Last year Bill Keller in an article about aggregation wrote this about the Huff Post " The queen of aggregation is, of course, Arianna Huffington, who has discovered that if you take celebrity gossip, adorable kitten videos, posts from unpaid bloggers and news reports from other publications, array them on your Web site and add a left-wing soundtrack, millions of people will come. How great is Huffington’s instinctive genius for aggregation? I once sat beside her on a panel in Los Angeles (on — what else? — The Future of Journalism). I had come prepared with a couple of memorized riffs on media topics, which I duly presented. Afterward we sat down for a joint interview with a local reporter. A moment later I heard one of my riffs issuing verbatim from the mouth of Ms. Huffington. I felt so . . . aggregated."
In terms of News Curation it is our view, mentioned in a previous post that the Huff Post fits in the category of a Content Commentator and it certainly has many points of difference to simple news aggregators.
However if we take the key points from the Keller quote above which of course was to some extent made with tongue in cheek, we can learn some important lessons from the Huff Post's successful approach to content curation. The lessons can be sumarized as follows
1. Understand and target a specific audience.
2. Curate and or produce content for your chosen audience.
3. Occupy a distinct position in terms of political alignment that appeals to your target audience. This has been demonstrated to be a trusim for both left and right leaning news curators/aggregators.
4. Use a myriad of people paid and unpaid to contribute to your content be they professional journalists , subject matter experts , academics, bloggers or celebrities who appeal to your target audience.
5. Carefully select , link and curate content from established and respected third party media that appeals to your audience and enhances your own whole product.
6. Finally for the founder , senior editorial staff and key executives use every public speaking opportunity or exposure to other media to market your publication.
On that note we would like to share the video below to demonstrate lesson 6
Right I'm off to get some sleep.
As a content curator, you want to make sure that you are reaching as many people in your target audience as possible, and there’s a good chance that many of them are spending a significant amount of time on Facebook. There are currently over 800 Million Facebook members and that is expected to surpass 1 Billion in August. Facebook is also very sticky: Visitors spend three times the amount of time on Facebook as they do on Google and that number is rising.
As an effective tool to attract and build an audience for your site, Facebook is number one. Here are four easy ways that content curators can use Facebook to attract an audience:
1. Create a Facebook Page. This is the first, and most important step. Your Facebook name should be distinct from your personal profile (although your personal profile will be linked to your Facebook page as the administrator). Facebook offers some helpful information on setting up your page. Another very useful resource to consult is Mashable’s Facebook Guide Book. Keep in mind that you can switch between using Facebook with your personal ID and your page’s ID, so whenever you're logged in, make sure you check which user icon is displayed in the top right corner of the header before posting.
2. Build a Community. Your Facebook page should not just be about your curation site, rather it should be a hub for you to connect and interact with your target audience. Content curators have an interest and expertise in a particular subject matter for which they curate the best content. This common interest with their end-readers, can serve as the focal point of building a community on Facebook. Make sure to ask questions, answer questions and interact with your audience. By building your credibility as an authority, you’ll draw in more visitors to your curation site. For example, if your website curates the latest news on strikes and protests around the world and how they might affect travel, build a community around frequent international travelers. To attract participants to this community don’t just focus on your content, but use your Facebook page as a way to open a dialogue on a variety of subjects that might interest your target audience. In regard to the example above, you could run a quiz about people’s favorite premium economy airline, or provide 5 quick tips on purifying water in a bind. The more people interact with your brand on Facebook (like, comment, share, etc.), the more their friends and subscribers will see it, and the more likely you are to get some of those people to become readers of your curation site.
3. Cross-promote your site. The next important step is promoting your site. Once you have a community around Facebook, you’ll need to make sure you continue to drive additional people to all the great content you are curating on your Facebook page. How you do this will largely depend on your site and subject matter. As a starting point, you should add commentary and link to pages on your website that are relevant to a particular Facebook discussion. So, in the travel example we gave, if there is a Facebook discussion about safety in Mexico, make sure to comment with a link to the page on your website about Mexico, where visitors can find latest information on strikes and protest in Mexico (as well as other news) that will help them determine whether the country is safe enough to visit at this time. Don’t overdo it, though, just be helpful and make it easy for your Facebook fans to find interesting information on your curation site.
