Curating Information as Content Strategy

Content, which is anything that informs, educates, or entertain online, is your business digital body language.

The Internet changed how people find and read content. While it was helpful to have a strategy for publishing information about your business before the Web, people didn't necessarily track if what you gave them as brochures and papers was integrated with everything else.

Online, it's easier to see all of the different outputs of an organization side by side -- and to notice whether they connect the dots, or if they seem to come from separate businesses.

It is more attractive to buy from a business that has its act together. You find out through search.

Why content is important

On the Web, people trade attention for good, useful content. So you need to have a plan that will help you develop, publish, and catalog content to make you more effective in attracting search and keeping people coming back to your source.

There are still companies that struggle with the idea of becoming content producers, and thus have not yet formulated a content strategy. It makes sense to have one because it helps you define why con­tent is use­ful and usable, good for the bottom line and for instilling a sense of purpose -- for customers and business alike.

Some organizations are affected by the sprawling issue when it comes to content. Separate groups that develop their own and don't necessarily map to the business' overall direction is one example.

Others have the opposite problem -- too few resources means not enough content to start generating the search and participation volumes they need.

Meanwhile, the Web is filled with loads of content -- some of it good, much of it hard to use in its current form.

Content and community

Which is where there is opportunity for resource-strapped businesses to make a dent. You may have noticed that there are successful online media portals that do that with news. They aggregate and curate news.

Aggregation helps journalists find stories -- and see patterns -- and it does the same for news readers. Publications like The Huffington Post have found this model to work well to attract and retain readers. And you could look at using a similar model for your business.

As I wrote a long time ago, the contemporary Web site presence should be organized in thirds, with 1/3 editorial impact, 1/3 community building, and 1/3 marketing or calls to action.

The biggest opportunity for businesses today resides in building their own audience.

Better yet, build a community or tribe.

Curating information as content strategy

Which is where the idea that curating information could be your content strategy comes in. And I mean curating in the sense of organizing, editing, displaying, highlighting, captioning, commenting on, and all of the activities you'd see associated with telling a specific story from your point of view.

What is it that you want people to experience -- read, see, hear, even do in stores or gatherings -- from your business? How can you filter, classify, build upon, and provide existing information to do that?

Your advantage will come from having a person dedicated to curating the information. If you're working at a business that caters to other businesses (B2B), you have a specialized kind of knowledge that can set you apart. As a small business, or in a crowded industry, you could find your advantage in curating because:

• becoming a useful filter makes you a destination
• commenting and intelligent framing of conversation are still in scarce supply
• showing trends and patterns from compiling information is powerful
• providing content in a way that makes it usable gains you a loyal following
• seeing what's out there helps you find gaps in demand
• curating allows you to set the tone for where the focus should be
• seeing your role as that of ultimate decision maker on what's in and what's out

Examples of curating information with blogs are links that pertain to a particular topic or subject of interest to readers, as well as commentary on articles or quotes, both of which have been executed in a variety of creative formats.

Have you integrated curating information in your content strategy? How about making it your content strategy?

 

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Comments

[Deirdre Reid]

I'm glad you're focusing on this today. Many small staff organizations, like associations, are hesitant to start a blog, even though it could help them with many of their educational and marketing goals. They believe they don't have the resources to create content. Besides repurposing existing content, curation is a great option for them. As long as they have time to monitor and read RSS feeds and filter out the good stuff, they can provide their members the best reads of the day or week.

And it's a great back-up plan when the well runs dry, not that I know anything about that. ;-)

[Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach]

Beginning a blog/site with the above ideas firmly entrenched can only save huge amounts of pain later.

I'm in the process of organizing my content as well; it's a character-building process indeed (we're talking hundreds of posts and articles). I wish I had considered it sooner...

[Ed Murray]

There's such a volume of information available online these days, it can easily overwhelm readers and researchers.

Good, trustworthy, consistent content curation should absolutely be part of your mix - or your entire mix.

[Erin]

Shameless plug (I'm a librarian): another avenue for assistance with curating content is your local public librarian (or for some organizations, you may have a librarian on staff). Curating content is what we do!

