Spotlight on Content Curation: Best Practices, Tools and How to Do It Right

Content curation can be likened to a museum curator’s job, but instead of paintings and sculpture, a content curator collects blog posts, videos, images, and almost anything related to their niche. This process lets you sort through the massive amount of information found online, so that you may pick the best ones and compile it around a specific theme. Once sorted and arranged, content curators will typically select the best and most relevant content and re-share it out while including their own unique annotation. It adheres to the OPC concept: Other People’s Content. Or more accurately, according to CopyBlogger’s Frank Strong: “Brands are built over time by third-party validation communicated through third-party content.”

Where does one curate content from, you ask? Look at the staggering amount of content shared across the Internet we can source from:

• 72 Youtube videos uploaded every minute
• 140 million tweets written and sent out every day
• 25 billion pieces of content (text, pictures, links, videos) every 30 days
• 4.5 thousand English news sources on Google News
• 2.3 million new Tumblr posts every hour of the day
• 58 million Wordpress sites created in over 120 languages

It’s understandable if you feel that all this sounds tiring and overwhelming when done manually, but fortunately there are apps and tools to make content curation a breeze.

Before you dive into our list of the best content curation tools around, do take your time and remember the three golden rules of content curation:

1. Don’t hoard. The problem with some content curators is that they tend to get so overwhelmed by the barrage of information they encounter daily that they forget to read and take advantage of them. Don’t let the tidal wave of information engulf you; instead, try to focus on trustworthy sources and information that matters.

2. Less is more. Remember to trim the unnecessary fat from your curated content and “serve” only the good stuff within. Ask yourself if you want to read other people’s junk – similarly, don’t feed your readers useless information unless you’re willing to regurgitate it yourself.

3. Be innovative. Don’t just copy and paste – be innovative and organize your curated content in a way that would attract new readers and wow your existing audience.

How big brands are leveraging the power of content curation

Content curation tool: Storify
Who uses it: LA Times, NPR, Al Jazeera, Washington Post, Cisco and more.

Why it’s great: Most users (journalists and non-media people alike) find that the site lets them effortlessly tell stories using social media. Storify’s founder, Burt Herman, was right in saying that “We have so many real-time streams now, we’re all drowning.” This is where Storify steps in to save the day. While users may be content with the free plan, serious users and media heavy-hitters may want to experience a powerful difference to their content curation efforts with the Storify VIP and Business subscription.

Case in point 01: The Los Angeles Times is a huge fan of Storify. Like media giant Al Jazeera, the LA Times uses it to involve audience and share stories around the world. One of their most notable endeavors includes having its Daily Dish food blog curate delicious meals their readers ate. They, in turn, collect the information and share it out as a weekly special feature via tweets with the hashtag #weekendeats, where results would be channeled into Storify.

Case in point 02: Journalists at the NPR are no strangers to using Twitter and Storify in their daily reporting. Andy Carvin, a senior strategist there, used Storify as part of his newsgathering process where he collected information for various topics including the famous Arab uprisings issue sometime back. He then pieced together the latest information to form breaking news pieces which made his followers (and employers!) very pleased indeed.

Case in point 03: Al Jazeera is well known for its “The Stream”. Touted as “a social media community with its own daily TV program”, the feature encouraged viewers to submit Storify pieces (containing tweets, photos and videos) from a wide range of topics, which they then air on the show.

Case in point 04: Washington Post has been robustly using Storify even before it took the content curation world by storm. One of the earliest adopters, the publication boasts of 100 stories and more than 2,000 users to its account, and that’s just in the year 2013! Among topics featured in their Storify account includes tornado warnings, changing global climate, political debates and more.

Case in point 05: Cisco takes advantage of the robust and user-friendly Storify platform to feature highlights of its #IoE Twitter chats. They urged users and followers to contribute their thoughts and ideas about The Internet of Everything. Participants with the best idea would be rewarded with the delight of seeing their tweets on WIRED.

But what about everyday users like you and me?

Storify promises a more wholesome content curation method not only for journalists but also for everyday users who want to weave a more complete narrative from different angles. For example, a Storify user once used the tool to gather and share his wedding event. He urged guests to share their own stories about his wedding using a hashtag, and at the end of the event, he would’ve collected a vast amount of stories all told by different guests at the party. Digital storybook, anyone?