4. Advertise. This is often overlooked because most people think that advertising is expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. Advertising on Facebook can be a very cheap way to get your brand in front of the right people who will serve as hubs to your social sharing. The key to this is the amazingly granular targeting that Facebook offers. Let’s say, for example, that you have created a site with news on Indo-Asian Commodities. Via Facebook, you can find the users who are particularly active in trading these commodities and advertise solely to them. Offer them a strong incentive to come to your site. Your goal is to get these active users to share your site with others, and, since they are hubs of knowledge in the community, to attract even more traffic to your site.
A Facebook page is a remarkable opportunity for content curators to reach a sizable, yet precisely targeted, audience, and the four steps above should have you on your way to attracting new visitors to your site.
We would like to share this video with you of a talk on the future of news and newspapers between two futurists Rob Dawson and Gerd Leonhard .
Some of you may have also come across Ross Dawson's much debated Newspaper Extinction Timeline
Ross also sumarizes the key points from the discussion in a blog post here .
In this fascinating discussion it is interesting to see that Dawson and Leonhard conclude that there is a bright future for news in terms of both demand and the propensity for consumers to pay for it whilst the transition to a new and undefined ecosystem will be both painful and challenging.
It is also clear that content curation and content aggregation are going to continue to be key in the new ecosystem that is evloving.
More and more publishers are looking outside their organizations to find the best content that will complement their own and meet the growing requirements of their readers. The terms content aggregation and content curation are often used interchangeably to describe these efforts, but there are some subtle differences between the two. By recognizing these differences and using the correct term, digital publishers can more effectively communicate with their staff and editorial teams about their goals and plans.
Content Aggregation involves two steps: (1) identifying the most relevant content sources for the specific context, (2) collecting and presenting to readers everything that these content sources publish. At the consumer level, the most recognized content aggregation product is the RSS reader, which allows users to specify the sources they wish to follow and then see everything that those sources publish.
Often, content aggregation is enough for a publisher to add relevant external content to their site. However, you won’t always want to present everything from a given source, but rather be more selective. That’s where content curation comes in.
The word curator usually brings forth images of museum curators who use their understanding of the museum’s visitors and their considerable expertise in art to select the specific pieces that are most likely to be appealing to their audience. A content curator’s responsibility is not very different. Content Curation, then, is the act of selecting individual pieces of content that are most relevant to the subject matter and audience. On a consumer level, every time someone shares a link via email, Twitter, Facebook or other favorite sharing tool, they are, effectively practicing content curation.
Content curation can either be done manually, by reviewing all content that is aggregated, or automatically, by setting rules and search parameters and allowing an algorithm to pick the best content pieces. There are several platforms available that will offer you the ability to aggregate content from selected sources and several of those platforms allow you to set rules and parameters for further filtering this content. Lingospot’s Algorithmic Publishing Platform provides rich capabilities for both automated and manual content curation.
Both aggregation and curation can help you enrich your readers’ experience on your website or blog by collecting additional content from a variety of trusted and pertinent sources. The level of filtering/targeting and the amount of time you can invest in finding the best content for your readers will ultimately determine the best method for your needs.
Photo credit for fish school: Luko Gecko on Flickr.
Most people associate the term curation with the work undertaken by museum or art gallery curators.
Demand for timely, relevant content that is specific to our unique interests and perspectives has given rise to online content curators together with a number of tools that help individuals and companies curate content from the web and deliver it in a meaningful way. The tools range from simple, application-specific types such as social media aggregators and discovery engines, to more robust, full-blown publishing solutions for publishers of all sizes.
Content curation remains essentially contested subject. It means different things to a variety of stakeholders be they journalists, editors, bloggers, business executives or marketers.
Some high profile big Media owners have lumped Content Curation with Search as well as Aggregation and suggested that it represents theft of intelectual property.
Fred Wilson the Venture Capitalist and blogger sees curation as an essential element in today's media landscape as indicated by one of his posts here .
Some argue that curation could actually save media.
Others have argued that there is a new type of curation that is in effect the New Search.
