What is Social Curation?
Special to Hudson Valley Public Relations by Jalana Fuller, Dutchess Community College
While content marketing involves strategically creating and sharing content, Curating Content allows individuals to identify, share, and contextualize quality content to a specific audience. Curation is the constant monitoring of what is being said, where it’s said, and how it’s said. Content needs to celebrate the brand values of the organization or individual. Those who curate content have become valuable sources of information without the need to create expert original content.
Lee Odden, an expert in strategic internet marketing states, “Blending a mix of new content with the filtering and management of other useful information streams is a productive and manageable solution for providing prospective customers a steady stream of high quality and relevant content.”
Curate vs Create
- Curating content reinforces relationships with those who are also active online. When you curate another individual’s content you are saying that you believe this person’s work is of substance, and should be viewed. This allows relationships to grow while strengthening the relationships you already have.
- Curating helps establish relationships between brand and consumer. A consumer who notices their content on a company website furthers engagement of consumers within the brand.
- Curating establishes your company as a thought leader in which your website becomes a sought out destination for quality information.
Types of Curation
- Elevation – When a curator creates general insight off a group of articles.
- Aggregation – The ongoing collection of the most relevant content regarding a topic into a single post. This is the most common type of curation.
- Distillation – Allows the writer to distill all of the chatter about a given topic down to a single relevant post. This method requires more original content.
- Chronology – Applies directly to laying out a particular topic based upon historical timeline.
- Mashups – When a writer merges different content about a single topic into a original point of view.
- Filtering – Curation is also about filtering what is being said, the crowd often takes control of the conversation. Good curation carefully manages the conversation.
Where to Publish Curated Content
- Company blog posts
- As eBooks
- Email Newsletter
- Social Media Channels
- Contributed Articles or Blog Posts to Industry Sites
Producing original content is challenging, and is not always engaging. Curating content provides an alternative that combines the best of both worlds while keeping the consumer interested.
Here are some tips to help you become success in curating content:
- Know your voice and personality. What message do you want to send to your audience? The content you curate represents you and your thoughts so be aware of what version of yourself your are presenting to the world.
- Know your audience. The content you curate should be of some significance to the individuals you are trying to reach so it is critical that you understand your audience.
- Know your networks. Not all social networks are created equal. Each media outlet will require unique content.
- Stay focused. Your content should be interesting, but focused.on your intended topic
Be critical of the work you curate. Curation is an effective tool in strategic marketing and can be beneficial to those who use it properly. It is important that your curation be thoughtful and targeted to maximize its usefulness.
To learn more about content curation or to discuss your marketing goals, give us a call 845.202.7087 or visit our website, http://hudsonvalleymedia.com.
Sources:
Bruce, C. Newlands, M. Content Marketing Strategies for Professionals.CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Top Rank Online Marketing Blog, “3 Content Curation Best Practices to optimize your Content Marketing” Retrieved 6/30/15 http://www.toprankblog.com/2014/11/optimize-content-curation
Digital Information World, “Content Curation Tactics and Tools to use in 2014 inforgraphic” Retrieved 6/30/15 http://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2014/01/content-curation-tactics-and-tools-to-use-in-2014.html