Want more? Check out other ways journalism has taken off with Storify.

NOTABLE CASE STUDIES: How the big brands fare with content curation

1. General Mills created a new campaign called “Hello, Cereal Lovers” which broke new ground as it embraces collaborative storytelling with social media participants. The company behind brands like Cheerios and Lucky Charms curated ideas and recipes from its Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr accounts and discovered great success as “we’re now in great conversations with the people that buy and enjoy our products,” according to Carla Vernón, marketing director for General Mills cereal.

2. Aternity, a software firm that specializes in end user experience, collaborated with a third party to create its first content curation campaign via a dedicated portal and newsletter. A short period upon launching it, the company was delighted to report a 130% increase in newsletter subscribers in the year, and then 70% in the following one.

3. Sephora, global cosmetic retailer and social media leader, partnered up with FeedMagnet to curate, aggregate and share content gathered from various social media platforms (think: Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr). They pretty much created a branded social hub through this new form of “social curation”.

When it comes to content curation tools, some of the bigger brands realize that the benefits of creating their own content curation portal as part of their marketing campaigns. Some admirable examples can be seen below:

1. Pepsi

Pepsi unveiled Pepsi Pulse in line with their Live For Now campaign. Shiv Singh, digital marketing leader for PepsiCo Beverages, revealed that the real-time platform could be likened to a “cheat sheet for pop culture”

2. Intel

Intel’s employees took the initiatives to create Intel IQ, their own social content curation platform that collects trending technology news. Visitors can read featured stories that were either created by Intel or curated from other online sources. Besides that, you’ll see breaking news related to tech and gadgets as well as a content stream that collects tweets containing the #IQ hashtag. All content curated here can be shared out by visitors.

3. Cisco

Cisco was one of the earliest tech companies to leverage on the power of content curation. Its Social@Cisco was created so that visitors can “Find, follow, and friend Cisco across the Social Web”. Seven core sections dominate the front page: Blogs, Youtube videos, Facebook, Cisco Buzz, Community, Google+ and Twitter. The latter features an active Twitter stream where visitors can also follow one (or all) of their accounts from departments such as IT, Security, and Mobility as well as personal accounts belonging to top executives.

A list of the best tools and services to optimize content curation efforts

1. Themeefy

Themeefy assures that you can “use the Web to teach and learn”. While it may be targeted towards educators, just about anyone can benefit from this lovely content curation tool, as long as you believe in the saying, “Learning is a lifelong lesson.” A lot of homeschoolers have benefited from this tool with parents and teachers alike raving about its user-friendly interface.

2. Paper.li

If you like your news relevant and fresh, then you’ll love Paper.li. This content curation service lets you publish and edit your very own newspaper filled with the latest news from around the Web. Paper.li is free to use but you can also pay to have your “newspaper” bear your own logo or branding, on top of other premium features. Businesses will find the pro version very useful in growing their audience.

3. Pearltrees

Pearltrees lets you create your own digital library where you can pretty much have all your favorite information from the best sources collected in one place. We like the seamlessly functional interface and the endless possibility of actually stumbling upon something related to your interest, and LIKING it.

4. YourVersion

YourVersion is free content curation tool defined as “the best way to discover new content that’s relevant to you”. If you want a great way to filter out unwanted “noise” in your social stream, this is it.

5. The Tweeted Times

Do you dread logging into your Twitter account due to the invading torrent of tweets? The Tweeted Times lets you counter the dread, and instead helps you gain the best out of your Twitter stream. Your customized newspaper is based on the latest news aggregated by Twitter Lists or Twitter Search so that you’ll always be in the know.

6. Kippt

Having trouble compiling all your research material, stories, inspiration, notes and favorite “Internet things” in one place? Kippt does it all for you as the curation tool makes your collections private if you’re well, a private person, or shareable if you want to collaborate with other people who share the same obsessions passion. It’s great for design projects, compiling work resources and tracking what people are saying about your company.

7. ContentGems

ContentGems is a marketing-centric content curation tool that taps into 200,000 news sources, websites and social media entities all over the Web. You can choose what you want to see based on your desired keywords – you even get to choose what sort of content to avoid. Besides being able to increase your thought leadership, you can also monitor what everyone’s saying about your brand. Do note that the free version lets you create a maximum of two Interest lists.

