Content curation

An interesting aspect of the culture of sharing on social networks is that of content curation. This is the act of pointing your followers to content from other people.

Anyone who sometimes uses Twitter to send people to an interesting blog post or news article or video that they did not create is curating content. A retweet is a form of content curation too.

Essentially the idea is that you find things that interest you and share them. If you become known as "always finding the good stuff" people will eagerly follow you even if you don't do much in the way of original content.

This human approach to content selection is very different than an algorithmic approach than used in a search engine like Google.

If you do online book or music reviews, you're curating content. When you blog about other people’s work you're curating content.

SXSW Future 15

Content curation happens offline too. At the South-by-Southwest Interactive Festival in a few weeks, I'm curating a panel discussion on social business. SXSW calls this a Future 15 because each of ten panelists gets just 15 minutes to present. I curated the ten panelists from among the thousands of panel submissions to create a unified two and a half hour session that fits together under the theme "social business".

The SAY 100

The SAY 100, launching today from SAY Media, highlights "100 of the most interesting and influential voices online today" and is a great example of content curation. SAY Media worked with ten experts in ten categories, to discover interesting content and communities - the people that are driving discussion and influencing opinion online.

Michael Sippey, VP of Artist Development at SAY Media says: "We built Say 100 to highlight the power shift that's happening in media from brand name sites, newspapers, magazines, etc. to individual voices."

Here are a few:

Seth Godin curated the Say 100 business channel. You'll recognize some familiar voices there.

Jane Pratt curated the Style channel, and picked great people like Tavi Gevinson and Scott Schuman of The Sartorialist

Clay Shirky curated the Thought Leaders channel, and picked some big brains like danah boyd, Sady Doyle and Richard Lipton.

Tina Roth Eisenberg curated the Design channel, and picked some fantastic bloggers like Will Hudson and Daniel Howells.

This is really cool stuff because now I have a bunch of hand selected blogs that are new to me to check out.

How are you curating content as a way of building an audience?

Comments

[Sally]

Hi David, I liked your post and reposted it on a facebook page The Future of Media: Presented by Dow Jones. We hosted a very interesting conversation last week in LA for our clients on the subject of the 'authenticity' of the journalist and the future of media with Darren McDermott (WSJ.com) and Brian Solis
Here is the link to the Facebook page if you wish to join in on the conversation:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/home.php?sk=group_100275596716849&ap=1

[AgeNation]

At http://agenation.com we use both created and curated content. Our focus is on conscious living and we have a number of experts in a variety of interest areas who create original content for our online magazine (rEVO). We also curate a number of podcasts for our AgeNation Radio section from a variety of broadcast radio shows who talk about conscious living related subjects.

Perhaps the most curated of our sites is our Twitter feed - http://twitter.com/#/agenation. I subscribe to a wide variety of blogs and websites via email and am always on the lookout for a story that would be relevant and interesting for our target audience, as well as re-tweeting tweets from followers or from non-followers who appear in keyword-defined Twitter searches in TweetDeck.

One further bit of curation that I think is always useful for the audience is in using the comments section of blog posts to point to stories on other sites that add to the information contained in your blog post. I did this recently with a story on the proposed abolition of the EPA. We did one of our "You've Gotta Be Kidding!" pieces about it and I later added a story about a poll done on the subject, and another about the financial benefits of keeping as opposed to abolishing the EPA - http://agenation.com/magazine/abolish-the-epa-youve-gotta-be-kidding/

I have also started using Storify which is a great tool for curating content from the web, especially twitter chats, and which you can further "storify" by connecting individual pieces with your own pieces of text. Definitely something I want to find ways of using more often. Here's an example I 'curated' from that same EPA story so you can see it in action - http://storify.com/agenation/should-the-epa-be-abolished

Jasper Blake
Social Media Manager
AgeNation

[David Wogahn]

Timely post David. Last summer I decided to find out if I could build an audience around a specific niche subject that had passionate followers and lots of media products like books, videos, games, apps, etc. I chose media because I could monetize it via Amazon aff links and because of the changes underway in the conversion to digital media. (http://www.golfmedialibrary.com).

I’ve learned a few lessons along the way. One, it’s important to add value and not just copy/paste old content…hard work in other words—you still need a “voice”. Two, mix up original content with curated content whenever possible to differentiate yourself (I added interviews). Three, pay attention to metadata and analytics. Analytics is like an editor, it’s useful for providing feedback and future ideas.

