog: "...Over time, as trust shifted and consumers were more willing to look outside of the traditional sources for new content, additional verticals started to adapt to this trend, including ad networks and daily deal sites.

... [here] I’ll give a few examples of daily deals sites that have harnessed the power of content curation."

And then he presents three online services that are making the best of content curation for marketing products.

From the article conclusions: "By becoming the source of curated content, brands can shift some of their energy from push to pull marketing.

Instead of constantly pushing out messages through banners spread far and wide, they can pull in their desired audience by sharing content those customers will enjoy, and then retain those customers for long-term interaction with the brand.

This gives the brand additional opportunities to develop a deeper relationship with their customers without additional media spend, and puts the focus on a channel that they have much more control over.

Curating content that customers will enjoy does take time, and you can’t be everywhere at once, so brands need to choose channels wisely, but for those that have the personality and the resources it takes, content curation can be a great way to attract and retain an audience that will trust the brand for more than just a one time sale."

Insightful. 7/10

Full article: http://thefutureofads.com/a-shift-to-curation ;

The Encyclopedia of Life is an unprecedented effort to gather scientific knowledge about all animal and plant life where pictures, information, facts, and more are available for all things living in our plant and animal kingdoms.

Our students are expecting to be able to use social media applications and tools in their regular school lives. It's only a matter of time before schools can no longer function without it.

The Slaughterhouse-Five author thrills a crowd as he uses X and Y axes to demonstrate the shapes of classic storylines...

A fun watch!

Great concept of flexible OLED screen smartphone, the Philips Fluid by designer Dinard da Mata, from Brazil. Designed for Philips, the mobile phone wraps around the wrist to become a bracelet for the fashionable, while gives an easy access on the go.

Media en Technologie in het Onderwijs | 100 manieren om Twitter te gebruiken

I’m sure a lot of you guys have looked into curation software available ...

Obviously with the radically different price points they all do different things, but here’s the gist – a whole lot of this you can do for free.

Step One – Define your Parameters

Define your parameters by where you want the goods to go. Make sure everything is accessible from the beginning so you can leverage your curated content efficiently from the start.

Step Two – Choose your Weapons

e.g. Timely.is; G+ and FB

Step Three – Be Intentional with your Schedule

I can’t speak to your industry/niche but I can tell you that when I do my curation at somewhere between 6 and 8am EST I find a goldmine of posts that are brand-flipping-new

Step Four – Be Crazy Time Sensitive

I make sure to only curate content that is timely [less than 1% of the time curate something more than 24 hours old]

Open up a google search and type in “content marketing” at the beginning of my day, and set it to the last 24 hours.

Step Five – Be Consistent

As long as you are curating the same general stuff over and over it will work for you.

Notice: Steps 1-5 are all about the setup or protocol. Steps 6-9 are the actual daily work.

Step Six – Prepare for Battle

Open windows to the following places:

Google search
Timely.is
WP dashboard to my curation site
Google +
Facebook
Twitter
I also have a Word document open

Step Seven – Get Rolling

e.g. search for the term “content marketing” in the last 24 hours as shown above; grab 5 or 6 posts that are relevant and make tweets about them and put them on timely/buffer/scoopit

Step Eight – Natural Overflow

Doing twitter first thing after curation is great, if you have the time.

20-30 minutes after you have your automated posts in place to interact with your feed, clean out the spam tweeps, follow back the real people, etc.

Step Nine – Use what you Learn

Use your curation is as the basis for your own blogs

Not regurgitation, but rather letting your new-found knowledge fuel your next post. Or, add to the list of blog ideas you have on a running list somewhere.

Setting aside this 45 minutes a day to get the most relevant pieces of content your industry has to offer can not only fill your feeds, but it can also fuel your entire day. And it should, because you should be talking about the latest things in your industry.

Great ideas by Amie Marse - http://bit.ly/HfET6B ;

Blogger Terry Heick unravels the mysteries of Google+ and suggests how this emerging social media tool can become a valuable teaching aid.

via Mediajockey's: Dit is er zo ééntje die je op posterformaat in de lerarenkamers door het hele land zou moeten ophangen. Heerlijke heldere nuttigheid.