1. Content Curation
Archana Basarur
Marketing in a Digital Environment
Dr. Eric Brey
04/10/2012

2. Content Curation
Table of Contents
OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................................................................. 3
TREND.................................................................................................................................................................... 3
CASE STUDY ........................................................................................................................................................... 4
APPLICATION IN OTHER INDUSTRY ........................................................................................................................ 5
TREND WORTHINESS ............................................................................................................................................. 6
REFERENCES:.......................................................................................................................................................... 8
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3. Content Curation
Overview
Enormous amount of information is spread all over the web. Twenty hours of video are
uploaded to YouTube every minute, 210 billion e-mails are sent daily, 30 billion pieces of
information is shared on Facebook each month; Wikipedia hosts 17 million articles
([Infographics], Jeff Bullas). This has made the task of searching for a specific content relevant
to your context very tedious. Even with sophisticated, art-of-the state search engine and SEO,
pulling the content that is right for your users/customers at that time is a lot time consuming.
Interesting content is what makes Internet sparkle. Specifically for business sites, content is the
vehicle for building customer relationships that are scalable, measurable, and commercially
valuable [Andrew Davies, Co-founder at idio Ltd]. We are seeing the shifts in market place, as
brands are realizing that they can pull the interested consumers by publishing qualitative,
engaging and informative content instead of pushing interruptive adverts. Instead of
broadcasting at target market, you can engage with them; instead of just talking about your
brand and sales preposition, you can talk about consumers and their needs; instead of just
talking and then listening for response, you are able to listen and then talk across any of the
social media platforms. Instead of buying the media, you can become the media. Internet has
turned what used to be a controlled, one way message into a real time dialogue with millions
[Daniel Sacks, Fast Company]. And you need to have enough breadth and depth of content to
talk with them. People love to share good quality and interesting content with their circle on
their comfortable channels. That is why sharing websites has become popular. Even the major
search engines are catching on and beginning to recognize content that people are sharing.
Trend
So where do you get such interesting and value-adding content? There are two ways:
one way is to spend good amount of time to create your original content and publish/distribute
it on your sites; other way is to find already existing high quality content from the web, analyze
and organize according to the needs of your users and share it on your sites. The second way of
finding depth in the content is called content curation. It’s the ongoing classification and
grouping of disaggregated pieces of information such that each piece increases in context,
meaning and importance. Content curation is the addition of context, trust, and meaning for
the benefit of the reader. Though it is still considered a "buzz word" by many in the content
world, content curation is now becoming a marketing staple for many companies with a
successful online presence. Many of us have been participating in a rough form of content
gathering for years without even knowing it. It can be RSS feed, links posted on blogs, social
media feeds, an online news mash up, popular online destinations like Delicious and Digg etc.
Anyone with a Facebook feed or Twitter stream has seen content curation first hand. What
makes content curation stand out from these feeds (which are completely automatic) is the
human interaction in considering the right content, organizing it, deciding the flow to fit the
context. For most companies, content curation is being used to drive Search Engine
Optimization (SEO). A company that links multiple pieces of content about a specific subject
increases its exposure when that topic is searched.
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4. Content Curation
Case Study
Scoop.It
It is a content curation platform, where users can curate information about any topic
they want. The site is geared towards providing users a very quick and easy way to “scoop” any
information that you feel is relevant to the topic you have chosen. There are several ways you
can do this, the easiest being via a drag and drop tool that you add directly on your browser. It
has a suggestion engine which provides a list of suggested links based on your keyword to
quickly sift through the content; good if you don’t have time to search. You can add your own
sources too to make the content more rich. Overall, it’s a very handy tool for the content
editors especially in blog, media, marketing fields where rich content is the King. Scoop.it also
has a metrics system that lets you track your progress. It’s the only program of its kind that
really gets you an authentic magazine layout that screams “read me!” Gabriella Sannino
professional SEO specialist says, “Scoop.it has to come up with better time management
feature in terms of ability to schedule your Scoop.it. They can make it affordable for smaller
business to take advantages of their services. Make the twitter RT easier instead of having to
take time to copy the actual url in order to get the correct link.” She also feels that they have to
explain their ranking system since their algorithms make no sense. If you aren't incredibly
specific when putting in your key terms for feeds, you'll get a load of unrelated content. One of
the other drawbacks is that Scoop.It doesn’t provide an option to embed the content onto a
private blog. It does, however, provide an interactive widget. Keep in mind that Scoop.it won’t
really be an asset in branding and content promotion if your content is lacking to begin with. If
that’s the case for your business, then start with beefing up your content first. Create an
editorial calendar and use curated content platforms like Curated.by and Pearltrees to see what
the leading conversations are. Once you’ve done that you’ll be in a better position to brand
your own work through Scoop.it.
Pinterest
It is a Virtual Pin board that lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find
on the web. It allows users to “pin” images and video to a virtual bulletin board they create.
