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The Ultimate Guide to
CONTENT
CURATION
HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE
This ebook is intended as a hands-on guide to adding curation to your content marketing mix, including
optimizing its impact. From program strategy to launch, this eBook walks you through each important
consideration and decision. In addition to identifying and clarifying strategic curation concepts, it also
provides a set of tactical frameworks to help you pick your topic; find, organize, share, and promote your
content; and analyze your curation programs’ performance.
This guide is organized into four main sections:
1.
2.
3.
4.
WHY content curation is a good idea, including a look at the new Buyer 2.0, the dawn of
content marketing, and why you and your audience will value curation.
WHAT content curation is, and how it fits in the context of the overall content marketing
mix.
HOW you can put content curation to work for your brand including a detailed, step-bystep look at what, when, where, and how to curate effectively.
WHY you’re curating content in the first place - a full-circle look at performance,
measurement, and optimization.
Jump in wherever it makes the most sense for you and let's see how we can maximize the ease and
effectiveness of your curation initiatives.
The Team at Curata
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4
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68
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TABLE
OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction
Content Curation: The Basics
Step-by-Step Guide to Content Curation
Find
Curate
Share
Analyze: Measure & Optimize
Curation Objectives Resolved
Final Word
Additional Resources
FOREWORD
As marketers, many of us know that fresh, useful, and entertaining content is a powerful
way to attract prospects to our brands, build brand affinity, and improve customer
retention and loyalty. We know that to fully realize the power of content marketing,
we need to consistently deliver content that meets prospect needs across the entire
spectrum of the buying cycle.
Most of us also know that creating all that content is hard.
We're no longer “just marketers.” We are now publishers. In this contentdriven landscape, we are responsible for producing huge amounts of content.
Unfortunately, most marketers don’t have the time, staff, or budgetary resources
to publish great (or, even good) content day in and day out. We're doing the best
we can, but it’s impossible to stay ahead of the demand.
That's where content curation comes in.
It's the smart, efficient way for you to meet the content needs of your organization
and your prospects without additional resources. This guide will you walk you
through everything you need to know about getting started with curation and
provide you with the tactics you need to succeed.
Pawan Deshpande
CEO and Founder, Curata
Share this eBook:
Before you know it, you’ll be able to easily
publish compelling, relevant, and timely
content on a daily basis. This content will
help: support lead generation, increase
overall awareness of your brand, and
establish your company as a go-to
resource and industry thought leader.
This eBook also includes insight from
over 20 content marketing experts,
who each answer the question:
What's the single biggest benefit
of curation to content marketing?
Whether you are new to content curation, a veteran curator, or an agency curating
on behalf of clients, the case studies, examples, and best practices included in this
guide provide valuable insights into what goes into great content curation.
4
INTRODUCTION:
Who is the Buyer 2.0?
What Value is Content Curation?
Why Curation - Why Now?
TODAY'S BUYER 2.0:
An Opportunity for Best-in-Class Marketers
Taking a New and Much More Complex Road to Conversion
A
B
The path to purchase used to be a straightforward line from Point A (buyer need) to Point
B (conversion). It was easy for marketers to guide and even control the prospect's journey
along this narrowly defined series of steps. There were limited sources of information and
even more limited channels through which a prospect could access that information.
But, you know all that's changed.
Today's buyer is hyper-connected in real time via multiple devices and channels to an
inexhaustible avalanche of information including brand-generated, consumer-generated,
and media-generated content. This buyer isn't waiting for you to tell him what to do next.
This buyer isn't interested in the old-fashioned, straight line from Point A to Point B. He's
bushwhacking his own, often circuitous, path. You no longer have control over the message,
the medium, or the buyer journey.
In fact, according to Sirius Decisions, 70% of the buyer journey is completed without any
sales involvement.
So, how are buyers making their purchase decisions, and - more importantly - how can
you influence those decisions?
6
Enter
Content
Marketing
You understand that reaching, engaging, and influencing prospects is all about
content, but it's not just about any content. Your prospects are overwhelmed
by low quality content that doesn't deliver on its promise, or even serve any
recognizable need. What they need and want is content that is deeply relevant
and provides actual value (in the form of education, resources, solutions,
and/or entertainment). Today's buyer is savvier and more demanding. They
expect more. And, if you can't provide content they can actually use, they'll go
elswehere.
Just to stay on this buyer’s radar, your content must be current, frequent,
and consistent. To earn their trust, that content better be worth consuming.
Each piece you publish must demonstrate your expertise, thought
leadership, and/or provide a solution to a specific problem.
It’s not easy to keep up. Unless you have a bottomless budget and endless
resources, you’re going to need to supplement your original content. In fact,
even if you have the best content in the world, they will still search elsewhere
for additional perspectives.
"
When you curate top notch information and resources for your audience, you are
showing that you have their best interests in mind. By providing useful information,
people in turn build trust in what you offer and you build up your own authority as a
relevant information source. When trust is built, loyalty is created, and the more valuable
curation you consistently provide to your potential customers, the more opportunities
you have to grow your business through a content marketing philosophy.
"
ARNIE KUENN
CEO
Vertical Measures
7
Why Content Curation?
Why Now?
In the beginning, there was content marketing, and it was good.
Early adopters reaped a high return on their investment, easily
impressing prospects and customers with their blog posts, ebooks,
webinars, podcasts, and other content. But, no gold rush lasts
forever.
As more businesses jumped onto the content marketing
bandwagon, it has become increasingly difficult for marketers to
maintain the frequency and quality required to ensure both topof-mind awareness and a brand’s position as an industry thought
leader.
BOTTOM LINE?
Content curation provides:
1.
An opportunity to provide
additional value to your
audience by serving the
best content that the
Internet has to offer.
2.
A low cost way to
complement your own
created content.
Content curation helps you compete effectively and efficiently, and
it provides unique benefits that are critical in today’s market.
