Content Curation Software

Content curation is described as the process of sorting throughout the various contents available on the web. These contents are presented in a meaningful as well as organized way basing on a specific theme. Basically, the work would involve sifting, arranging, sorting, and eventually, publishing the information. The content curator will pick the best contents, which are important as well as relevant to share with the community.

The work involved in content curation is not just about collecting links or perhaps gathering as many information as possible. This is about placing the information collected into a context with annotation, presentation, and organization. Basically, the content curators will be able to provide a customized selection of the best as well as the most relevant resources for a given topic or theme.

Is Content Curation Valuable?

Organizations as well as people have already started making and sharing content and media over the web. For instance, if one internet user makes an average of 50 contents per day, the number of contents of the 800 million more users will exceed several billions of gigabytes.

Content curation offers great value to any person looking for quality content since finding information as well as making sense of this information will require more time, attention as well as focus. This would make what seemingly random web information valuable as this is arranged and organized in a way that is easy to find and simple to understand by people searching for information over the web.

Benefits of Content Curation

There are a lot of benefits that content curation provides to both the organizations and individual internet users. Here are some of the benefits:

• Helps Build A Community. Content curation can definitely help build a community. People who continuously do curation will gain followers and will eventually meet other bloggers.

Besides this, they will also have the chance to meet other content curators. Once this happens, there will be a chance to see things in a different perspective as curators will read and share ideas with each other. Moreover, a content curator will also be able to build a reputation as he or she becomes a valuable source of information.

• Promotes Recognition of Websites. Content curation can also help a website be recognized in the industry. Basically, curators will be empowered to research as well as gather information that speaks of a specific brand, organize it and share it with the public. This would promote the website and would definitely increase more sales as well as profit.

• Allows Sharing Thoughts and Influencing Others. Content curators will have the ability to write from their own perspective, which allows them to share their ideas and thoughts to an audience. This will influence the audience in terms of how they think, make decisions, and act.

Final Thoughts On Content Curation

Content curation involves creating content, building up contents from different sources, and showcasing this in an organized fashion. This is definitely a great way to capture specific information that is relevant to a given topic.

Author Bio:

Jason Miner plays a vital role for www.blogcarnival.com. He is an expert in writing topics of different categories. He is helping the carnival team to grow & working on making this an even better place for bloggers.

The irony of the web world today opening its doors to almost everyone who has something to say is – we’re fast running out of new things to say. With so much great content out there, how do you top that?

How can a marketing website make it to the upper echelons of the snooty Google search index?

And once there, it’s a tooth and nail battle to maintain the spot – so how do the successful websites do it? If you can’t create content, then you have to learn to curate content.

That’s the mantra for business websites that don’t have the time to create new content, or deal in services and products that are hard to create value-adding content around.

But content curation also requires some skill and focus. It’s not simply about channeling others content.

It’s about establishing a standard and maintaining it.

Here’s a look at 10 websites – both well-heeled and upcoming – that manage to curate content that is fresh, of high quality, relevant and valuable. These can offer lots of lessons for the attentive reader.

1. BMW

The BMW blog (at bmwblog.com) of course has its daily dose of BMW news, features and great, created content.

But the website likes to vary its content with a dash of curated, relevant video content, such as the Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol trailer which stars the BMW i8 alongside Tom Cruise.

2. The Huffington Post

The folks over at Huffington Post (huffingtonpost.com) do content curation as well as – if not better than – BMW.

They create some content, gather some links from around the web, and invite some content from its readers. This is the way the best news websites keep at the top of the content game.

3. Google News

While The Huffington Post and BMW use human curated content, Google News uses aggregated content. Aggregation is automated curation of content.

While this method of curation is not recommended unless you are a giant corporation with plenty of clout (and great technology), automated aggregation has been used successfully by publishers and web owners in the past. Whether it will be completely replaced by human curation is yet to be seen.

4. Learnist

Learnist is a new website that features crowd-sourced lessons bringing together videos, web pages, e-books and other forms of information into one space.

This allows users who know enough about something, be it music, floriculture or science – to create teachings (or rather ‘learnings’).

Learnist makes a good use of content curation and creating a community around it.

5. The Monkey Cage

The Monkey Cage (at themonkeycage.org) does content curation really well, and with a difference. The blog presents social science research that is publicly available.

The focus of the blog is to curate such research that is socially relevant and draw interesting correlations between our daily and political lives in democracies today.

There is well-written and illustrated commentary by the blogger – Political scientist John Sides – which sets the blog apart.While this is not an overt marketing blog, Sides did begin this blog to publicize his field. And so far, he has managed really well. The blog made it to the TIME’s top 25 blogs of 2012 list.

