Content and Curation for Nonprofits

Good summary of why content marketing - which includes content curation is valuable to enterprise and some good thoughts on the value of having employees do it - not just the marketing folks.

From a pure practicality perspective, whilst thought leadership can be applied in a limited but still quite effective manner when adopting this antediluvian approach, it is simply not viable to apply it to content marketing:

• A primary reason for this is that content curation is more than just retweeting or otherwise sharing. There needs to be a qualitative value-add from the organisation to some degree some of the time (actually a lot of the time, but I’m taking the low [expectation] road here)

• Involving employees in content creation educates employees on their industry which, one would think, helps them contextualise their work efforts and give them information to get better at their job, increasing productivity

• Employee involvement increases commitment to their organisation – likely to increase productivity – and helps them become a stronger organisational advocate

• Utilising normal (non-marketing Martians?) minimises the need to hire additional marketing employees and can optimise financial investment into the program – increasing productivity.

The most interesting and challenging aspect of this dimension, however, relates back to who are those doing the curating and how is this contextalised within an organisation’s branding?

• What are they commenting on?

• What is the nature of their value add?

• Is there a comms or marketing employee facilitating all this curation, or is it the relevant individual doing it solo after, perhaps, some initial briefing and some guidelines have been set? This relates to the third point I flagged above.

Fourthly, and this is perhaps the most fundamental aspect, the rationales driving the strategy will determine all of those issues noted above.