8
Content Curation is Key to Overcoming
Five of the Top Ten Content Marketing Challenges
Content curation evolved naturally. Year after year, industry surveys produce an almost identical list of the
challenges that foil content marketing success. In the 2015 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and
Trends - North America report jointly produced by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs
[1], five of the ten most-cited pain points are ones that can be largely alleviated by integrating curation into the
content marketing mix:
#1 - Producing Engaging Content (54%): Curating
Content Curation is about
creating value by identifying the
best and most relevant content
for your readers, highlighting the
main points and wrapping your
own insight and guidance around
that.
only the highest quality, most relevant content ensures
better engagement with your audience.
#2 - Producing Content Consistently (50%): Regular
curation makes it easy to increase your publishing
frequency without the heavy lifting of creating original
content.
#4 - Producing a Variety of Content (42%): Curating
content from a diverse set of sources ensures a variety
of both formats and voices.
DAN MOYLE,
Multimedia Marketing
& Communications
Specialist at Amerifirst
"
The smarter we get,
the better our tools
are, the more we can
do that in a regular
and ethical and
respectful way.
"
[1] Source: B2B Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budget and Trends – North America
http://www.slideshare.net/mprofs/2015-b2-bresearch-final-39729380
9
#5 - Lack of Budget (41%): Content curation does not have to be a
hugely time-consuming task, so you don’t have to allocate additional
resources in order to reap the benefits.
#6 - Gaps in Knowledge and Skills of Internal Team (34%):
Whether the gaps have to do with tactical content production
or subject expertise, content curation helps you bridge them
by integrating additional expert insights and lightening the
burden of technical and artistic content development.
The same report also indicated that content
curation is one of the areas B2B marketers are
most interested in exploring further.
"
One cannot underestimate
the brand lift from great
content curation. When you
stand on the shoulders of
giants (i.e., associate with
and amplify the best content
and thought-leaders in your
industry), your view (and
brand) can only improve.
"
JEFF ROHRS
Exact Target
My goal is to make sure that I
am consistently answering the
questions my customers have
each and every day. The curation
method of nding, organizing and
annotating has been one that has
served me very well. When you are
nding (seeking out new content),
organizing (love the editorial
calendar) and annotating (sharing
the goods) with others that crave
the
answers
to daily pain
points
you
are
helping
to show not
only relevance
but also key
expertise
in
your speci ed
JAMIE WHALEN
eld.
Manager
Content Marketing
Lionbridge
The most important bene t of
curation—done really well—is
building trust with your audience.
You could toss in the tired "thought
leadership" phrase here or its
siblings—authority and expertise—
but the mission is the same. If you're
a thorough and thoughtful curator
of the high quality content that's
truly useful to your customers, you
earn their trust by continuously
demonstrating you have a rm grasp
of the challenges they grapple with
daily.
BARRY FELDMAN
Founder
Feldman Creative
Content Curation is the Ultimate Way to Boost
Credibility and Influence
While many marketers have evolved from a productfocused marketing approach to a content-focused
one, only the most enlightened B2B marketers
have realized that to maximize the effect of content
marketing, it needs to be market- or industry-focused.
The lens through which marketers view their content
has expanded.
JEANNINE ROSIGNOL, VP Marketing
Communications at Xerox says the
combination of the original and curated
content,
"
[Content curation] gives our
prospective clients a fuller
picture of the topics they
read about.
"
In this way, Xerox uses curated content to educate and inform
on a broader, industry-wide scale.
It is no longer enough to be able to talk about your
product or even about your customer’s needs. Truly
evolved content marketing includes providing
industry-level insights. To position your brand as a
trusted resource, you need to think like an industry
analyst.
In the same way that the conversation is no longer
about you (or your product), the voice you bring to the
conversation cannot be only yours, but must include
the expertise, insights, and opinions of others.
Curation is how you bring added dimension to your content marketing.
12
Adding content curation to your content
marketing mix also delivers these benefits:
IMPROVE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: Curated
STREAMLINE LEAD NURTURING: Curated content
ESTABLISH CREDIBILITY AS A THOUGHT
LEADER: Curated content helps you develop go-
COMPLEMENT SOCIAL MEDIA AND BLOGGING:
content becomes additional indexable pages that
provide more doorways into your site via search
engines.
to web resources that improve your credibility and
encourage visitors to trust you as the authority on
your topic.
is easily repurposed via newsletters, emails, and
other channels to make lead nurturing simple and
consistent.
Curated content supplements your social media
publishing schedule and helps facilitate social
media conversations not only with prospects and
customers, but also with peers.
SUPPORT LEAD GENERATION: Curated content
drives incremental site visits that increase the
potential for landing quality leads.
In short, content curation helps you deliver an improved content marketing ROI, lower per-lead costs, greater
efficiency and increased credibility.
13
Companies of All Sizes are Tapping Into the Benefits
of Content Curation
Green Data Center News by Verne Global
IBM
The small team at this data center company, based in Iceland,
tapped into the power of content marketing and curation to
create the industry’s leading web site on green data center news.
Green Data Center News has enabled Verne Global to connect
with prospects on a daily basis, easily get global press coverage,
and save over $100,000 in expenses for outbound marketing
staff and web site development.”
Even industry giants benefit from adding content curation to their
marketing mix. IBM uses curation to source third-party content
on relevant themes for its Big Data & Analytics hub, “Around
the Web.” This helps establish them as an industry insider and
thought leader, complements their social media marketing, and
also attracts influencers who may contribute to the site.
Read the full case study.
Read the full case study.
14
CONTENT CURATION:
The Basics
"Content curation is when an individual (or team) consistently
QUICK
finds, organizes, annotates and shares the most relevant and
quality digital content on a specific topic for their target
REFRESHER: highest
market."
Curata
What Is
Curation is. . .
Content
Curation,
Being discerning,
A person, not simply a
computer algorithm.
discriminative and selective.
Exactly?
Added value: perspective,
insight, guidance.
Not a one-time
event or activity.
A laser focus on your
audience.
16
An Example of Content Curation
1
A new title and thumbnail are used to better
contextualize the article referred to in this curated
blog post.
2
Annotation: The marketer introduces the reader to
the curated post, putting it in context for the reader.
3
Snippet: A couple of sentences are quoted from the
original post.
4
Insight: The marketer adds their own insight to
further contextualize the curated post and add value
for the reader.
5
Clear attribution and link-back as part of ethical
curation.
17
The Art of Content Curation
is Not a New Concept
Content curation is inspired by real-world curation such as is done with art for museums:
• A curator at an art museum finds masterpieces that are related
based on a shared point of interest (topic, region, artist, era,
medium, etc.).
• The curator then organizes the pieces into a collection,
building a more cohesive narrative around the individual
pieces through context.
• Lastly, the curator shares the collections with others
via a gallery which provides a centralized point of
access and the oportunity for additional interactions,
conversation, and learning.
• As a subject matter expert, the museum curator
provides visitors with easier access to and deeper
understanding of the art. You create similar value
as a content curator, finding and organizing quailty
content, building a contextual narrative around it,
and providing expert insight.
18
"
"
Content curation is a
fantastic option for
companies looking to
grow their content strategy.
Many
companies
don't
have the bandwidth to
create original, high quality
content. By curating other
thought leadership, you are
expanding your in-house
content to include resources
created by other like-minded
leaders.
Even in our crazy, hectic, always-connected world, you still can't be everywhere all the
time. That's where content curation comes to play. If you're a content consumer, curation
from trusted sources means you spend less time finding what's most valuable to you.
They take on the work of finding and analyzing content to make sure that it's relevant.
If you're a content producer, curation is evidence that you're willing to admit that you
don't know it all. You'll build credibility by bringing other experts to the
table.
CARLA JOHNSON
President
Type A Communications
"
"
DAYNA ROTHMAN
Senior Content
Marketing Manager
Marketo
Key Points to Remember
About Content Curation
•
You can curate content from a wide variety
of online sources including trade publications,
•
social media profiles, blogs, scientific journals,
news outlets, and more.
•
you - hand-selecting which content to share,
determining the organizational method that will
increase accessibility and usability, and adding
context and insight that will aid your audience
in gaining a deeper understanding of the
content.
You can organize them using rich and
tailored taxonomy by grouping and
categorizing related content.
•
•
You can share content with your audience via
many different channels including websites,
social media feeds, blogs, mobile apps, widgets,
and email newsletters.
Content curation is not aggregation, which
lacks the human touch.
Content curation is a fundamentally human
process. At the center of it all is the curator -
•
Content curation is not content farming,
which involves unethically pirating third-party
content and publishing high-quantity, lowquality content.
When done right, content curation is ethical and beneficial to all parties involved: you (the curator), your
prospects (the audience), and your third party sources (the original content creators).
20
Content Curation's Role in the Marketing Mix
What is your [desired] content marketing mix for each type of content?
Syndicated
Content
10%
Curated
Content
25%
Insight/Guidance
• Enlightened content marketers strive
to create 65% of their content with
the remainder being 25% curated and
10% syndicated.
0%
Created
Content
65%
The Objectives?
1. Better leverage resources
2. Improve the ideation process
3. Better engage buyers through higher
value content
Best-in-class Marketing Mix
65% Created
25% Curated
10% Syndicated
Curata's 2014 Content Marketing Tactics Planner
If you use this graphic, please cite Curata and link to http://bit.ly/CMTactics2014
21
The act of curating starts with research. Therefore, the single biggest bene t of
curation is discovery. Great ideas, concepts, campaigns, statistics, facts, quotes,
videos, inforgraphics, and other content types are likely to be discovered during
the research phase, making curation both important from a strategic, competitive
research standpoint, as well as a tactic of value employed by content marketers
looking for interesting, valuable, relevant content.
"
"
SCOTT ABEL
The Content Wrangler
"
PAM DIDNER
Author
Global Content
Marketing
The biggest bene t of content
curation is to stretch your marketing
budget so that you don't need to
create all content from scratch. Select
content intelligently and carefully
so that they will read your curated
content with a sense of wonder such
as 'Wow, that's interesting...' or 'Oh, I
didn't know that...'"
"
"
“We
started
at
zero and are now
at 8,000 to 10,000
page
views
per
month and growing
approximately 10%
each month with
curation.”
BOB MEYER
President & Co-founder
MPS Connect
"
22
STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE
to Content Curation
5 Steps to Successful Curation
There are five primary activities required for developing and maintaining an efficient, effective, and
ethical content curation practice:
1
2
3
4
5
DEVELOP YOUR CURATION STRATEGY: objectives & topics
FIND your sources
CURATE by organizing and editorializing
SHARE via a variety of channels and mediums
ANALYZE and optimize your
content curation performance
24
The following section will walk you, step-by-step, through each of
these activities so that you have a clear sense of what it takes to
build and manage your own content curation program. At the
end of this ebook, you will find some resources that provide
additional or complementary information, and you can always
reach out to our team here at Curata. We'd be happy to answer
your questions.
([email protected])
Be aware, however, that there are efficient and not-soefficient ways to curate. While the vast majority (more
than 80%) of respondents handle content curation inhouse, almost half (46%) of these folks are spending
more than two hours per day on curation. These
marketers are likely curating manually, starting from
scratch each day and wasting valuable time on
inefficient systems. Implementing a content
curation
platform
would improve their
performance
substantially.
25
Define
Your
Objectives
Content curation can be used externally (for marketing purposes), or
internally (for knowledge management and competitive intelligence).
This guide is focused on the marketing side of things, but since the
majority of the best practices covered are relevant for any use case,
let's look at a few other possibilities:
MARKETING
Share content
to inform,
educate, and
influence your
prospects and
customers,
simultaneously
strengthening
your brand's
position as a go-to resource and
industry thought leader.
PUBLISHING
Build an online
destination
that can be
monetized via
advertisements
or sponsorships.
KNOWLEDGE
MANAGEMENT
Educate an internal
audience, such
as a team of
researchers, on a
particular topic.
COMPETITIVE
INTELLIGENCE
Inform internal
stakeholders on
relevant news.
For example, you
might use curation
to keep your
sales team up-to-date on your
competitors and industry.
26
FIND
Pick Your Topics
(aka "Staking Out Your Territory")
Picking your topic is a critical first step in developing a successful content curation program. Unlike
other parts of the curation process, which are performed on a repetitive basis, picking out your
topic is typically something you should only need to do once. This isn't to say that your topic area
won't evolve or expand down the road, but you can make sure that you're starting on the right foot
if you engage in proper due diligence.
In many ways, picking a topic is analogous to picking
a market for a product. You have to find the perfect fit,
the perfect balance of supply and demand. Imagine
you have a great idea for a product. You hire a great
marketing team, genius engineers, and manage to
pull off a flawless launch. All of that is impressive, but
if there is no inherent market need for your product,
it'll never get off the ground.
If you make the same mistake by jumping to
conclusions about what your audience wants, you will
wind up with a topic choice that is inherently flawed.
When that happens, no matter how well you find,
organize, and share content, your chances of success
are slim.
"
RAND FISHKIN
Founder
Moz
The greatest benefit of curation
that I see is to help distill signal
from noise and become a trusted
and authoritative resource in your
field. If you're the source of what's
truly important and useful, you
can stand out even in crowded
markets and earn a significant
audience.
"
In the next few pages, we will walk you through a
proven, step-by-step process to help you pick a
winning topic.
28
The 3 Elements of a
Perfect Curation Topic
There are three factors you must consider if you
want to find the just-right topic:
1. Competitive Landscape: How much
competition is there for this topic?
2. Audience Interest: Is my target audience
interested in this topic?
3. Content Landscape: Is there sufficient content
on this topic for me to curate?
If you are able to find a topic that meets all three
of these criteria, then you have found a great topic
for curation. Let’s take a closer look:
1
Insufficient content
Not relevant to
target audience
Competitor
Landscape
for curation
Ideally, you’re looking for a topic that:
•
•
•
Has relatively low competition (meaning it isn’t
already widely covered)
Is of specific interest to your audience
Has generated sufficient content in the market
for curation
Audience
Interest
3
Content
Landscape
2
Saturated. Too
many audience
29
STEP
1
Survey the Competitor Landscape
Your competitive landscape includes any other sites that cover your chosen topic.
Curation can help you find your competitors and assess is most relevant to your audience.
how well they present their content. This process will
help you uncover curation opportunities such as sites
that cover your topic only some of the time (along with
other topics) or sites with low publishing frequency.
In either case, curation makes it easy for you to add
value by hand picking and sharing only the content
that
1
CAN I CURATE BETTER
THAN THEY CAN?
Can you make your curation
site more attractive to readers
by offering greater depth of
coverage, relevancy, and/or
consistency?
2
Your stiffest competition is any other well-maintained,
curated publication on your topic. If you discover
an existing curation site that rivals your own best
intentions, ask yourself these three questions:
IS THERE A BETTER
PERSPECTIVE OR
OPPOSING POINT OF
VIEW?
Can you curate the same
content from a different
angle, highlighting a unique
take on the topic?
3
CAN I BROADEN OR
NARROW MY TOPIC?
Can you use increased
specificity or, conversely,
greater scope of topic to
increase your content's
"discoverability?" If your initial
topic was offshore wind farms,
how could you better reach
and serve your audience if you
narrowed your focus to Atlantic
wind farms, or broadened it to
wind power?
30
STEP
2
Survey the Content Landscape
In order to become a successful curator on your topic, you must have enough
content to curate. A quick and easy way to begin assessing the available content
sources uses Google and social media:
Plug your
desired topic
into Google
News
Sort your results by
date to see how
many articles are
being created per
day or week.
Review blogs that
cover your topic,
either consitently or
intermittently.
Do the same
exercise
in Twitter,
Facebook, and
LinkedIn
Assuming you find enough quality content via these basic sources, you should be able to find at least four
articles per day that are worth sharing with your audience. If you're able to hit this frequency benchmark
without any trouble, you will know you have a viable topic for ongoing curation. As you continue your curation,
you will discover new sources that expand your source list, giving you and your audience additional variety
and perspective.
31
STEP
3
Determine Your Audience Interest
Speaking
of
your audience,
even if you have found a topic
that passes the competitor and
the content tests, the most
important hurdle remains. You
must ensure that your topic is of
interest to your target audience
for your business. Without this
critical element, your curated
content will fail to capture or hold
the attention of your audience.
Google's Keyword Planner is a
simple way to determine audience
interest and designed to help
advertisers measure keyword
search volume (for pay-per-click
campaigns).
Google's Keyword Planner can also easily
double as a proxy to measure the general
level of online interest in a given topic.
If the Keyword Planner shows that there
is general interest in your topic, you still
need to make sure that your audience
shares that interest. The best way to
determine this is to ask.
Using either interviews or a simple
survey, ask a sample of your customers
for their opinions about your topic how important it is, whether they
feel they have information on it
already, what specific questions
they have.
32
Putting It All Together: Find Your Sweet Spot
The perfect topic will obviously pass all three tests: competitor, content, and audience. However, curators
often need to work with a topic that is not quite perfect and only passes two of the three tests. While not
ideal, such situations can sometimes be salvaged. For example:
IF YOUR TOPIC PASSES COMPETITOR AND AUDIENCE INTEREST TESTS, BUT NOT THE CONTENT
TEST. Say you have selected the topic "paper based liquid chromatography." There are no other
resources dedicated to this topic and you have established that your audience is deeply interested
in the topic. However, there's very little third-party content available, making it almost impossible
to curate content on a regular basis. One possible way to make this topic more viable would be to
include it within the broader topic of "liquid chromatography.” Since you would be able to source more
content, this would allow you to meet your audience need within the context of the broader industry
topic.
IF YOUR TOPIC PASSES THE CONTENT AND COMPETITOR TESTS, BUT NOT THE AUDIENCE
INTEREST TEST. Maybe your company sells outsourcing services and your target audience is VPs of
Engineering at software companies. You have chosen the unique topic of “next generation tablets."
