Content curation is a natural evolution of online content creation and distribution. It helps brands face the two imperatives of Content Marketing: 1) increase the brand's visibility: By tapping into external content, curation creates a rich inbound context that drives traffic to the brand's original content, 2) foster customer engagement: Content curation helps position the brand as a reference on the topics it shares with its audience. Content curation tools like Scoop.it and Pinterest ease the curation process by partly automating it. - pulling online content through widgets, bookmarklets, crawl or RSS feeds - re-purposing it by filtering, editing and re-organizing content from multiple sources into topics, - publishing the curated content on multiple media, including social media The topic-centric nature of content curation helps users discover the brand and helps the brand position itself on its audience's interest graph. There are hundreds of curation tools. - Free public social content curation platforms à la Pinterest, tumblr, bundlr, trap.it are both online tools and social destination networks. - Paid-for corporate tools a la Curata, CurationSoft, Digimind are private collaborative platforms that help brands create a competitive advantage through both content creation and content curation. - Many tools, such as Zemanta and Scoop.it have a freemium business model and serve the two markets. The social features of social curation (like, comment, follow, re-clip/re-pin) bring to brand content the peer validation that connected customer consider indispensable to trust a brand Content curation tools can also be categorized according to the type of content they specialize in: - Shopping curation tools such as The Fancy, Fab.com or Pinterest - Social media curation tools such as Storify - News curation tools such as LiquidNewsroom or Wavii. Content curation should be part of every Content Marketing and Social Media Marketing strategy. Brands should pick the top social curation and corporate curation tools for their market and use them in complement to each other to ease and optimize both content creation and content curation. Curation is not panacea for failing to create original brand content: - Content curation won't increase the visibility of a brand that does not have a compelling brand story - it will fail to engage customers if the brands does not genuinely share topics with its audience. In addition - curation is hard work, it requires most of the skills of content creation. - curation does not stem the content overload, on the contrary it worsens content inflation - it also worsens copyright issues This slide deck is a sister document to my eponym blog post: http://return-on-clicks.com/index.php/2012/06/content-curation-for-brands/

1. CONTENT CURATION
TOOLS FOR BRANDS
Therese Torris
May – July 2012

2. Brands struggle
to meet the
Content Marketing
imperatives

3. Increase visibility
Poor
content
How can I help users
discover my brand?
There is so much content out there, you need quite a bit of content
to be visible online

4. Foster customer engagement
How can I tell a story
worth repeating?
Not only do brands have to produce a lot of content, but that content must also
be able to engage customers and turn them into brand ambassadors

5. Content creation is… hard
I was unable to trace the author of this often quoted picture.
This is a typical issue of content attribution addressed later in the presentation.

6. Content curation to the rescue
Content curation helps brands
use external content
to increase their visibility
and engage their audience

7. The curation process
 Define relevant topics
 Identify external sources
 Pull content, filter, sort
 Clip pictures, select quotes, summarize
 Edit, comment, reorganize topics
 Publish in attractive format
 Post on social media and web sites
Curation is much more than content aggregation

8. Pulling content from multiple
sources into relevant topics
Multiple sources
Relevant topics
Pictures taken from Scoop.it http://www.scoop.it/u/therese-torris
Relevant topics are topics of interest shared by the brand and its audience

9. Curated content adds value
External health content broadens the
▪ Relevant relevance of a food brand, for example
Unlike aggregation, curation picks a
▪ Unique unique mix of external content
Not easy to produce fresh content
▪ Fresh every day; external content helps
▪ Optimized Curation tools like Zemanta will tell
you which topics are trending
▪ Rich media Pictures and video are a must;
in-house production is not enough
▪ Trusted Curated blogs from external experts
lend credibility to a brand citing them
▪ Entertaining User-generated content can be fun;
Most brands could use more fun !
Curators must select external content that adds value
to the brand’s proprietary content making it more visible and more engaging

10. Curation creates an inbound
context for brand content
Unique
Social networks References
ex: Twitter brand Ex: Wikipedia
content
Curated
content
Content curated from multiple external sources embeds the brand’s
unique and proprietary content into a rich inbound context and drives traffic to it

11. Topic-centric curation
helps users discover the brand
through shared topics
positions the brand on its
audience’s interest graph
Content curation helps brands become a reference on the topics
they share with their audience

12. Tools partly automate
the curation workflow
PULL RE- PUBLISH
CONTENT PURPOSE
Filter Display
Index & Clip
Edit Credit
sources
SEOptimize Schedule
Search topics
Re-categorize Post, mail,
Update
by topics tweet
Pulling external content is called clipping, ‘pinning’ on Pinterest, ‘scooping’ on Scoop.it.
Curation categories are called ‘boards’ on Pinterest, ‘topics’ on Scoop.it, ‘bundles’
on Bundlr, ‘traps’ on trap.it etc.

13. Curation tools multiply
Social
Corporate
Not only are there hundreds of new curation tools, but existing content readers,
aggregation and sharing tools like Google and Twitter enhance their curation functions.
For more details see my Scoop.it topic http://www.scoop.it/t/content-curation-tools

14. Social curation embeds brand
content into consumers’ content

15. Pinterest’s Success Factors
 Free
 Easy-to-use
• 1-click “pin”
• publish instantly
 Highly visual
• 1 pin = 1 picture required
 Forcefully social
• Users « Like », « Follow », « re-pin » each others’ and
brands’ content
• All content is public. Following forced on users
• Well-indexed by search engines
When I joined Pinterest I was automatically assigned people to follow.
I still can’t delete a dozen of them.

