"once you start gathering content to share, you begin to realize it’s a bit more complicated than you thought. It takes a bit of focus and creativity to find good content and then organise it."
Via Guillaume Decugis
|
Rescooped by
Martin (Marty) Smith
from Content curation trends
onto BI Revolution |
Scoop.it!
Via Guillaume Decugis
Martin (Marty) Smith's insight:
Backing Into Great Content Curation Greatness
Since the goal of every Internet marketing team should be creating a sustainable system of content marketing with an ever increasing return let's agree on a few important curation ideas:
* Curation creates more reach faster than creation.
* Creation is still important, > than 20% is risky.
* Curation is never random, strongest clearly themed.
* Scale means you do more with less, so scale = ROI.
* Real time is where the HEAT of content curation lives.
* The more you curate the better at it you become.
The second bullet is ironic. Even gurus I LOVE tire me out when they don't pick up other people's threads or react to mine. "Tire me out" is another way of saying I leave and reduce advocacy.
This means EVEN if you have resources needed to create 90% and only curate 10% I would NEVER suggest that as a winning strategy. Create more than 20% and you risk "talking to yourself about yourself". I've come to the conclusion that the optimal ratio is 90% curation to 10% creation, but Argyle Social did a somewhat related study that came down 50% creation (promotion of your own stuff) and 50% curation.
I think promotion is different than either curation or creation, so let's put that study aside for the moment.
1. Define Your Curation THEME
Note that I use the singular "theme". Any beginning content plan should focus on ONE meme; one idea set, and devote all energy to that single theme. Don't go too broad either. Not Internet Marketing, but Internet Marketing / Email Marketing (if you are @Bronto) or Internet Marketing / New Ecom (if you are @Atlanticbt my employer).
2. Research Your Theme's Ecosystem - Picking Gurus
Who are the gurus of your theme? How social are these gurus? Do they respond when use @GURU? Pick a mix bag of 5 gurus to follow with 3 in the "approachable" camp and 2 in the uber-guru camp (pick the two with either the biggest following or that are most aligned to your thinking or both).
3. Create A Content Map For Your Theme
Use the 10% creation and 90% curation rule to guide what kind of content you create and put where. Creation is best on OWNED properties. Curation moves easily between OWNED and SHARED (social nets). Don't only do ONE or the other tactic exclusively on one platform. Mix it up. Create short blog posts that are hybrid curation. Create themed Tweets that are almost like a blog post in 20 tweets. Others would tell you to use a blog to do X and a tweet to do Y. I disagree, surprise and serendipity keeps your content marketing alive.
4. Create A Schedule, Stick To It
Leave 20% of your plan for "response", but do create s publishable schedule of daily, weekly or monthly features. Schedules = TRUST and you can never have enough trust. If you miss a scheduled date explain why and, "Dog ate my homework," is not a good excuse.
5. Schedule Reviews & Summary Presentations
Watch 5 Key Performance indicators every single day of the MACRO (traffic) and MICRO (forms completed by Google visitors on keyword X) variety. Schedule a quarterly review with senior management since that too creates trust and makes you SMARTER due to the preparation and questions you will need to answer.
6. Practice, Practice and Practice More
How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, Practice, Practice. The old cliché is true. Yes it will take getting used to the idea your "practice" is seen by OTHERS, but get used to it. I use Scoop.it as my practice field. I allow for a higher degree of errors (WHEN is Scoop.it going to add spell check for God's sake :) and stumbles because Scoop.it is about FEEDBACK and SPEED in our ecosystem.
When something looks PRIME TIME on Scoop.it I tighten down the bolts (i.e. hire my great editor) and increase the investment. I move a longer and more keyword dense take to our owned properties such as our blog or website.
Our process doesn't have to be yours since there are infinite variations on the curation theme. The important idea is to curate a LOT of content daily, define a platform that is your "practice field" and always increase the speed of curation while reducing errors and increasing shares (what you are curating for).
BTW, learned these tips from GREAT curators such as @RobinGood and @maxOz and others I listed on Google Plus:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102639884404823294558/posts/MzpAzkLAFfx
Link is to an excellent Guillaume post linked to another great curation post.
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Sarah Arrow gives interesting tips in that post but the bigger point she makes is that content curation requires some organization and works best when integrated within a workflow that makes it easy. Whether you're using organized RSS feeds, iPad readers like Flipboard or platforms like Scoop.it, the whole system should make it efficient for you to scan through content without distraction and publish your best picks in a way that feels natural.
And as I commented on her blog post, I’m a big believer of using your idle time for curating content using your mobile: on top of making this time useful, the mobile platform also addresses the “Shiny Object” temptation she's describing and unchains content curation. Don’t you find the smaller screen and the use of the mobile format lots of blogs and media are now using also helps being less distracted and more focused?
A good Read on what you need to know before you launch your 2013 Content Marketing strategy. You can see the Top 5 CM Planning Guides by Click Here or just Google DiY Conent Marketing