There are no other sites dedicated to this, but there is sufficient third-party content. However, the
topic has nothing to do with your business. Though you may attract an audience interested in new
technology, the VPs of Engineering who you want to reach are interested in topics that are more
specific to their needs. A better topic choice would be something like “outsourcing management best
practices."
33
Putting It All Together: Find the Sweet Spot
(continued)
IF YOUR TOPIC PASSES THE AUDIENCE INTEREST AND CONTENT TESTS, BUT NOT THE
COMPETITOR TEST. Assume you sell a secure iPhone operating system that can be managed by
enterprise IT departments. You have chosen the topic "iPhone Business Productivity tips and news.”
This topic caters to the right audience: iPhone-oriented business professionals and there is a great
deal of content available. However, there is an established publication on this exact topic that has
a dedicated full-time staff that not only curates, but also creates original content multiple times a
day. You chances of displacing them are seriously slim.
To avoid going head-to-head with an established publisher, you
may want to choose a topic that is still relevant, but perhaps even
more specific to your audience niche. In this case, something like
"iPhone security issues in the enterprise."
Think of your topic as your territory. It is the area of
expertise you want to “own.” A topic that passes all
three curation tests - competitor, content, and
audience - will give you the best opportunity
to successfully become known as the go-to
resource and industry thought leader on your
topic. Once you’ve identified this key piece of the
content curation puzzle, you’re ready to
begin curating in earnest.
34
"
To produce enough content to meet the information and Youtility needs of your entire
audience, it's almost impossible to do it all yourself, from scratch. Curated content
allows you to broaden your content topics and do so in a fast, cost-effective way.
"
JAY BAER
Convince & Convert
Curation allows you to scale your
conversations beyond what you
can afford to initiate with original
content only. By understanding
your audience, curating relevant
content allows you to host a
broader range of discussions
and act as a hub of information
TODD WHEATLAND broader than what you could
Author
create on your own.
"
"
Example of Selecting a Great Topic
IBM's Smarter Planet
IBM uses Smarter Planet to educate professionals about smarter systems. They first surveyed their
competitors and the current technology landscape before deciding that their audience (mainly IT
professionals) would be interested in news about smart systems.
36
FIND: Discovering & Assessing
New Content Sources
Once you’ve selected a winning topic, you need
to find and “tune” your content sources. There
are two broad types of sources to consider:
1
KNOWN AND TRUSTED SOURCES
These are sources that you, and likely your
audience, are familiar with. It’s a good practice
to include as many of these as possible because they
typically produce high-quality, relevant content on
a frequent and consistent basis, making them ideal
curation sources. If you’ve chosen your topic well,
you should be able to find at least a dozen known
and trusted sources by reviewing the content you
consume via:
• Trade Publications
• Twitter Lists
• Specific Twitter Users
• Industry Blogs
• Scientific Journals
2
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
To supplement your regular, go-to
references, explore these additional resources
for relevant content:
t Feed Reader: A feed reader allows you to scan
a large quantity of content from multiple sources
in a single feed. In many cases, you can also easily
import your finds into other formats via an OPML
file.
t Email Newsletters: Check your inbox for
newsletter emails that might contain or link to
useful content. Visit the sites for each newsletter’s
publisher and add their feeds to your source list.
t Public Relations Team: PR teams are often already
monitoring and clipping content from a set list of
industry sources. Tap into their expertise and add
any resulting sources to your own curation list.
37
Fine-Tuning Your Sources
HOW MUCH
CONTENT IS
JUST RIGHT?
There’s no magic number for the amount of content you should source
or publish each day, but there are a few questions you can ask yourself to
figure out which volume and frequency are right for you:
HOW MUCH CONTENT AM I
BRINGING IN?
Too much incoming content will
leave you overwhelmed and
unable to keep up. Too little content
means you (and your audience)
are running the risk of missing out
on important articles. You need to
find the balance that will enable
you to provide in-depth, timely
coverage that is manageable from
an editorial standpoint.
HOW MUCH TIME CAN I
(REASONABLY) SPEND ON
CURATION?
How much content you can source
on a regular basis will depend
largely on how much time you have
available to invest in curation. If
you only have twenty minutes a
day to dedicate to curation efforts,
then you may want to be a little
more conservative with your
expectations and aim for perhaps
ten to thirty pieces. However, a
curation technology solution can
make this process more efficient.
HOW MUCH CONTENT DOES
MY AUDIENCE (REALLY) WANT?
If you publish too much content,
your audience can get fatigued and
“tune out.”This results in newsletter
opt-outs, decline in social media
followers, and fewer returning site
visitors. If you publish too little
content, your audience may not
consider you as authoritative a
resource. Just as you need to find
the right volume benchmark based
on your availability, you must also
consider your audience’s appetite
for content.
39
PRO
TIP
Crowsourcing Your Curated Content
Finding relevant content does not have to be the sole responsibility of just one
person. In fact, curation is most efficient and effective when your organization thinks
of it as a cross-functional practice instead of the exclusive domain of the marketing
department.
Help your extended team - including sales,
customer service, product development,
etc. – understand your curation strategy and
tactics so that they can contribute with content
suggestions of their own. You will have an
easier time persuading people to get involved
and invest in the effort if you can show them
the value of curation to
your organization as a
whole and their
department
in particular.
Whenever
possible,
share curation successes and use curation to help
support and enable your internal teams.
Select a curation technology that offers a
collaboration or "crowdsourcing" feature as part
of the solution. Remember, the easier you make it
for your extended team to contribute, the better
your chances of getting
them on board with
your
curation
initiative.
40
"
LEE ODDEN
CEO
TopRank
Online Marketing
"
One
of
the
most
underutilized applications
of curation for content
marketing is for brands that
are active in their content
and media relations efforts
to curate earned media and
their own content. As part
of a blended approach, this
use of curation can be just
as powerful for attracting
and engaging customers
as original content.
