Content Curation Update and Roundup

I am working on my monthly Windmill Networking content marketing column, and thought it would be a good time to revisit my article Blow Out Your Content Markerting and Lead Social Conversations witih Content Curation, which ran in March.

So I took some time to get caught up with experts in the field whom I know and respect.

Tom Riddle of curation platform CIThread, a solution that I have covered, mentioned that the company is taking a step back and reevaluating its approach to the marketplace.

When I asked him about alternatives, he mentioned Curata (I know and have covered them, as well) and Curation Station, but seemed to wonder whether any curation tech companies were having great success and impact on the market.

I also spoke with Alex Romanovich of Social2B, and he had a lot to say, offering his “two cents” on the state of content curation:

Let’s define this first.

Content Curation is a content marketing approach that
allows an individual user or an organization to collect, refine, and repurpose
or retarget this content to a specific audience.

This is a great opportunity for Small Business or
Professionals who are interested in providing unique, curated content to their
target audience, as a differentiator. Content Curators are Content Connoisseurs
– the good ones are providing value to their audience, and sometime monetize it
as well.

Another important aspect of content curation is the fact
that well curated content is all about personal story-telling and personalized
input on the content obtained elsewhere. The original content is left
untouched, yet the curation process allows for a more opinionated and more
refined look at nuances and elements of that original content.

So what’s the big deal? Well, precision and viewpoints
make a difference. The audience likes curators for their ability to refine and
to filter content, and thus categorize it for the target audience.

Here are some good examples of Content Curation platforms
and what they may entail:

1. Pinterest – image and video curation at its best. More
   on Pinterest in this Social2B blog post. After you review the blog post, consider this – there are tools now, like
   Curalate.com, that allow brands and professionals to measure the effectiveness
   of their Pinterest curation presences. As always, and with any content, you
   have to be consistent, sustainable and relevant.
2. There are a variety of tools that allow you to create
   your own Curated Magazine – Storify, Paper.li, Scoop.it, and many others, allow
   you to select the existing publications and create an interest based
   publication catering to a particular audience. Passion Marketing and Interest
   Based Marketing will be entering our vocabulary fairly shortly.
3. For bloggers, there are a number of Blog Curation
   solutions, including the WordPress itself as a curation platform with various
   plug-ins. The solutions can be as simple as leveraging Google Alerts and using
   free tools, such as SocialMention. If you want to integrate other features
   related to curation, such as voting and feedback, FanNewscast could be a great
   solution as well – extending curation to Facebook and other platforms.
4. For email
   marketers, it is possible to integrate your email content with social media,
   thus extending your message beyond the direct response capabilities offered by
   email only. XYDO, ConstantContact, ChimpMail, Vertical Response and others now
   provide well integrated, social content marketing and curation solutions to
   drive your audience towards the social media and digital media platform of choice

Finally, to get results from Content Curation you need
consistency and some level of automation offered my platforms such as Curata
and others. Curata includes a more sophisticated level of automation and
analytics not immediately offered by other platforms. In the end, Curation is
all about telling your story – your own way, refined for your audience and
catering to your community.