There is even a higly respected Academic Journal that is focused on Digital Curation , the International Journal of Digital Curation
Most people inadvertently already act as curators whenever they decide to post a link or video to their social networks to show their friends they have found great or topical content.
We think Rohit Bhargava's generic definition from 2009 is still valid today:
"Content Curation is a term that describes the act of finding, grouping, organizing or sharing the best and most relevant content on a specific issue."
Editors have always made curatorial decisions about their own internal content — which stories to assign, what to feature on a specific page and so on. Going forward, those types of curatorial decisions will be made on other people’s content as well, and today the role of the editor is undertaken by a myriad of individuals be it a professional journalist , a marketer who is responsible for using content as part of the marketing mix, a blogger, or in reality anyone that publishes online.
In past blogs we have touched on some basic tips for content curation, but many of our readers are not fully aware of what content curation software does and why they should consider using it.
Content curation software is software that automatically collects web content of your choosing and presents it on your site. It alleviates the need to spend time manually searching for content and allows you to focus on creating your own content, marketing your site, or otherwise engaging your visitors. Content is selected from sources of your choosing, such as your favorite RSS feeds, news articles, videos, and images. After selecting your sources, content curation software allows you to set filters and search parameters to refine what content ends up on your site. Once you get the filters to your liking, sit back and watch your site update with the most relevant and latest content about your subject matter from the best sources available on the web.
Let’s illustrate with an example: If you were a vegan cook and wanted to create a site with the best reviews on recipes, restaurants and other culinary articles for vegans, you could curate content in one of two ways: (1) constantly scout the web for the best articles for your readers and then use a traditional content management system to manually add links to these articles, or (2) use content curation software and set a list of source publications (food blogs, dining magazines, newspaper food sections) and a number of filters that you are interested in (vegan, vegetarian, meat alternatives, tofu, etc.) and then continue to refine the search parameters and filters. In the former case the amount of work you’d have to do to maintain the site would remain constant. In the latter case, you’d spend less and less time maintaining the site and could focus on finding better advertisers and sponsors, writing your own content or building a community around your site.
Of course, with automation it is natural that you are giving away some of your editorial control and trusting an algorithm to do a good job for you. Therefore, the best content curation software allows you to do both: algorithmic and manual curation. This is an important feature that will enable you to find the right balance between spending time on the content and spending time on your visitors and advertisers.
Lingospot’s Algorithmic Publishing Platform includes powerful content curation tools. If you would like more information on how it may help you curate content for your site, please contact us.
Content curation is an essentially contested subject. It means different things to a variety of people be they journalists, editors, bloggers or marketers.
Most people inadvertently already act as curators whenever they decide to post a link or video to their social networks to show their friends they have found great or topical content.
We think Rohit Bhargava's generic definition from 2009 is still valid today:
"Content Curation is a term that describes the act of finding, grouping, organizing or sharing the best and most relevant content on a specific issue." ( we prefer to use topic or topics)
Based on our experience of working with hundreds of online publishers of all sizes, we would suggest the following essential tips for content curation.
1. Focus on your area of domain expertise or interests to gain a specific loyal audience.
2. Consider carefully the ratio of automation vs. manual elements in your content curation process as well as the optimal mix of curated and original content (if any). This obviously varies from topic to topic or subject.
3. Create a community for your visitors to connect and discuss the content you publish.
4. Find and collect the best content from across the web.
5. Use multimedia - images, video and good visual design to draw in visitors.
6. Maintain a continual and consistent flow of content.
7. Ensure you are adding value by selecting from quality sources and or providing a service.
8. Organise and present the content in an engaging and well structured manner.
9. Always remember that you are helping your audience to make sense of topical information by bringing together what is most important.
10. Give credit where it's due, respect Intellectual Property and always ensure you are in effect citing your sources of content.
As Jonathan Fields says in a piece called Is Content Curation the new Black in Psychology Today "one of the single most valuable roles you can play in this cataclysmic cacophony of content is to be the one who lends sanity to the process of finding and sharing only the cream of the crop."
There are still thousands of topics and subjects that are opportunities for content curators to step in and engage with audiences .