6. What Kate Wore

This is another blog that is on TIME’s list, located at whatkatewore.com. The blogger Susan Kelley has picked a big subject for her blog – the outfits that the Duchess of Cambridge is seen in.

She deconstructs the Duchess’ outfits, holds polls and links to events in the life of this public figure. Here Ms Kelley has followed an important element of good content curation – she has focused on a niche audience.

7. Reddit

The other two are not the biggest websites out there that have become household names, but this next one is.

Reddit (reddit.com), as we all know, is the place you go to in order to discover stories and conversations that you may never have heard of otherwise.

Reddit uses crowdsourcing to produce interesting, serious and silly content that keeps readers hooked.

8. Intel

Another website that uses crowdsourcing really well is the new Intel website (at iq.intel.com).

The site contains content that is sourced from Intel Employees via Twitter. This is an example of smart curation – Intel knows its sources will be relevant and good.

9. CMO

The senior marketing executive looking for digital marketing insights will find plenty of food for thought on cmo.com. The website is directed towards curating content for a niche audience, and appears to be a news website.

But readers will find that the content is highly relevant to the digital marketing industry. The website has a global traffic ranking of 57,170, which is great in a landscape of more than 600 million websites.

10. Inbound

Inbound.org is a partnership between SEOMoz co-founder and Hubspot co-founder to create a community for marketers and marketers interested in social media, content marketing, SEO etc. to come together and curate content.Readers can discover great stuff on these subjects and more and share them. This is a good example of how social ranking can be made use of to curate content in a given area.

As curation continues its upward climb in blogger and news room attention, more and more great stuff is coming out about how curation is done and how to incorporate it into any content marketing plan.

Beth Kanter (Photo credit: jdlasica)

Below are some of the best, recent resources from two thought leaders in curation: Robin Good and Beth Canter.

Honest, Caring Curation Is As Important as Creation

www.internetbillboards.net9/6/12  See on Scoop.it – Information Economy Note from Beth: This article was curated by Robin Good who used to point out the difference between sharing and. … Great advice for anyone wanting to become an effective content curator: “Whether in tweets, in blog posts, in podcasts, or in newsletters, be ruthless with your attention. … Some adopt a strategy of blanket-curation, throwing everything new or fresh or remotely interesting online and letting other consumers make …

The Key Benefits of Content Curation by Beth Kanter: Presentation

www.scoop.it9/26/11  Robin Good: Here is the official presentation that Beth Kanter delivered yesterday, accompanied by a curated bundle of user contributions (mostly tweets) and relevant resources (stats, some visuals and other resources) outlining the key benefits that content curation can bring. To do so, she used Storify.com which allowed her to pull in … Ten Great Google Plus Tips | Rainbow SEO | digital marketing strategy | Scoop.it. Your Google Plus page reflects your businesses …

ROBIN GOOD POP MILANO PROFESSIONAL ONLINE PUBLISHER (Photo credit: Michele Ficara Manganelli)

Digital Curator or Content Curator – Beth Kanter Interviews Robin

sigaloncuration.soup.io1/29/12 - Digital Curator or Content Curator – Beth Kanter Interviews Robin Good – Insights & Tips On Curation For Non- Profits [Video] | Content Curation, Social Business and Beyond. Beth Kanter interviewed Robin Good a few days …

Curation-ism, Part II: 4 Steps to Take to Go Forth and Curate

www.business2community.com4/12/12 - So in the spirit of that advice, here is a run-down of OpenView’s content curation process, with tips as well as a list of tools and other examples of curation models from around the web below. … For an even more substantial overview of content curation, check out Beth Kanter’s terrific “Content Curation Primer”. And for … Robin Good has a lot of interesting things to say regarding the importance of your visual delivery of content curation, and what’s in store for the future.

Adding more value to your Blog: How to write a Digest | Web

www.web-strategist.com10/3/07 - Beth Kanter asks in the comments form today’s Social Networking Strategy: “I’m remembering Robin Good’s piece on news mastering techniques — this is what you’re doing here. So, any tips or secrets you want to share with …

Shallow vs. Quality Curation

Robin discusses the difference between the two and the differences are very important.   Machine aggregated content and curation using only software tools without context, meaning, and opinion being provided by the curator is what he calls shallow curation.

One of the things we drill into customers from the very beginning of their CurationSoft usage is that neither our tool, nor any other tool, gives you a completely curated, professional blog post.  A piece of software cannot come up with a good opinion, relevant to the discussion at hand.

That’s why CurationSoft is a “content assistant” rather than being touted as a set-it-and-forget it tool like so many others.  The editor HAS to be involved and HAS to put the human touch on every piece of content they touch.