[Gabriele Maidecchi]

While I don't have a specific curation strategy backing me up, the activity of following interesting blogs, finding valuable content (like this article), commenting and sharing it with people in your "network", this is a curation activity that often spawns some content creation tasks like a blog post inspired by what I read here or there.
Everything is tightly interconnected, as far as I see.

[Margie Clayman (@margieclayman)]

This is an excellent post. I have dabbled in content curation myself and I find it very rewarding, and I find too that in this busy world, people appreciate you saving them some research time. Thinning the water output from the fire hose is always a nice way to change things up!

[Ian Goldsmid]

Valeria - it would be great to see you post reviews/comparisons of some of the emerging content curation tools if you ever find time to do that?

[Anne Sorensen]

Hi Valeria. Thanks for another great post.

The technology has certainly changed our customers' behaviour and therefore the communications tools in the marketer's toolbox.

Agree re strategy. To identify objectives (ie what are we trying to achieve here?), understand our audience and develop content to suit are all key. It's also exciting and so valuable that today's technology enables easy measurement of our efforts - the results of which can be fed back into the strategy for refinement.

As part of the management of an integrated marketing strategy, the content strategy can be synchronised even in larger organisations - with staff being given responsibility and guidelines for certain areas. Perhaps like a firm's 'style guide' for brands - there could be a 'content strategy guide'.

Thanks! Best wishes.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Deirdre - associations are the perfect fit for content curation, they could include the content of their members, build community by helping with insights and connecting members, etc. It takes a bit of letting go of the old ways and being a bit more creative, dare I say resourceful?

@Barbara - we're not born fully formed, so we learn these things as we go along. Just see your work as a progression and focus on the high value activities once you figure out what would be even better.

@Ed - thank you for stopping by.

@Erin - maybe more companies need librarians to catalog and propose knowledge and information in new ways...

@Gabriele - yup, my whole participation on Twitter is based on curating content and conversation.

@Margie - part of the concept of being helpful and demonstrating you are listening is to propose and organize information, resources, etc.

@Ian - my main tool is my brain, and I have talked about how we process information. As for technology, that will cost you, it takes time to test, evaluate, etc ;)

@Anne - good thoughts. Many organizations that are serious about integrating two-way communication tools into their plans build editorial calendars that cut across campaigns, divisions, and roles to provide a fuller experience for customers and prospects. It's a lot of up front work, however it makes maintenance easier and sustainable, which is where you win.

[Deirdre Reid]

@Valeria, you're exactly right and touched the association sore spot -- letting go of the old ways and control. We're working on them!

[Eddy]

Valeria - good post. In content planning for our clients, we emphasize a blend of three types of content: created (100% written/produced by them), contributed (having guest bloggers), and curated (the distribution of aggregated and human-filtered content feeds).

I couldn't agree more with your reasons for curation.

[Mohan Arun L.]

Curation = poor mans content strategy. If you can afford to dedicate resources (time energy or money) for producing original content, go for it.

[Kerry Rego]

I think it's interesting to note that curation is the new flavor of the month. Now that we have all this data, we need to figure out how it's useful to us. The sort and find is where we are at.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Deirdre - glad you're on it.

@Eddy - blending is a good way to build sustainability and community into your plans.

@Mohan - curating *is* creating a new expression of the content by commenting, ordering, etc. Museum curators develop new stories from what they edit in and out of the art they choose to display, for example. Plus, it allows you to contextualize disperse information. Much of what passes for "original" content is often built on other people's ideas and not credited properly, esp. in social media.

@Kerry - not for many. I have been curating content and conversations for years. The same can be said for librarians, teachers, mentors, even parents. You don't need to do anything you don't want to do, either. Curating also means engaging critical skills, and having the humility to admit that you don't know it all.

[Simon Fogg]

interesting to see curation in this context, another blogger has recently published a book on curation in the context of christian worship triggered by reading a book on curation in the art world, worth a look http://jonnybaker.blogs.com/jonnybaker/2010/07/curating-worship-new-book.html