Curation Revolution

Excerpted from this interesting article on Outspoken Media:

"The facts are:

***Content curation is a needed skill that will only grow in importance as more big brands and publishers flood the Internet with all kinds of content.
***Curation can be a fun, rewarding and highly effective part of your online marketing mix.
***Curating content requires skill, tenacity and, above all, an unflinching focus on the needs of your audience.

The biggest temptation all search marketers face is to sell our souls to the Borg and AUTOMATE EVERYTHING.

An effective curation strategy requires a healthy variety of sources. If you expect any one tool to do all of the work for you, you’re going to miss a lot of remarkable content.

So, use a fancy tool as one of your filters, if you wish. But don’t fool yourself into believing you can just put it on autopilot and watch it magically send you everything you need to succeed.

If your goal is to curate content that provides true value for your audience, you’ve got to out-hustle all of the namby-pamby posers in your niche who claim to be curating, however half-heartedly.

Here is a collection of solid strategies and tasty tactics that will help you consistently out-curate your competitors.

1) Create Twitter lists of experts and thought leaders in your niche.

2) Save Twitter searches for relevant keywords.
3) Build customized MyAllTop pages to keep up on industry blogs.
4) Set up Google Alerts for targeted keywords.
5) Subscribe to blogs by RSS and view them in Google Reader.
6) Create topical lists on Facebook.
7) Perform keyword searches in Trackur.
8) Explore Regator’s curated blog directory.
9) Hunt down content by category on StumbleUpon.
10) Find applicable articles and experts with Topsy.
11) Join relevant LinkedIn groups.
12) Search Scribd’s documents database.
13) Dig into the bookmarked items on Delicious.
14) Keep an eye on curated niche sites that serve your audience, like Inbound.org.
15) Scour the Web with Snip.it and Scoop.it.
16) Drop your keywords into Bottlenose.
17) Scan the curated lists on List.ly.
18) Sign up for a personalized email digest from YourVersion.
19) Say hello to your little friend: Social Buzz.
20) Swing by Ice Rocket and ROCKZi once in awhile.
21) Ignore Google+ at your own risk. I dare you. #smooches.

Constantly Refine and Refocus Your Curation Strategy:

I like to cram tons of different sources into my content funnel at the beginning of each new curation project. Then, once I’m convinced I’ve cast my net wide enough, I begin the crucial process of whittling down those sources into a much more manageable list.

Be the Pickiest, Little Curator Allowed by Law:

If you’re going to out-curate your competition, every piece of content you serve to your audience has to be exactly the right piece of content.

Set high standards and strive to exceed them...."

Read full, long and interesting article here: 

http://outspokenmedia.com/online-marketing/how-to-consistently-out-curate-your-competitors/

Robin Good: Everytime I see a new post or article claiming to list the best content curation tools I know I am in for some disappointment.

Most of these lists just pick up names from other lists without even bothering to check, test or verify what these tools actually do, whether they are still available. Unfortunately the rush to put out "curated" list of tools and services has created more misinformation than useful lists. 

But if you, like me, are on the lookout for new and effective tools to curate your own content or the one of your customers, I have created a comprehensive map of all the curation tools available online and I keep it fresh and updated almost on a daily basis.

The map presently lists over 250 content curation tools which you can navigate much more easily than it was possible on my earlier versions of this map.

On the right side of the map you will find all of the news and content curation tools available online today. On the left side, you can find bookmarking, link lists builders, clippers and lots of tools to operate with RSS feeds (which are still at the heart of a curator's job).

Full map: http://bit.ly/ContentCurationUniverse  

Share it. 

****** No one I trust more to determine the best list of new STUFF (tools) than Robin. Marty

Marty
Not sure I would go anywhere near this far (Google being irrelevant) since Google isn't sitting still. CEO of  uber agency WPP just mentioned his company increased their Google spend 17% while flattening out Facebook a week ago on @Squawkbox. That said, I do see incursion being made by mobile search, video and social search. The Google castle is in need of defending.

Antonino:
From The Article: "Google’s search marketing services may be becoming irrelevant due to the rise of social search.

That’s in addition to a failure to recognize that Google+ cannot be the sole solution to social search with an always increasing number of web properties.

Info-Tech Research Group expects that Google, which held 90% of the search market in 2010, will only hold 30% in 2013, due to the rising impact of social search".

Read More: http://www.techvibes.com/blog/google-becoming-irrelevant-social-search-to-own-70-of-searching-by-2013-2012-05-25