"
Content curation strengthens an organization’s
opportunity to become THE GO-TO SOURCE
for information on a topic(s) of interest to their
audiences. Especially if the content is 1) is
timely, the audience has a convenient way to
stay up to date; 2) represents
the landscape of topical
perspectives, the audience
has a home for getting their
arms around the whole
terrain rather than just a facet;
3) represents the best of the
Internet’s content tsunami,
the resource will save the
CARLOS ABLER
audience a ton of time in Leader, Online Content
wading through channels in
Strategy
pursuit of relevance.
3M
"
CURATE
CURATE: Content Selection & Editorialization
Ensure that you use content curation software that automatically handles all the laborious tasks
related to finding, organizing, and - ultimately - distributing content. This frees you, the marketer, to
focus on the creative and strategic parts of the curation process.
Click here to view a full list of content curation tools.
Being able to focus in this way gives time-strapped marketers like you a critical advantage. Curating
content is, by definition, a human process. When you are able to step fully into the role of curator, you
can do a more effective job of selecting, sorting, and annotating all the quality multi-sourced content
available to you. There's an art to incorporating the human element to add value and context to your
creation efforts. In this section, we'll walk through some practices that make for a successful marriage
between art and science.
"
Content curation gives you the ability to link your ideas to related ideas to build
credibility with the markets you serve. Curating and sharing content on its own will
help, but it doesn't increase value through the addition of your expertise. If you
share someone else's ideas and expand upon them with your own, you gain
credibility, share your knowledge and make whatever you curated more
valuable in the process.
"
ARDATH ALBEE
CEO & B2B Marketing Strategist
43
Your first responsibility as a
curator is to decide which of
your sourced articles is worthy
of your audience's attention. Here
are a few high-level criteria you can
use to make an initial assessment of
an article's potential value:
RELEVANT
Is this content relevant to my
audience? Though it may be
related to my topic, does it offer
any additional insights to my
audience that they may not
already know?
CREDIBLE
Is this content from a publication
that I trust? Is the content from
a reputable site or blog? Or is it
from a low-quality site with no
credible authority in my subject
area?
Deciding What to Publish
DIVERSE
Does this content offer
an alternative viewpoint (maybe
not one that my organization or
I agree with, but one that makes
the discussion more interesting?)
VALIDATING
Does the content offer additional
insight that validates my point of
view?
UNIQUE
Is this fresh content that will
provide my audience with new
information or insight that they
haven't found elsewhere? If the
content is available elsewhere,
is my site doing a better job of
highlighting and contextualizing
the content?
44
"
There's only one star in our sky, and that's our reader. We focus on what that person
might find educational or interesting or helpful, and work to present various types of
content that meet their needs. Curation broadens the palette of content we can present
to our readers, and brings in fresh voices and new viewpoints - which makes our site
more valuable to our readers.
SHERRY LAMOREAUX
Writer/Editor
Act-On
"
Content curation allows brands to blend their own points-of-view and perspectives with
that of the external world, creating a natural bridge of contextual relevance between
the two.
MATT CARTER
Program Director, Big Data
& Analytics Category Digital Marketing
IBM
"
"
How Often & When Should I Curate
Content?
FAQ
Most users tend to curate
content each work day. Even if you
prefer to send a weekly newsletter rather than
daily newsletter, curating on a daily basis breaks
up your workload and ensures that your site is
refreshed with new content regularly.
25%
Curating in the morning, between 7am and 10am
or as soon as you begin your work day, is a general
best practice. Ensure you use a content curation
solution that will automate the sharing of your
content via newsletters and social media channels
throughout the day, even after you’ve finished the
formal curation process.
% of Participants
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
Daily
3 days per
week
Weekly
Monthly
Content Curation Frequency
Quarterly or
less
Never
Source: Curata's 2014 Content
Marketing Tactics Planner
INSIGHT / GUIDANCE:
16% of marketers
are curating for their
audience every day,
48% are curating
from third party
sources at least once
a week.
Best-in-class
marketers are
curating at least
once a week.
Leaders curate more
frequently to support
their own original
content and plan to
increase curation in
the coming years.
46
SHARE:
Getting Content in Front
of Your Audience
All the work you’ve done so far - identifying, finding, and
organizing your content - has been behind-the-scenes
preparation for sharing your curated collection with your
target audience. This is the moment of truth.
HOW TO PICK WHERE TO SHARE
Each member of your audience consumes content a little
differently. Some people go to their inbox first thing
in the morning, others may login to Twitter, and others
may go to a feed reader or a resource site homepage. As
a content curator, it’s your responsibility to find which
channels are best suited to your audience’s content
consumption habits and preferences.
If you’re a new curator, we encourage you to explore your
outreach options. There are so many ways to share your
content, and in many cases you won’t know what works
best until you’ve experimented. The following section
provides an overview of some of the most popular
sharing methods and channels along with some criteria
to help you decide which are the most appropriate for
your brand and your audience.
IN THE FOLLOWING SECTIONS, YOU WILL
LEARN THE PROS & CONS OF:
• A dedicated topic-centric resource site
• A newsletter
• Social media posts on sites such as Facebook,
Twitter, or LinkedIn
• An on-site news widget
• A blog
JON MILLER, VP of Marketing and Co-Founder at Marketo, finds content curation especially useful during
the relationship-nurturing phase. As an example, he explains how someone he's known for a couple of
years periodically sends out links to articles from high-profile publications like the New York Times and the
Economist. The key to this tactic is hat the friend adds value by including his own commentary on the piece.
"
It's an incredibly powerful way to maintain the relationship.
"
And, it also creates - in the mind of the reader- an association between the curator with some very wellrespected publications.
48
Dedicated Site
A dedicated site, sometimes called a microsite, or section of a site populated primarily with curated content.
PROS
CONS
• Sites can easily create a full-fledged experience
with curated content as the centerpiece making
them the go-to resource on a specific topic or
issue.
• Dedicated sites deliver strong SEO benefits
because they have dozens or even hundreds or
thousands of subpages.