They can be photos they took and uploaded, images found on other websites, videos they find
online or videos they have created themselves. A user then shares that pin with their friends,
who can then like or re-pin it to their boards. The primary purpose is to share your interests
with friends through images and video. The genius of the UI is that when you hit the "Pin It"
button, it pulls out all the images on the page you're visiting, allowing you to select just the
right one. Using individual photos instead of the whole URLs means that Pinterest's boards end
up slick and aesthetically appealing. People rarely post content created by the media at all.
Instead, people post links to retail sites. They curate vast selections of goods that they want to
think about purchasing. People found it's actually ridiculously helpful for planning wedding
"details" because you can quickly accumulate a bunch of examples of things of a type. Unlike
other social networks, which waited years to monetize through advertising, Pinterest has taken
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5. Content Curation
a different route. They're monetizing already by taking a cut on sales that pins on their site help
generate. They partnered with a firm called SkimLinks, which automatically scans through every
link posted on the site to see if it goes to retail site with an affiliate program. If it finds that kind
of link, it secretly adds an affiliate code that ensures Pinterest will make some cash from sales
that derive from that link1. Right now Pinterest has limited uses for businesses. They do not
offer any advertising or paid placements like other services do. If your business doesn’t have
images or video associated with it, or is a business you can’t represent visually, you’re going to
have a tough time finding any use in Pinterest. If you fall into this category, you need to come
up with a way to represent your business visually, whether it is photos of your customers using
your product or service, photos of your products or infographics representing the services you
provide. Copyright is a huge concern as it is literally impossible for Pinterest to ensure that
every picture being pinned is done so with the copyright holder’s permission. Pinterest does
provide a link for a copyright holder to tag a photo for removal. Pinterest doesn’t currently give
users an option to restrict pins to a specific geographic area. In addition, it is impossible to find
out where users are located. That doesn’t mean local businesses can’t use Pinterest, they just
need to accept the lack of geo-targeting on the network and work with it. We all know that
Pinterest has a female dominated customer base. I recommend considering this before starting
an account for your business. Right now Pinterest does not provide effective metrics tool to
measure your success there. Most people aren’t visiting Pinterest to find business-related
content, at least not yet. Pinterest also lacks the ability to search and connect by a user’s bio by
keyword.
Application in Other Industry
Curata
Curata is Hivefire Company’s signature product specially targeting B2B marketers to
establish brand leadership and Drive Online Lead Generation through Content Marketing.
Company’s content curation solution helps aggregate, organize and distribute fresh content for
B2B marketers to attract prospects and engage customers online. Curata, already being used by
leading organizations such as Novell and Airvana, is a cost-effective way for marketers to have a
single solution for content creation and content curation, combined with distribution to
multiple channels, including social media outlets. In addition, Curata will automatically
syndicate content to social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as part of
the curation process, allowing marketers to seamlessly increase their brand presence on social
media channels. Currently, Curata is the only B2B marketing platform that combines content
production with distribution, leveraging patent-pending machine learning and natural-language
processing technologies for online content.
1
Pinterest: Covert affiliate link scheme exposed, Search Engine Journal, By David Angotti
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6. Content Curation
Redux TV
Video discovery startup Redux has launched a native app for Google TV-powered
connected TVs, Blu-ray players and other devices, enabling viewers to navigate curated
channels of online content in the same way they navigate linear TV channels. Redux TV doesn’t
hunt down television shows or online web series; instead it searches the web for interesting
videos, documentaries, and displays them in channels centered on a certain topic. For instance,
the Tech channel has TED talks and interviews by Digg founder Kevin Rose; The Dress Code
channel is all about fashion, home life, and style. The Redux app enables viewers to pick
channels of interest from a personalized menu and watch a continuous stream of videos
without having to choose them individually. Users can also navigate through channels or videos
using the same up-down-left-right remote control functions that they’ve come to rely on for
traditional TV browsing.
Trend Worthiness
Content curation has become the buzz word all over the internet. But according to
Gabriella Sannino, International Content Strategist, “Saturation is going to be curation's worst
enemy. But today it's wonderful; you have an attentive audience that wants to read your
content. They are focused on a given topic. But curators can become obsessive about their
topic. Basically they are researchers doing all the footwork. A free R&D gathered for any given
project or study. The key is to focus on your readers content needs, then you have won the first
step of gaining their affinity and of course their business. One more thing I would like to add is
if you are doing an outstanding job "curating" their reading habits it can lead to
conversation...then naturally a relationship is born. It's the best way to get them to know, like
and trust you.” Content curation has a major impact on SEO2. Since content curation targets at
delivering high-quality and relevant content to a group of users or audience, it could be one of
the most effective and trendiest ways of gaining traffic, reputation and internet success.
