A recap of the various ways content curation helps build a targeted audience by CommsAxis' Lilach Bullock. 

As she points out, while content curation is a way to scale the amount of content published while adding value, there is no way to "cheat" through a fully automated process: artificial intelligence and algorithms empower curators but do not replace their human judgement.

Concretely, she breaks down her tips in 5 different practical points on how to build traffic. To build up on this, you can also check on our own analysis on where content curation traffic comes from.

If you're blogging or creating any content, curation comes naturally as a way to feed your inspiration as we've commented several times. Research is often the first step in any creative process. In this article, Julia McCoy articulates very clearly how content curation informs content creation and gives guidance on how to efficiently leverage.

It's great to see creative agency people embrace the fact that creation is not the only way to be great at publishing content.  

Our curation of the best answers we could find to all these questions.

Enjoy! 

All the new media rock stars that were launched post Web 2.0 have one thing in common: they don't produce all of the content they publish.

From the Huffington Post to BuzzFeed to Upworthy or Business Insider, they all use a mix of creation, aggregation and curation. As this practice was initially heavily criticized by the old media gurus, the fact that the respectable New York Times now embraces it possibly could be the best recognition that the remix culture in general and content curation in particular have won. 

Common points between these experts? Be strategic. 

Yes, some see content curation as a tactic - among many others. But if you take a strategic view at the opportunity, you'll find it can really help achieve your business goals. 

Here's why and how. 

Insightful analysis by Heidi Cohen. 

For most businesses, the first step into deploying a Content strategy was not to measure the value of content, but rather to realize the mere need to have a Content strategy: we need to fight the content shock. "I pusblish, therefore I am". The same went for Social Media marketing: initially, nobody knew what it was worth; nevertheless, businesses at various speeds understood they just had to be here. They could not afford to pass, although they could not measure the ROI then.

So naturally the next step was ROI. We've reached this step. We've witnessed this maturing process at Scoop.it: when we launched (3 years ago) users and clients would initially join because "Content is King" - but did not quite know how much the King was worth. Now they join because good content curation has a positive ROI.

So the questions of how to source content, and what are the respective values, performances and ROI of each source are utterly important ones.

Comprehensive comparison between created and curated content for marketing in this paper; with an objective demonstration of the efficiency of curated content for businesses.

Teasing: stay tuned, more coming on this subject from Ally Greer.

Steve Rosenbaum was the first to call curators super heroes of the Web and I love the expression as it clearly conveys the value they bring to their audience as well as the goodwill and benefit they receive in return. 

Heidi Cohen articulates that in greater details in this post in a very clear way and also gives actionable tips. 

Content curation is about sharing knowledge. By carefully selecting the right content and placing it in the right context, content curators transform information into knowledge. 

@Marc Rougier's post comes back on the results of our extensive survey on the status of knowledge sharing in the enterprise which measured how knowledge became a strategic asset for the enterprise - yet one that is largely underserved in terms of tools or platforms to manage its dissemination properly. 

"While there is consensus on the importance of sharing knowledge within organizations, current systems have not adapted to third-party content."

Here's how you can prepare your company to Knowledge 2.0.

“The premise of The Brief is that the editors of TIME are giving you the 12 things you need to know right now,” she says.

By focusing on the essential and cutting down the previous 10 vertical newsletters to 1, Schweitzer made more happen with less.

A comparative analysis of the various ways you can integrate curated content to a Wordpress site or blog.

Curate or die. 

Steve Rosenbaum has a way of presenting things in a manner that is all together inspiring, clear-cut and practical. I just read Curate this!, and it's a must-read.

Here's why.

Content curation is not just a placeholder for the lack of inspiration or time to create great content. While it certainly can help publish relevant good content in the lack of a brilliant original content idea, it's also a great way to generate some. 

As this post highlights in the context of a content marketing strategy, you will understand what type of content you need to create if you consistently watch what's going on in your industry through regular content curation. By publishing the content you've curated, you will also generate and measure reactions from your target audience. Think of it as real life market study for content strategists.

So as I've often commented, this is the reason why content curation often is the easiest strategy to start as part of a content plan: not only because it comes naturally by building on what you already do (read content on your topics of expertise) but also because it makes the original content creation part easier and better. 

The trend isn't new (I actually gave a talk last year at LeWeb about this) but while it's now more and more obvious that brands should become media, it's interesting to see how they're doing it. 

As Mathew Ingram explains, Mozilla invested: they set up an editorial team and recruited a former editor at AOL and CNN. They also give a prominent place to curated content through a right column widget called "From around the Web" which is not unlike the New York Times' recent "watching" section. Following the success of the new media rockstars such as the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Business Insider or Upworthy, it's good to see innovative brands embrace the idea of becoming media - in the 21st century meaning of the word which is leveraging a mix of creation and curation.

Great points on keeping content curation real but Rachel is defining it as merely sharing content on social media. To me, the best way to define it is to add context to your content by adding an insight to it: react to the content, add meaning to it, expand on it, disagree with it, etc... For that, you need to have some form of content hub where you can do that (such as the kind we're providing through topic pages on Scoop.it but this could also be your blog).

To her point, it's also a great way to start a conversation as you've indicated: by adding your own point of view in a particular context, you invite your audience to react.

An actionable and pertinent list of 9 ideas to follow for an effective content curation, by Tommy Landry from ReturnOnNow.

Whether for Content Marketing, Audience engagement or Thought Leadership, content curation must first follow the basic rule of Marketing: Know your target audience.

Tommy also reminds some curation-specific rules:

- Stay on theme. It's easy to lose focus when you curate because existing content is... infinite; define and respect your editorial line; curate consistently with your message and values)/

- Add value. Again, with content curation, mere sharing is possible but not enough: your personal insight, your unique perspective is required. Help, educate, inspire. And be subjective!

1. Know Your Target Audience

2. Be consistent

3. Use Content Curation Tools for Efficiency

4. Stay On Theme

5. Be Selective

6. Promote A Wide Variety of Sites

7. Don't Just Share Big Media Content

8. Spark Discussions

9. Add Value

Jon Reed makes a great point by highlighting that professionals already do the basic - and more time consuming - part of content curation. 

So, as he says "why not establish processes" that can help you benefit from the incoming content you already filter (and read) and that matches your professional interests?

The time consumption of any new strategy is indeed critical for time-constrained professionals. Strategies which leverage existing activities are you low-hanging fruits so if you're already reading and sharing content, the right tool and processes can let you curate it for (almost) the same amount of time. But for much greater impact. 

This is a solid summary by Heidi Cohen on why content curation is besoming essential to businesses. Its role to content strategy mix has evolved from being anecdotical a few years ago to becoming central as it not only helps fill the gap but provides meaningful synergies for your created content. 

Now as Heidi puts it, content curation is not free: while it's - as she puts it - "a low cost way to fill your content marketing pipeline", low doesn't mean zero. I still regularly have debates with people who think that automated aggregation can replace content curation: it doesn't. There's no way to set it up once and forget about it. You'll need to invest as little as 15 minutes a day to achieve results but these 15' need to be spent.