• Done well, these sites can seamlessly juxtapose
original content with curated content to provide
you with a dual-purpose platform.
• Because the curated content is front and center (vs.
Being tucked away in a widget), you need to pay
closer attention to what you curate. Whether your
curation site is positioned as a section of an existing
corporate website, or as a vendor-neutral industry
resource (something we’ll cover in a later section),
you need to closely manage what is published.
"
Content curation enables us to populate GreenDataCenterNews.org with current news
and opinions in addition to our own curated content. This microsite has enabled us to
connect with prospects on a daily basis, easily get global press coverage, and save over
$100,000 in expenses for outbound marketing staff and website development.
LISA RHODES
VP Sales & Marketing
Verne Global
"
49
CURATION
TEMPLATE
TIP
As shown on page 17, there are a few formatting and structural best
practices for creating a curated post on your dedicated site:
t/&85*5-& - Don’t be afraid to edit the title so it’s as relevant as possible
to your audience. And consider adding an image (if there isn’t one), or
replacing the image with something that’s more likely to catch your
audience’s attention.
t 46.."3:"%%&%$0..&/5"3: - Whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with the original content’s
author, you should include:
t A brief summary of the article (including some context around why you curated it)
t "SFMFWBOURVPUF from the original article (this is optional, but adds credibility)
t "EEJUJPOBMJOTJHIU, opinion, and/or context
t -*/,#"$, - Always include proper attribution.
t "26&45*0/ - Questions help contextualize the content and increase reader engagement.
t $"--ű50ű"$5*0/ - Give your readers the option to learn more about the article’s topic and/or your company.
ANN HANDLEY, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs, considers content curator one of the key roles necessary
to a successful content marketing team. In her post, A Simple Content Marketing Org Chart, she says the following
about curation:
"
This is an often-overlooked role in the content team, but it's an important part of the
content publishing process...Filtering the best stuff and sharing it with your audience
either directly or through your content creators makes you a go-to source; in other
words, it enhances your credibility.
"
50
Newsletters
One of the most popular ways to share content is through email newsletters, which are especially
effective because:
• They are a ubiquitous medium that can be consumed by nearly
any device in any organization.
• They encourage repeat visitors to your site.
• They are easy to measure - you can see exactly who is receiving
them.
Ensure your content curation platform provides a variety of
newsletter options that allow you to set customized preferences
while adhering to general email best practices. If you already have
a newsletter platform, ensure your curation solution provides
integration to this platform.
51
PRO
TIP
39% of the Best Business Bloggers Use
Newsletter Promotion at Least Weekly
How often do you send a
newsletter with your
blog content to your subscriber
base?
60%
% of Respondents
50%
40%
30%
20%
CHUCK EBERL
EVP Marketing
Connance
10%
"
Our CEO was at a trade show
and someone he respects
came up to him and said,
"Geez, you have to check out
this new site called RCP. The
weekly email is everything
Ineed to keep tabs on and I
don't have to get any of the
other stuff that is out there."
Our CEO was very proud to
share that we were behind
the scenes on it.
"
0%
Weekly or More
often
<1,000
Monthly
1,000 to <10,000
Quarterly or
Never
10,000+
# of page views
If you use this graphic or framework, please cite and link to bit.ly/bloggingstudy
52
Email Newsletters
A recurring communication sent on a regular basis and containing digest full of all recently curated items
or a mix of curated and created items.
PROS
CONS
• Email newsletters are a great way to educate
an audience on a consistent basis, aiding brand
awareness, affinity, and lead nurturing.
• Most people check their email multiple times
each day, so your content has a better chance of
reaching them than if you were relying on them
to be independently proactive about visiting your
site.
• Newsletters do not deliver content in real time.
You would not send an email newsletter more
frequently than once a day, so time-sensitive items
could be twenty-four hours out of date by the time
your content hits your audience's inboxes
WHEN IS
AN EMAIL
NEWSLETTER
THE BEST FIT?
•
•
When you have an existing “captive” audience.
Email newsletters can also be used very successfully in conjunction with
outreach tactics, such as collecting subscribers from a trade show or a
corporate site. In those instances, you acquire people through the outreach
tactic, and retain them with your newsletter.
53
Curated
Newsletters
vs
Corporate &
Lead
Nurturing
Newsletters
Many organizations have existing newsletters that they distribute on
a monthly or quarterly basis via other email or customer relationship
management (CRM) systems. Some organizations also send lead
nurturing campaigns through marketing automation systems.
It's important to note that curated content newsletters are significantly
different from these other two types of newsletters. They serve an entirely
different purpose, which brings us back to the importance of being
clear on your content
curation strategy and
objectives in the context
of your other marketing
efforts. The fact is,
many
organizations
send out all three types
of newsletters in a
coordinated effort that
delivers the right content
to the right audience with
the right frequency.
54
THREE NEWSLETTER TYPES
& Why Each is Important
CORPORATE
NEWSLETTERS
PURPOSE:
Keep prospects and customers
apprised of your organization's
updates.
CONTENT:
Announcements and press
releases regarding your
organization.
FREQUENCY:
Monthly or quarterly.
"
LEAD NURTURE
EMAILS
CURATED
NEWSLETTERS
PURPOSE:
Educate and influence prospects
engaged in your sales funnel.
CONTENT:
Educational materials, sales
materials, and marketing offers.
FREQUENCY:
Varies depending on your sales
cycle.
PURPOSE:
Build awareness of a topic, your
organization's perspective on
that topic and your audience's
understanding of that topic.
CONTENT:
Mix of third party and original
content.
FREQUENCY:
Daily or weekly.
Curation positions you as a facilitator of industry
conversations in your market - and that's a great
thing to be. Not every important insight on an
issue will come from you and your team. Curation
lets you harness the wisdom of the market for
your own content marketing efforts.
DOUG KESSLER
Founder
Velocity Partners
"
Unlike other types of newsletters,
curated newsletters are sent at a
relatively high frequency, yet enjoy
high open rates and subscriber
growth rates. That's because a wellcurated newsletter is not intrusive.