Why?

Because it increases relevance and meaning for readers and the search engines who track what readers are liking, tweeting, and talking about around the web.  The only way to get people to share and love your content is to do it better than an aggregator which only supplies search results.

I employ tens of thousands of people each year to keep me informed and entertained.

Who am I?

You. Me. Everyone who uses the web.

Collectively, we employ gazillions of content creators and curators to keep our brains fat and happy with all sorts of data.

Information (Photo credit: heathbrandon)

There are job openings for anyone who likes to share great information on topics of interest to others.  And we are so hungry for content with context and meaning, we’re employing more and more people who do a good job of curating the web’s content for us everyday.

When I surf for news and information in the tech space, I employ no less than a dozen different sites at any given time.  I say ” employ” because in return for keeping me informed, I reward those sites with pageviews which they, in turn, sell to advertisers.  I click on some ads, and occasionally buy stuff recommended by the sites I use frequently.  All of this activity on my part constitutes and economy-boosting, job creating role that myself and every web surfer takes part in everyday.  And why do I like these sites?  Mainly because they have great content.  Without a lot of filler.  And a lot of that content is curated or inspired by other content.

They do all the research, gathering, filtering, and writing, and I benefit by saving time and keeping up on things I care about without all the fuss.  That’s value worth paying for.  And I pay with attention, clicks, and dollars.

Who gets hired by us?

The people who do the best job at giving us what we need: the information we’re looking for, minus all the noise, plus some commentary and analysis to put that information into a new context for us to better understand and consume it.

In short, the best job prospects on the internet today lie in content curation.  Some call it good old fashioned news reporting.  Others call it “riffing” on the news and information being created at blistering speeds on all topics of interest.

Whatever you prefer to call it, you are employing people for this job every time you visit a favorite site that always seems to keep you in the loop with the best information or entertainment.

Image via Wikipedia

Have Blog? You’re Hired!

There is a huge need for clarity and focus on the web.  And as more and more content is produced, the need only grows.  We need people with websites and curation tools and we’re willing to pay with our attention, clicks, and dollars.

Skills Required

• A domain of your own or a blog hosted at, say, WordPress or Tumblr.
• A desire to find cool information and share it with others (essentially what we all do on Twitter and Facebook).
• An ability to choose the good from the bad, and curate posts that make your readers happy, loyal followers and brand evangelists.
• Ability to use tools to help you gather and filter information, like CurationSoft.
• Ability to use tools to help you make posts without being a “code jockey” or data entry drone. (Like CurationSoft!)

The skill set may not seem like a big deal, but the effect a person with these skills can have in any market is profound. It can turn you into a valuable earner with one of the coolest jobs on the Planet.

Image via Wikipedia

Training

• A place like Blog Success will get you up to speed on WordPress.
• CurationSoft  will give you everything you need to curate like a pro, and doesn’t even require a big manual.

Again, just because it sounds too easy to be of value, and therefore, doesn’t sound like it could turn into a good paying gig, doesn’t mean it isn’t one of the most attractive and effective money earning businesses on the web today. It certainly is!

Do you like sharing great stuff with your followers on social networks or on your blog?

Here’s your chance to to get a little credit for all the digging and linking you do for friends and followers!  One of the guys behind this contest is Marty Smith, who is on a mission to educate everyone he can about curation and what he sees as the future of web publishing.  (We do too!)

From the contest page:

Quality content is so abundant a new skill is being honed. Content Curation uses new tools such as Scoop.it, Hunch, Pinterest and “old” tools such as blogs, email and content management systems (CMS) to organize the web’s boundless content around important themes. Our contest seeks to thank hard working content curators, identify some of the top content curators helping to define this exciting new skill set and develop an annual content curation event.

10 winners will chosen, with first and second places getting an iPad or a Kindle Fire, respectively.  Every winner gets a profile on the site as one of the “best curators of 2011.”

All you have to do to enter is start submitting links and showing off how good you are at curating what’s news, interesting, funny, informative, or just plain neato!

Curation Contest Entry and Details

Clay Johnson

In his review of “The Information Diet,” by Clay Johnson, David Eaves examines the pain and suffering that too much junk information can cause.  And how he, as a “knowledge worker,” should be very good at managing information.  But he has the same problem that all of us face.  Being on a diet sucks.

“What makes The Information Diet compelling is that Johnson embraces the concerns we have about the world of information overload – from those raised by New York Magazine authors and celebrated pundits to the challenges we all feel on a day to day basis – and offers the best analysis to date of its causes, and what we can do about it. ” David Eaves “Not Brain Candy: A Review of The Information Diet by Clay Johnson“

For me, reading a lot of different ideas and opinions about information overload points to the coming trend in mass curation.  As anyone who keeps up with the latest tools and tricks to manage information knows, everyone seems to be grappling with overload.  And this means that everyone is on the lookout for places on the web that can save them time by being a quality filter for the topics that interest them.

In short, the business of curation across the range of popular and niche topics, is set to explode.

Curation is already employed heavily by most serious news and blog sites.  It has to be if they are to keep up with their competition.  But it is also essential for readers to find good sources of quality links and information where they don’t have to search, research, and glean meaning from a noisy web.

Those who provide such a service to their target market will continue to profit greatly from it.  If entire books are being written about how to deal with information overload, there’s no longer much need to debate whether or not curation would be a good priority for content marketers.

People are spread pretty thin these days between social networks and email.  And, obviously, they love to flock to sites that perform the valuable service of curation to save them precious time.  In every corner of the web, right now, there is an opportunity to create a loyal following, great traffic, and great rankings by curating and becoming the chosen filter for readers.

Martin Smith has made the most impassioned case for curation I’ve seen to date.  While most experts talk about the topic of curation in an almost clinical sense, this guy is… well, freakin’ excited about it!

“I’ve seen tornadoes roar up on dusty Texas plains. I’ve run from a black storm’s vengeance, furry and terror. No Texas tornado has anything over the content storm heading at each and every one of us.”

“Curation, the process of separating content wheat from chafe, will be the next web revolution.”

and

“If Web 1.0 was about online access and Web 2.0 is about social nets Web 3.0 will be coring down to content that really matters.”

These quotes are from Marty’s blog “Scent Trail.”  I like this guy!  :)  Thanks to Robin Good for putting Marty on my radar.

This was a fun interview.  Gina and Ronda do a really great job on their Blog Talk Radio show every week and I was honored to be their guest today.

We talked about the basics of curation along with some cool tips on how to be a great curator.  It’s worth a listen even if you have been curating as a content marketing strategy for some time.

We’ve been talking a lot about how messy the web has become in recent years.  And it’s only getting messier.  So much so that simple words will not suffice to describe just how much content is created and uploaded to the internet every minute of the day. We created this infographic to depict how “full” the internet is.  While it’s technically impossible for the web to fill up, it is very clear that web surfers are well past our limits of time and patience it takes to find the best information on the topics that interest us.

With a desperate search for tools to help us gather and consume only the best information on any topic, nothing has presented itself as an ideal solution.  Except for one thing:  the human curated information hub. Looking at the graphic below, it becomes clear very quickly why it is impossible for a single algorithm-driven source, such as a search engine, to supply us with everything that is relevant (and of high quality) on a certain topic without all the noise that comes with it.

It is also a great way to demonstrate just how important human curated content has become. Curation is truly a valuable service to web surfers who have neither the time nor the patience to sift through mountains of links and data to find what they’re looking for and make sense of it.

(Click graphic for larger view.)

Yet another use for curation:  reporting the under reported news.

Sometimes it’s easy to think that since there are massive news curation sites like HuffPo on the web, everything newsworthy is being covered.  They have a huge writing staff and aggregate content from everywhere.

The fact is, lots of news is left on the cutting room floor each and every day.  Decisions about what’s newsworthy are made in split seconds as the giant sites jockey to be “first” with the news they think will get the most views.

Nothing inherently wrong with that, except that what some call a strong news day, others call guilt by omission.

Image via Wikipedia

It’s not possible, even for the biggest sites on the web, to cover everything that could or should be covered.  The web needs more reporters, curators, and people who dig through wasted opportunities to post things like good news (for a change) or news that is otherwise purposely or accidentally missed by news networks and online hubs.

There is a tremendous opportunity for web reporters who curate “missing” news to fill many voids and dark spots in the information we consume every day.  The embarrassment of riches that large organizations enjoy means they are passing on more news than they can handle in a 24/7 news cycle.

Yet, it is being reported.  Small sites break stories as well, but they don’t have the reach to get wide distribution.  That means there’s a whole lot of news that people would otherwise consume and enjoy if only it could were curated, shared, and bubbled up to wider audiences.

A massive layer of “unused news” just fades away daily as if it never happened.  Curation can change that.  Curation is beginning to change that.  But we have a lot more work and education to do before we ever come close to saturating the web with premium curated content sources.  There is great a opportunity to provide readers, watchers, and listeners with more valuable choices in curators to follow, around the topics in which they are most interested.

This spells huge opportunity for those who take up the challenge to profitably curate on a wide variety of topics.