Types of Curation

Part 1 of a two part series…

There are several different types of curation. In fact, there are almost as many types of curation as there are definitions of what exactly curation is.

But there are only two, count them, TWO types of curation that can be monetized well and used for brand-building.

[box type=”info” size=”large” style=”rounded”]Curation is basically a content marketing tactic. Rather than adding to the mountains of “original” content being uploaded every minute to the web, the curator researches, gathers, and picks the best information around a specific topic and shares only the best with their readers or followers. A curator becomes a thought leader through commentary to provide context and meaning to the information they curate into a blog post or a share with their “real-time” audience on the social web.[/box]

With that in mind, there are two major types of curation happening today:
Real-time curation, and
Blog Curation (or Curated Hubs)
Real-Time Curation
This is the realm of curation that is personified by people like Robert Scoble, Guy Kawasaki, and Mari Smith. They are followed on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ by so many people because of their ability to surface and post content their readers appreciate, enjoy, and spread around their own networks.

Real-time curation is all about being in-the-know and reporting on the latest breaking news and new information around a specific topic range. Scoble is all about tech, startups, cool apps and social news. Smith is all about sharing content on social media, branding, thought leadership, and marketing via social.

Kawasaki is the hardest to put into a box. He shares just about anything and everything falling under the vague and subjective category of “interesting.” But he’s done the best job of anyone in making general, real-time curation work for his brand.

The real-time curator relies on the same tools as anyone does to pick up on the latest news and information. They live on RSS readers and other info gathering tools and they follow rich sources of information from the top content creators and leaders in their market.

Image representing Robert Scoble as depicted i…

Monetization of Real-Time Curation
Robert Scoble works for Rackspace. He’s actually paid to “be” Scoble and draw attention to Rackspace. Any company in the world would love to have Scoble as their mascot. The amount of attention he garners with his blogging, interviews with tech leaders, and his social following is nothing short of amazing. When he drops news about Rackspace, they are able to show off their ninja skills by keeping their servers from crashing under the massive influx of traffic Scoble can generate.

Mari Smith monetizes her real-time curation by building her brand, selling her books, and selling her expertise.

Guy Kawasaki, American venture capitalist and …

Guy Kawasaki monetizes his massive social following with book sales. His is the house that real-time curation built.

A study of these three social mavens (by following them and watching what, when, how, and where they curate) would go a long way in developing your own strategy for successful real-time curation.

Part Two: Blog Curation (A Curated Hub)
Post Tags
blog curation, content curation, how to curate, real-time curation, types of curation
About Author: Peter Lenkefi
What Our Users Say
I just started using Curationsoft in order to start curating technology news for my website. Within days, I stopped using the other curation software I had previously purchased and switched entirely to Curationsoft. The interface is so intuitive that I still have not watched all of the training videos – but I learn completely new techniques each time I do watch a new one. The ability to easily use this in conjunction with Facebook is amazing and will be a great way to drive traffic to my site. In addition to curation for my blog, I have also been using it for research. If you open a Google Drive document and drag research content found with CurationSoft over into the document, you not only have a great all-in-one-place resource – but your bibliography is nearly built if you need to provide sources. I am using it for researching compliance in the mortgage finance field and it has already been an amazing time saver. Finally, I am completely blown away by your amazing customer support. I opened one support ticket to take care of a password issue (my fault) that was responded to almost immediately. The second ticket was opened to point out a minor bug which – was fixed within a day or two. Thanks for creating this fine software and providing such great support. I happily give CurationSoft five stars! Marvin S.

I have used the software in numerous sites to enable me to select and add a range of curated content and I find it easy and simple to use, while at the same time powerful to attract truly dynamic content. I use the software to find interesting and useful content for some of my sites and I still wish to learn more about using the software to the max. Content curation is core to the future development of sites as we all need good quality and reliable content to add to sites on a daily basis. Paul S.