Content curation impacts almost all businesses over the internet where high quality content
plays an important role; especially B2B businesses and inbound marketing where great content
is the king. It is a very handy tool for B2B content marketers enabling them to quickly find the
high quality content relevant to their business and share with their target audience very
frequently. Sannino has personally seen an explosion in content curation for mobile and social
topics. Evolution has proven that technology keeps innovation moving forward. Therefore
depending on humans and their need for consumption of vast amount of information this
platform could have a few more surprises in store. Journalists, including large newspapers, may
be well served by giving access whether paid or not to archived articles into curated formats;
where they can offer print, video, audio, images all in one page. Once the curator (company)
2
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
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7. Content Curation
has established their presence they become the authority on any given topic. At the very least
become the person or business that is approached for verification (if any are needed). For
example (theoretically) if you had someone curating the civil unrest in Egypt they could be
approached by a film maker doing a documentary. The advantage of being the hub of
information available in one place is invaluable. From recorded dates, names, locations, images,
videos, every imaginable format all in one place. You're not restricted to just one format.
Relevance is attained by clicking on one page.
Futurists in the media industry3 conclude that there is a bright future for news in terms
of both demand and the propensity for consumers to pay for it whilst the transition to a new
and undefined ecosystem will be both painful and challenging. It is also clear
that content curation and content aggregation are going to continue to be key in the new
ecosystem that is evolving. In Curation Nation4, Steven Rosenbaum reveals why brands,
publishers, and content entrepreneurs must embrace content aggregation and curation to grow
an existing business or launch a new one. In fact, he asserts that curation is the only way to be
competitive in the future. In order to be ahead of competitors in content curation business,
strong analytics including capacity to schedule is very important, says Sannino. She further
describes “Time management is one of the biggest hurdles many face in curating for the
masses. Unless that's all they do, not something we advise anyone...With that said in order to
get as much exposure to your curated content you have to have the ability to put things on
cruise control once you have taken the time to find 10-15 various posts. The other thing to keep
in mind is how to distribute this content to all your social circles, networks etc. Timing is very
important in the way these applications perform or maybe I should say lack in
performance. Nothing worse than seeing someone's various social networks feed posting at
break neck speed. Therefore when you are spending time curating it would be nice to include
the capacity to schedule the frequency and time.”
The importance of content curation is also felt when Twitter made an important
acquisition, it bought young startup called summify in Jan 2012, a company whose service (as
its name implies) was designed to cut through the noise of all those social-media streams and
summarize the content that matters. More than anything, this is perhaps the single biggest hole
that exists not just in Twitter but Facebook and other services as well: the need to give users
more ways of filtering the massive amounts of information that keep flooding their activity
streams and other social-media inboxes. There are so many ways of producing and sharing
content but so few good ways of filtering. Eventually content curation tools can become inbuilt
part of these big social medias. Going forward, content curation tools might also focus on
building the community within and sharing curated content related to each other’s interest
thus forming big ocean of circles.
3 Futurists & Keynote Speakers Gerd Leonhard & Ross Dawson: The Future of Newspapers
4 Curation Nation: How to Win in a World Where Consumers are Creators, By Steven Rosenbaum
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8. Content Curation
References:
1. A New Online Content Curation Resource For Associations And Nonprofits Launched By Wild
Apricot Membership Software, (PRWEB) March 22, 2012
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/3/prweb9309961.htm
2. Content Curation Marketing Today, October 18 2011
http://www.contentcurationmarketing.com/articles/56536/recent-announcement-from-big-name-
curators-demonst/
3. Content Curation: Truths, Threats, Motivations and Opportunities, By Jaimy Szymanski, March 27,
2012. http://www.altimetergroup.com/2012/03/content-curation-truths-threats-motivations-and-
opportunities.html
4. Content Curation Tools for B2B Marketing, By Scott Gillum, January 06, 2012
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gyro/2012/01/06/content-curation-tools-for-b2b-marketing/
5. Know Your Internet: What Is Pinterest and Why Should I Care? The Atlantic, By Alexis Madrigal
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2012/02/know-your-internet-what-is-pinterest-and-
why-should-i-care/252835/
6. Pinterest turns virtual ideas into reality, By Lee Woodruff, March 29, 2012
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57406371/pinterest-turns-virtual-ideas-into-reality/
7. Pinterest: Just what exactly is on it? BB News Magazine, By Lauren Everitt, March 2, 2012.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17204313
8. Redux TV delivers curated, leanback viewing experience for Google TV , by Andrew Kameka,
December 27, 2011
http://androinica.com/2011/12/redux-for-google-tv-android-app/
9. Build Your Employer Brand on Pinterest, By Jessica Miller, SmartRecruiting
http://www.smartrecruiters.com/static/blog/build-your-employer-brand-on-pinterest/
10. Gabriella Sannino, Professional SEO Specialist | International Content Strategist | Global Marketing
Analyst | Speaker | CEO at Level343.com
11. Twitter acquisition confirms that curation is the future, by Mathew Ingram, January 20, 2012
http://gigaom.com/2012/01/20/twitter-acquisition-confirms-that-curation-is-the-future/
12. Curata: How to feed your content beast without getting eaten alive
http://www.getcurata.com/
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