David Wogahn

[David Meerman Scott]

Sally, Jasper, & David - thanks for jumping in. All interesting ideas on content curation. There are so many ways to succeed in this area. Keep up the good work.

[MarcFuseki]

Very good post David; you are right to point out that curation is an opportunity to build an audience and that there are many ways to do it (selecting panelists for Futur15, retweeting web content, etc). It's about sharing your "best of"; and, possibly, becoming a trusted source.

I think David (Wogahn) is also right to state that the curator doesn't just select and pass, but also adds value in bringing his personal touch, his perspective.

I'm from www.scoop.it; it's a tools which makes it super easy to create neat media by means of curation (selection from many web sources, edition and sharing). I thought you could be interested; we have passionate people using the tool to express themselves on very specific topics. Allow me to give you a few, very diverse, examples below. And would be happy to meet at SxSW :)

Cheers!

http://www.scoop.it/t/speaking
http://www.scoop.it/t/mystic-mindpower
http://www.scoop.it/t/thedroidguy
http://www.scoop.it/t/san-francisco-s-life

[David Wogahn]

So Marc, this *is* cool. I see it is private beta. Keep an eye out for my token request. Thanks for sharing.

[David Meerman Scott]

Marc - I'm at SXSW the first weekend. Check the schedule for when I am speaking (both days) and say hello.

Meantime - I will check this out.

[Tony Faustino]

David, I have three examples of content curation earning audience attention to my blog. These posts centralize lists of hyperlinks from news resources or research on a specific topic.

Type 1: Leverages a Real-Time News Event. Example posts earning attention discussed Ted Williams' work with Kraft Mac & Cheese (aka the homeless man with the golden voice) and President Obama's recent private "tech supper" with U.S. technology power players (and more importantly who wasn't at this informal summit, i.e., Microsoft).

Type 2: Explanations on The Value of Page One Google Results in Organic Search.

Type 3: Explanations on Why Google Fears Facebook as a Competitor.

It took a long time to conduct the research and curate it. But, I hope I'm making someone's life easier when he/she researches any of these topics via search engine. Plus, I enjoy it. The curation process continuously builds my knowledge because I update the posts with new hyperlinks relevant to these topics.

[David Meerman Scott]

Tony -- I'm thrilled to hear that writing about a real-time event has proven popular. I love that way too. As you know based on the title of my last book, not many people think in real-time!

[MarcFuseki]

Thanks David and David!

@David M: Will be in the audience and try to catch up at SxSW

@David W: you should have your invite by now; let me know otherwise and thanks for trying

Cheers

[DRBlend]

Doing content curation since 2006 - Dark Roasted Blend - http://www.darkroastedblend.com - Greetings!

[Pawan Deshpande]

What makes content curation so effective is that it gathers - or curates - multiple opinions pertaining to one subject. And this oftentimes equates to civil - but highly engaging - debate.

Much like yourself, David, I will be a part of a curated panel at SXSW this month. Titled "Debating Brands Roles as Publishers," this panel will curate multiple opinions on whether or not a 'brand journalist' that curates content can be considered a 'true journalist.' As my co-panelist Joe Pulizzi has already commented, a lively debate is expected as divergent opinions on the virtues of content curation come together live.

I invite your readers to attend this panel, of which they can find information below:

http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP6685

For more background, I've also included a link to an article we published where industry leaders, including yourself and Pulizzi, discuss content curation:

http://www.getcurata.com/resources/content-curation/

[Sebastian]

Nice post, thanks. We have developed the plattform http://www.mytweetmag.com, that is specially designed to curate content with twitter and to create info-streams in a group of experts.. I think there are a good handfull of other tools out there. A good choice is ScoopIt, they do it with a bookmarklet like delicious.

[Email Templates]

I never really thought about retweeting as a form of content curation but it makes sense. By expressing it through your own blog or twitter, you are adding an extra voice from what your subscribers are already used to before they actually read the content.

[Netbillboards]

Very interesting, what I think will be even more interesting is when we all stop talking about content curation and it just becomes second nature and simply a process we perform without even really having to think about it. I think in the next year or so we will be seeing a lot more content curation without having to mention it.Nicely done though sir, very nice article.

[Meredith]

David, love your definition of curation! It's true; if you're the conduit through which people find relevant information, you're a content curator! The company I work with, StoryCrawler, is the latest tool for finding the best content on any given topic and then easily republishing it across multiple platforms. Would love to have you check it out!