CurationSoft benefits our business by the relative ease it provides in obtaining great content at ease along with the ability to drag and drop the information to posts. It has a nice interface and it is definitely a time saver. I have ranked pages on the first page of Google with the curated content that was added to posts using your software. I earn $1ooo a month from 1 of my clients using your software on average, so the software has definitely made a positive contribution financially. I use the software to primarily add current up to date relevant content for my clients websites. Content curation basically is weaving together great content from different sources around the web to have a great page of great content for the end user. It brings steady traffic due to the search engines indexing great content. It is awesome. Ayanna T.

I use CurationSoft to help grab content for Tier 2 and Tier 3 sites for ranking purposes. It allows me to create decent looking sites with good content for SEO reasons when working to rank a certain site. Content is king, and great content is always best! I basically repurpose expired domains and use the software to do it quickly and natural looking. I get paid for my SEO services for clients and use the software a lot: I use it to get content quickly to build out sites that link to my client or ‘money’ sites that need to look good and hold up to human evaluation. Content curation gives me the ability to use relevant topics, content, videos for a specific niche and find quality content and quality authority links quickly to build out a site. Mike H.

CurationSoft helps in finding fresh content to fill our blog with news and updates. The more news and updates you add to your site, the better in terms of quality and search engine love.We have had increased traffic to our news site and hold top 10 rankings for niche related news.This news site has helped indirectly by referring clients to us in related industries. It has also helped to establish us as an authority in the industry. We use it to stay in tune with news and blog posts related to martial arts movies, sports, etc. Content curation, once you get used to it provides fresh insight and helps to quickly overcome writers block.

Richard B

CurationSoft helped me overall to improve my “image” with clients since I’m no longer “just” the SEO-guy, since I made it part of my “package”, and really only use it as a competitive advantage.I use it a lot for my offline clients to get them an idea of what blogs to put out, where to find them and what to put how and where. I often show it off in a meeting, where we go online and look up articles/info pertaining to their business. We then compare it with stuff they have on their website.It’s VERY valuable to have ONE piece of software to get the info my clients need to become better bloggers.

CurationSoft makes content creation faster, and allows me to curate content and know I put together a quality post. Not some garbage spin or autopost. The software helps me find content and it does an excellent job doin it. I use it to add content to my personal blog and other websites I run. So the bottom line is, the software gets me content fast, and saves me hours of time that I used to spend (and dread spending) to create something useful.

CurationSoft helps expediting research in locating relevant content. Access to Twitter, YouTube, Google News & Flickr makes for varied and vast resources. Further emotional comfort by realizing that the content found is copyright safe. The ability to search by keyword then drag and drop, edit and post is fast and easy. Pingback creation saves time by not having to grovel, or worse, pay, for backlinks. Insertion of digitally rich media improves visitor experience. I have not tracked search engine rankings, but generally have more visits. It is so easy that I use the software when I am on my treadmill desk, so I can get a workout while easily adding pages of content. Rod A.

We manage over 80 websites and CurationSoft allows us to post interesting and unique content quickly and easily on a regular basis from one place. Before we had CurationSoft it was a time consuming process to find and edit content and the login to each site and make a post. Now it’s really very easy. The curated posts we make to each site add weight both in terms of number of posts and credibility in terms of people having confidence we know what we’re are talking about. I have no hard evidence but I’m sure it helps convert to a sale of our products as customers often reference posts in their communications with us.I have an assistant use the software to post interesting news items to 2 to 3 of our 80+ sites on a daily basis. It’s quick and easy to do and does not take her more than 5 mins per post. Before it would have taken her 30 mins per post, maybe longer.It enables us to keep our customers and prospects in touch with our industry niche and provide a service which both find valuable. Because of the speed we are able to post valuable content on a lot of sites, quickly and regularly for low cost. -Richard C

CS enables me to share crucial info with members of my congregation who do not have the time to do the kind of research I do. Michael D: