A Marketing Mix

I'm still not convinced that curation is all that new or different than blogging or other online publishing activities. (Blogging is not dead.) Nor am I convinced it is the most important thing you can do in terms of marketing. (And just because "everyone is doing it" doesn't sway me either; like momma always said about if so & so jumped off a bridge...) But I don't think curation can be overlooked much longer. Curation needs to be evaluated for several major factors:

a) can it fit within your scope (Do you have the time & skill set? Can you do this in house or should you hire?)

b) purpose (to maintain existing clients/customers, to reach new ones?)

b) where would it fit? (Not all curation sites are the same; some are more suitable for products, brands, B2B or B2C reach, demographics, etc.)

While B2B marketers are beginning to adopt B2C best practices when it comes to e-commerce, B2B marketers have traditionally invested more of their budgets into content marketing than their B2C counterparts, making it interesting to see how both sides measure up in this rapidly-growing area. There are many more similarities than one might expect.

Robin Good  of Content Curation World breaks the findings down thus:

a) what people curate as relevant is not generally among the top ranked results according to popular metrics. Good stuff is not the same as what is considered normally popular or authoritative stuff.

b) content curation allows a community to synchronize around specific issues and subjects (as anticipated by Clay Shirky)

c) better and more appreciated curation is of the "structured" kind, providing additional info, meta-data and categorization.

d) curators that are highly appreciated are characterized by consistent activity and by a variety of interests (or viewpoints under the same theme) that they are capable to cover.

This is rather my experience; however, I usually explain it to my clients this way:

a) You can be doing an excellent job, but never receive the recognition, popularity, or traffic you deserve.That doesn't mean you won't be appreciated greatly by the smaller group of people who do find/read your curated works.

b) No matter the popularity of your curation, you can build and have conversations -- but remember, community cultivation not only requires additional time, but a different skill set.

c) If you're going to do it, do it well. Use tools, such as labels and tags, and *always* provide context as well as proper credits and links.

d) Consistent activity is nearly as important as showing some personality along with your knowledge. Your topic may be narrowly focused, but offer additional topics and information about you personally (not just professionally) so that people get a sense of you.

A research paper by Zhong, Shah, Sundaravadivelan and Sastry, King's college London, 2013

See the excellent notes from Robin Good below. Interesting to see more work emerging in this field.