8. Trap.it

A powerful content discovery, curation and delivery platform, Trap.it has a uniquely built algorithm that provides fast and accurate content recommendations in order to create personalized experiences.

9. Floost

Floost lets businesses and professionals track just about anything they want. We are enamored with the intuitive dashboard and intelligent search tools, thus effortlessly helping us curate content while engaging our audience via personalized Floost widgets.

10. Bundlr

Bundlr makes content curation truly interactive with its ability to create topic pages filled with amazingly fresh content (think: photos, videos, blog posts, white papers, etc.). Plus, we like the features that come with the premium version – no ads, a bunch of Bundle stats and analytics unlocked for your analyzing pleasure and a whole lot more.

11. Scoop.it

Scoop.it’s one-click publish feature is pretty impressive. The free version is enough to wow those who want to jump onto the content curation bandwagon, but if you’re serious about getting into the system, you may want to sign up for the paid version that grants you permission to use your own domain and branding.

12. Storify

Like its name implies, you can take third party content and put an interesting spin to it: your own Story. We like adding our own narrative to our personal collection thus making it truly customized. What impresses us is that the people behind Storify is taking their business of content curation very seriously – they offer features that support Instagram videos (trivia: this feature was implemented just ONE day after Instagram rolled it out) as well as a host of other benefits. If you like Storify enough, you may want upgrade to Storify VIP that gives real-time updates and in-depth customization.

When is content curation NOT content curation?

Content curation may be defined as collecting important and relevant pieces of information to tell a more complete and applicable story, but there’s smart curation and then there’s, well, not-so-smart curation.

Here, let me show you exactly what I mean.

One day, you tweeted an article you wrote about the newly released iPhone. Before long, you spot something like: “Breaking news by @ABC e-newsletters. Top stories by @smartguy and @smartgal and @YOU!” You’d obviously be flattered to be included as a source of “breaking news”, but wait, is the newsletter really all that valuable?

This was what Robert A. Geller, president at Fusion PR, experienced that made him rethink the importance of automatically curated newsletter so prevalent in Twitter and other social media platforms. He became suspicious (not to mention a little disappointed) once he discovered that the newsletter curator “had no idea who I was or what my content was about.” Needless to say, he was mortified to see that the content was pieced together via automatic scraping based on keywords.

What’s the moral of the story? That’s easy of course: practice intelligent curating and don’t be lazy when using content aggregators to piece together your stories. The right ingredients to this are training and awareness on digital literacy and social media etiquette, according to Dr. William Ward, who was the professor of practice of social media at Syracuse University.

In a nutshell, for you to prevent content curation from becoming content aggregation, you need to make it a MANUAL and well thought of effort.

Social curation – the next chapter

As you can probably tell, content curation DOES have its own flaws. This is where social curation comes in. Think of it as content curation, but filtered and targeted. Due to the massive amount of content and the need to unify data, social curation is becoming more relevant as brands try their utmost best to share significant stories across multiple platforms.

Here’s what in store for the future of content/social curation:

• Location awareness: Just like location-based services such as Foursquare, a new breed of new apps and tools that come equipped with geographically-aware features will allow brands to spreads custom stories according to their desired targeted locations.
  
• Content marketing: This isn’t something new – brands will be more comfortable harnessing the power of social content platforms as a tool for increasing brand awareness.
  
• Visual voice: As you can judge from the wildly successful Pinterest, text-heavy content will be a thing of yesterday as photo and video content will be lauded as heroes of the day.
  
• (DIY) personalization of content: People want to personalize the content they consume, and content/social curation will help achieve this goal as the method is expected to become increasingly mainstream.
  

Last words

There are tons of content curation tools out there, and as you can see, we’ve just only touched the tip of the iceberg. The huge variety and easy availability of content curation tools can be considered a double-edged sword; it’s so easy to be distracted by the myriad of tools and sites out there especially since they come with features you may or may not need. The best thing to do to avoid being overwhelmed is to learn from other content curators out there, see what’s being done and what sort of results they’re enjoying, then utilize the right tools. Make sure they complement your skills perfectly as you leverage on their features and slowly explore other tools when you feel comfortable enough to expand.