Website automation software can benefit your website or blog in a number of ways. If you are a news junkie, or if you have your own news aggregation/curation site, you are probably already using some form of website automation software. If not, here are four reasons why you should:
1. To find great content. Most website automation software automatically pulls content from sources of your specification. Once you’ve chosen your preferred content sources, your site will automatically be populated and updated with content from those sources. The most sophisticated software platforms also provide you with the ability to set custom filters (search queries) on these channels, so that you can further refine the content that you are selecting. Sources typically include: news, RSS feeds, video, pictures, social media updates and more.
2. To save time. If you are a content curator, website automation software is a must. It can be time consuming to manually gather content from many different sources across the web. With website automation software helping add curated content to your site, you’ll have more time to create original content and focus on your business.
3. To stay current. It’s difficult to find the time to stay current and update your blog or website every day. By utilizing website automation software you can ensure that the content on your site is current up to the minute. Once you’ve set up your filters, content automation software will ensure that your pages are always fresh and interesting to your visitors.
4. To save editorial resources. Tracking and curating content on a large number of topics generally requires a team of editors to find and curate the best content for each topic. Website automation software can do all that work for you. Whether you are a large publisher like TIME.com or a niche site such as Strike Informer (that aggregates news about strikes and protests), you will find website automation software can significantly increase the amount of work a single editor can do.
Lingospot’s Algorithmic Publishing Platform is powerful website automation software used by both large publishers and smaller niche curators. If you’d like additional information of how Lingospot’s APP can keep your pages current with great content and save you time and resources, please contact us.
Google Places is a wonderful tool for a small business be it a shop or professional service provider (that holds meeting in their offices) like a firm of accountants or lawyers and Doctors or Dentists. Too many small businesses are not taking advantage of this wonderful opportunity to create an online presence for their small business. With the decline of traditional yellow pages, and in most areas, print advertising, you cannot afford not to be online. Customers today mainly are looking for what you have to offer online. If you do not have a website yet, or even if you do, we recommend that you set up a Google Places account.
There are five main simple reasons why you should set up an account :
1. It's free
2. Be found on Google Maps
3. Rank higher in search results
4. Showcase your business
5. Get customer reviews
Below is a useful video with more information on why you should be on Google Places
This post is mainly about Google Places but you should also consider similar offerings from Bing and Yahoo.
Being found on the likes of Google Places helps drive traffic to your website too, and it's here that you can really highlight your business's points of difference in more detail. In an earlier post we discussed how content marketing can help attract and retain customers.
If you would like additional information about Lingospot and how content curation software can help you save time and transform your site or blog into a powerful hub of information for your clcustomers please click here
Here are some good reasons to establish an active Facebook presence for your business in 2012, if you have not done so already:
1. According to a recent Mashable article, Facebook is the most populated social network on the web, and 2012 will be one of its most important years ever (in its relatively short existence). As a professional service provider or small business you should make sure your brand has a presence on Facebook.
2. In 2012, Facebook will begin to compete with Google when it comes to advertising with its new ad formats, which will include sponsored news stories in users’ news feeds. They are also aiming to become a destination source for all media.
3. Facebook is quickly becoming the simplest way to track news and updates on everything that is important to you – from friends and family to businesses, news publishers, associations, venues, and more. People often search to see if a business or product they are interested in following has a Facebook page in order to add it to their newsfeed. A growing trend is to follow the Facebook page of a company rather than subscribing to its email newsletter. Who has time to keep up with so many email subscriptions these days, when you can have it all show up in your newsfeed on Facebook, or go directly to the Facebook page to catch up when you want to see what’s new?
4. With Facebook’s new Subscribe feature, you can also allow users to subscribe to any public updates you make on your personal account.
5. Facebook plans to be to "discovery" what Google is to "search" by using social recommendations and social actions. So, not only are they becoming the one place everyone goes to track anything and everything, they’re also aiming to become the #1 online destination for information.
6. Use Facebook to post links to your newest blog articles. If you’re not writing a blog, here’s a good reason to start:
"The average company that blogs generates 55% more website visitors, 97% more inbound links, and 434% more indexed pages." -Laura Fitton
If you’re busy and don’t have time to devote regularly to blogging, Lingospot’s software can help you save time and effort. Please contact us if you would like more information on our software.
You can also visit Facebook's page for more information on using Facebook for Business.
