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How the United Nations uses social media to share its mission with the world.

This is a question that each person active on social media should ask himself a day or another. Have you ever thought? [note mg]

How many hours have you spent adding buttons, gadgets and widgets to your new blog or website? You research the right tools, share buttons, share bars, analytic tracking tools and more. You install them with a hope and a prayer that someone somewhere is going to use them.

However, unfortunately many business leaders find they don’t get used. The share buttons sit on their site with the lonely zero or default +1. Chances are your pocket book or wallet might be feeling a little lonely too.

What if you took the same time you spend on the share bars, share buttons and tools and instead first focus on something worthy of a share? I know it sounds like a crazy concept because after all it’s far easier to focus on the bright shiny objects, geeky tools and data analytics.

Trust me, I am a data junkie and could literally spend all day helping my clients dig into the heads of their target audiences with a goal of embedding their brand in their brains!

Is your content worthy of a share?

Read more: http://bit.ly/HNNTN5

This is a cross-post from Altimeter Group Researcher Jaimy Szymanski. I excerpted from the article:

"Curation is taking over the digital content scene. With related applications and platforms multiplying, the act of collecting and sharing content has become second nature for most of us.

When talking data it’s far simpler to look at all the content out there and curate, rather than analyze the gaps and create new, original content to fill them.

This brings up some unnerving questions as well:
- With curation on the rise, what effect will this have on the creation of new, interesting, valuable and thought-provoking content online?
- When (if at all) will curated content be accepted as unique content?
- What happens when curators far outnumber creators?

But, upon taking a closer look behind the why of curation, the researcher found potential value pulling some data from Trendstream.

***Motivations Behind Content Curation and Sharing:

1) Motivations behind curation are positive: to share a good experience, to help consumer pick out good product and to encourage company improvement.

2) Millennials share content focused on “self.” As generations get older, secondary motivation shifts to a bigger picture though, to helping consumers. Add to that the fact that many have grown up recognizing technology as a platform for both utility and self-expression or promotion.

3) Fostering expertise is among lowest motivations. I predict that curated content will increasingly be more accepted as “original” content over time, as long as it contains some unique insight or alteration.

***Where Curation Opportunities Lie:

Curation will prove to be a very positive trend for marketers who are looking to affect their audience via way of content marketing.

It’s quite possible that content curators will also begin to be recognized as influencers in their respective industries, and organizations will treat them as such.

I’ll end with a few final thoughts: 

1) The amount of content curated will rise and fall in cycles, as shared content depends on original content creation to survive.
2) Organizations will weave curation into their content strategies, at the very least to ensure sharing of their content is as simple as possible for consumers.
3) Application development – both web-based and mobile – will continue to support the curation trend."

Read full article here: 
http://www.altimetergroup.com/2012/03/content-curation-truths-threats-motivations-and-opportunities.html

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