16. Pinterest case study:
Whole Foods
“The purpose of the [Pinterest]
site… is to share what you’re
passionate about and to connect
with the community there around
common interests… Not to
shamelessly self-promote and
peddle one’s products”
Michael Bepko, global online
community manager for Whole Foods
Mashable’s Associate Editor Lauren Drell published this excellent case study
about Whole Foods on February 23 2012 . I updated the numbers on June 5, 2012
http://mashable.com/2012/02/23/pinterest-whole-foods/

17. Whole Foods on Pinterest
40 topics - 38,000 followers

18. Consumers & Whole Foods pin, like,
comment and repin each others’ content

19. Pinterest allows users to pin prices
for Social Shopping Curation

20. Pinterest’s traffic and time
spent on site surged
Data from comScore, graphics from Statista published on February 29, 2012
in Mashable under the title The Rapid Rise of Pinterest’s Blockbuster User Engagement
http://mashable.com/2012/02/28/pinterest-user-engagement/

21. Shopping curation drives
qualified traffic to brand sites
• Pinterest drives more referral traffic than
Google+ with 10X fewer users. Soon more traffic
than Facebook and Twitter?
• Top social referrer for women’s sites Martha
Stewart Weddings, Martha Stewart, Country
Living, MyRecipes.com…
• Opinion leaders, shoppers and aspirational brand
lovers pin products
Sources: Mashable, February 27, 2012
Business 2 Community, February 8, 2012

22. Social curation and shopping
curation meet a need
Consumers prefer to
discover brand content
through peer validation

23. Social curation platform
vs. Corporate tool
Social curation Corporate curation
 Manual clipping  Search, crawl, RSS
 No filtering  Advanced filters
 Simple comments  Advanced editing
 Highly visual  Multimedia, text mining
 No optimization  SEO optimization
 No attribution  Source Attribution
 Individual curator  Team workflow
 Public destination site  Private & Public
 Free  Paying
I am exaggerating the contrast. In reality some tools like Zemanta and Scoop.it are
both. They have a freemium model --with a free version and a paying one.

24. Corporate tools
complement social tools
The performance and privacy
of corporate tools
provide brands with
a competitive edge
Beyond curation, corporate tools are private collaborative tools that corporations use
to listen to markets, optimize content (SEO) and collaborate on a content strategy

25. Brand curation strategy
 Pick 2 or 3 top social curation platforms
for your audience. Ex: Pinterest, The
Fancy, Fashiolista if you’re in fashion
 Equip your content marketing teams with
a set of performing corporate curation
tools like Zemanta, Digimind or
CurationSoft. Integrate them into a
collaborative workflow to ease both
content creation and content curation

26. Curation is NOT a panacea
1. Curation complements creation, it cannot
replace original brand content
2. Selective curation (not simple aggregation)
is hard work, too !
3. Curation feeds the ongoing inflation of low
value-added content
4. Curation worsens unsolved copyright
issues

27. 1. Curation can’t fill in for
missing brand content
Content curation is pointless
if the brand has:
no story to tell,
no original content
no topics to share with customers
no Social Media Strategy

28. 2. Curation is hard work
 Curators must screen through hundreds of
posts and sites daily
 Next come editing, commenting,
publishing, responding to comments…
 Curation requires as much topic
knowledge and Social Media
Marketing skills as content creation
I can attest to the hard work of curation. I used Scoop.it to prepare this
analysis and it’s taken me a few hours a day to curate 4 different topics.

29. 2. Curation does not stem
content inflation – if feeds it !
Curators
Re-curated
curate
curated content…
Curated ad infinitum!
Original
Content
Contrary to popular belief, curation doesn’t help face the information overload,
on the contrary, as curation spreads, it feeds the inflation of low value-add content
see http://return-on-clicks.com/index.php/2011/08/facing-content-inflation/

30. 3. Unsolved Copyright issues
Good curation
does not steal
original content.
It points to it!
Picture source: Is Content Curation Stealing of a Shrewd B2B Practice?
http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing

31. Discovery vs. Copyright:
a fine line
 Blocking curation prevents discovery
You can block Pinterest with one line of code <meta name=“pinterest”
content=“nopin”/>… but it’s not a good idea if you want to be visible !
 Excerpts should be short
How much can you quote? NOT MUCH.
What is a picture’s “fair use”? Small, attributed, and linked
 Attribution to original author is a must
Attribution is too often ignored. Original source can get lost when content is curated
over and over again
For a great article on content dissemination vs. copyright, see Allen
Partridge's post: http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2012/02/content-
curation-and-the-end-of-intellectual-property.html

32. Conclusions
 Content curation is a natural evolution of online content
creation and distribution
 An indispensable part of Content Marketing and Social
Media Marketing, curation creates an inbound context of
external content that drives traffic to the brand and
engages its customers on topics it shares with its audience
 Social and corporate curation tools complement each other
to ease and optimize content curation
 But curation tools are no panacea: curation is hard work
and requires most of the skills of content creation. Curation
worsens content inflation and copyright issues

33. Thank you for reading
Comments are welcome
Therese Torris
Blog: http://return-on-clicks.com
Curation: http://www.scoop.it/t/content-curation-tools
Email: ttorris@return-on-clicks
Twitter: @ttorris