AM FULLY A CONTENT CURATOR
What
is Content Curation?
According to Beth’s Blog, Content
curation is the process of sorting through the vast amounts of content on the
web and presenting it in a meaningful and organized way around a specific
theme. The work involves sifting, sorting, arranging, and publishing
information. A content curator cherry picks the best content that is
important and relevant to share with their community. It isn’t unlike what
a museum curator does to produce an exhibition: They identify the theme,
they provide the context, they decide which paintings to hang on the wall, how
they should be annotated, and how they should be displayed for the public.
Content curation is not about
collecting links or being an information pack rat, it is more about putting
them into a context with organization, annotation, and presentation.
Content curators provide a customized, vetted selection of
the best and most relevant resources on a very specific topic or theme.
The value of being a content curator as opposed to
just being a content consumer.
Ever since social media emerged as a legitimate marketing tool, there has
been debate as to what balance should exist between created and curated content
in establishing an online presence.Although much of the discussion has focused on companies, knowing the difference between original and third-party content usage is also vital for individuals.
The Basics
Created content is the natural first step in establishing a presence on any platform. In the case of social media, this type of content lives in the form of tweets, blog posts, Facebook status updates and Instagram photos from the individual themselves.
Curated content, on the other hand, are tweets, blog posts, etc. from others which are then shared on your personal networks. So, when you are retweeting an article or posting a YouTube video from another person on your Facebook, you're essentially curating that content.
Not Anything New
While curation as it applies to content and social media may not be familiar, everyone has heard the term before. Among other things, curators are the people responsible for selecting the
paintings, sculptures, etc. that are displayed in places from the Royal British Museum to the Knoxville Museum of Art.
Applying that idea of curation to social media, it means taking the best of what you find on the internet and sharing it with those within your reach; not only for their benefit, but to show that you have a keen eye for quality work.
Most of us do it anyway. We all retweet, re-share, find and hyperlink sources. But, like a museum curator, we need to make sure it's the quality that gets out to our followers; perhaps not the latest Nicki Minaj video if the area in which you're trying to become an online voice is astrophysics.
Do you feel ready and confident about this role?
Before you begin the product demo, take a few minutes to think about why you
want to use content curation in the first place. What do you hope to accomplish
by sharing content across multiple channels?Your answer can be focused externally. For instance, you may want to demonstrate thought leadership on social media channels. On the flip side, your answer may be focused internally. You may, for example, want to educate your employees.
I saw how to find, curate,
and publish content from scratch. I feel confident that I can do it on my own.
I
will not waste time building my own content library. The solution provides content out-of-the-box, and it uses artificial
intelligence to learn my preferences.
My marketing team will be able to
publish content to all the end points we need (e.g. e-mail, social networks, blogs,
etc.)
I have all the functionality I need
to get started now, but still have plenty of room to grow.
I will be able to meet my content
curation objectives (e.g. build thought leadership, establish brand identity, educate
my employees and integrating it with my profession etc.)
Furthermore, I can measure my
objectives using this tool.
All in all, I feel like I can easily
and quickly implement this solution.
What will be the value to you of organizing and
sharing resources?
Organizing and sharing of resources let you know
very many things as well as getting friends.
Many resources such as supercomputers, legal
advisors, and university classrooms are shared by many members of an
organization. When the supply of shared resources is limited, conflict usually
results between contending demanders.
If these
conflicts can be adequately resolved, then value is created for the
organization. In this paper we use the methodology of applied mechanism design
to examine alternative processes for the resolution of such conflicts for a
particular class of scheduling problems. We construct a laboratory environment,
within which we evaluate the outcomes of various allocation mechanisms. In
particular, we are able to measure efficiency, the value attained by the
resulting allocations as a percentage of the maximum possible value. Our choice
of environment and parameters is guided by a specific application, the
allocation of time on NASA's
Deep Space Network, but the results also
provide insights relevant to other scheduling and allocation applications.
We find (1) experienced user committees using
decision support algorithms produce reasonably efficient allocations in lower
conflict situations but perform badly when there is a high level of conflict
between demanders, (2) there is a mechanism, called the Adaptive User Selection.
Would you recommend this to all new users of
technology?
I strongly recommend the new users of technology because the curated content
may be high-brow (a la BrainPickings.org), or simply a collection of popular
images/videos/posts from across the web (e.g.: BuzzFeed.com). The primary
intention is to help the audience discover and consume a large quantity of
content in the easiest possible format.Essentially, a content curator acts as a go-between publishers and readers. Think of them as personal trainers who not only tell you what to eat, but also deliver the best foods right to your doorstep.
Publishers benefit from it as it gives their content an even larger audience. Consumers, meanwhile, get access to personalized content they wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. Curators, of course, benefit by turning into virtual platforms with the capacity to moderate vast amounts of traffic. Curation isn’t limited to content alone. Some of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in the world such as Fab.com and AHALife.com follow a curation model wherein they sell hand-picked designer item
Content curation provides context and convenience
Much online content may not be well explained and in some cases, is used incorrectly. And there is a lot of content. Content curators take the time and effort to filter, reword or explain the information to their audiences. In that sense, the aim of content curation is to make information more useful to audiences for specific reasons. It’s all about context and convenience.
Content curation does not overwhelm
The Internet has a great deal of informative content on various subjects, especially now. In fact, there is so much information and content that it often leads to information overload. On the other hand, curation reuses content on the internet to create content that will also be online (although content curation can also be used offline). However, content curation creates value by making the content better suited for the goals and target audiences.
Content curation can build authority
Content curators can build a more authoritative voice by locating and reformatting content in a way that it remains relevant to the readers. The authority arises from the fact that curators help people gain a better understanding of issues that confuse them. So, it’s not the act of content curation as such alone, it’s also about how you use curated content to inform, educate, entertain and engage target audiences.
Content curation: disconnected, connected and hybrid
Ideally content curation is integrated in an overall content marketing – and often social media marketing – approach. However, sometimes it makes sense to create a brand around curated content regarding a specific topic. You can also use it in a hybrid way, as an addition but somewhat disconnected from your own content. An example: this blog has a specific view and mission so we don’t cover everything about content marketing. However, we know what our target audiences value and use specific platforms and channels to link to other content as well. This can result in a specific channel, such as your Twitter account, becoming a medium as such. That’s not bad, the only challenge is that if it’s not an owned channel, such as a Twitter account, it doesn’t belong to you but to twitter’s policy and you have no control over Twitter whatsoever.
Conclusion
Content curation is the perfect
solution to the problem of over-creation and content discovery online. It is
also a fantastic way for businesses to grow their audiences and create a
vociferous community of readers. It benefits everyone involved – curators,
publishers and readers.