It is not an unsolicited interruption;
it is a useful communication that
contains relevant, timely content the
subscriber wants in his or her inbox
everyday.
55
Recurring vs. One-Time Newsletters:
Which One is Right for You?
•
For a one-time newsletter you cherry pick which content to include, include a customized introduction,
and then send the newsletter manually.
•
Recurring newsletters are sent via a defined schedule (every Wednesday, once monthly, each quarter, etc.)
and typically have a preset layout and appearance. For instance, each newsletter in a series might include a
featured piece, a collection of additional resources organized by sub-topic, and an invitation to download
a nice piece of original content. Depending on what kind of technology you are using, many elements of a
recurring newsletter can be automated.
We typically recommend the recurring newsletter
format with some automation. This approach allows
you to focus on your daily content curation without
getting continually bogged down in the mechanics
and logistics of managing an ad-hoc newsletter
send.
56
NEWSLETTER
TEMPLATE
TIP
A good newsletter template should include the following:
t */530%6$5*0/ - Let your audience know what you're delivering
t 3&$&/503*(*/"-1*&$&4 - This can include blog posts, infographics,
webinars, or any other content that your audience will find useful and/
or interesting.
t 3&-&7"/55*.&-:5)*3%ű1"35:4063$&4-You may include articles
you've curated via your blog and social media profiles.
t $"--ű50ű"$5*0/ - Invite your readers to click through to learn more,
download an eBook, request a demo, etc.
t $0/5"$5*/'03."5*0/"/%4)"3&#6550/4 - Make it easy for
readers to reach you and to share your content with their colleagues.
"
It's hard to create enough of your own original content to be able to tweet 15-20 times
a day. Having curated content that you can publish helps because it's things that they're
going to be interested in. I think curation can be a really important part of your overall
inbound marketing strategy.
MIKE VOLPE
CMO at HubSpot
"
57
Social Media Channels
Status updates including links to curated content, shared via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
PROS
CONS
• Social media feeds are updated constantly and in
real time. Though people may visit a site or check
their inbox only a few times a day, they are likely to
check their social feeds multiple times throughout
the day. That immediacy makes this channel
particulary well-suited for distributing content that
is time-sensitive.
• The social channel is made for sharing. It's extremely
easy for people to share, retweet, and otherwise
promote your curated content.
• It can take some effort to build up your audience
on a social channel.
• Getting noticed on fast-moving and "noisy" social
channels requires a certain critical mass of content.
If you are unable to post with consistency and a
fairly high frequency, your posts will get lost in the
shuffle.
• As of now, social media does not help articles rank
higher on search engines.
WHEN IS
SOCIAL MEDIA
THE BEST FIT?
•
•
•
When your topic has a sufficient throughput of content.
When you already have an existing or potential audience on social media
channels.
When your content has the potential of being widely shared.
58
CONTENT
TEMPLATE
TIP
TWITTER
Since it can be difficult to squeeze an entire message into
140 characters, we recommend starting a conversation
with your readers by asking a question or voicing a strong
opinion.
FACEBOOK & LINKEDIN
t New Title - Don’t be afraid to edit the title so it’s as relevant as possible to your audience.
t 4VNNBSZ"EEFE$PNNFOUBSZ- Include additional insight, opinion, and/or context.
t "TLB2VFTUJPO - Encourage readers to get involved in the conversation.
t -JOL#BDL - Always include proper attribution.
Curation ROI
"
Quarter over quarter, our site trafic increased between 10-20%, also in turn impacted
our corporate website traffic, which overall, has increased between 18-25% since
implementing the (curation) site (along with the complementary programs we are
running around SEO, etc.)
DONNA PARENT
VP Marketing
Aternity
59
Feeds
Real-time, standardized, automatic content syndication.
PROS
CONS
• Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds give you a
standard way to share content across the Internet
in real time.
• People with RSS readers use them to subscribe to
specific feeds, so this is a more loyal audience who
are usually return visitors.
• Some search engines crawl RSS feeds, providing
the potential for SEO benefits.
• For some audiences, social media has replaced RSS
feeds since social media platforms provide more
room for annotation.
• It's also difficult to annotate your content within a
feed, making it more challenging to add your own
context.
• Most importantly the view provided by a feed
represents only a small window in time, meaning
that your content has a shorter shelf life.
WHEN ARE
FEEDS THE
BEST FIT?
When your audience indicates a strong preference for feeds. For example,
developers tend to cosume a high volume of content via feeds. If your target
audience includes developers, RSS feeds might be the way to go.
60
Embedded Widget
A small pane integrated via code on your existing web properties and used to display content that is
delivered via a feed.
EXAMPLES & METHODS:
• 3M has an In the News widget on career website.
• IBM has an "Around the Web" widget on the IBM Big Data Hub microsite.
• You can also embed a Twitter widget on your site to syndicate content exclusively from your Twitter
Account.
PROS
•
•
Widgets are relatively easy to implement using
Javascript code or by creating an iframe.
You are able to complement original content
with third- party content in an unobtrusive
manner.
CONS
•
•
•
WHEN IS AN
EMBEDDED
WIDGET THE
BEST FIT?
Because they are rendered in Javascript (which
search engines do not recognize), the content
in widgets is almost never indexed by search
engines, so your keyword-rich curated content
does not impact your SEO performance.
Since a widget is only a small component of a
larger site, you still have to worry about keeping
the rest of the page up-to-date manually.
Widgets provide extremely limited real estate
which does not allow for visitor comenting
around the curated content.
When your goal is to touch up your website with some fresh content you may
want to use a widget. For example, if you already have a corporate blog and
are satisfied with visitor traffic, a widget can help you provide some fresh thirdparty content with minimal effort.
61
ANALYZE:
Measure & Optimize
Content curation is the jewel in the
content marketing crown for the
following 3 reasons:
1. Makes you a tastemaker by
providing context to your content and other people’s content.
2. Enables you to find and give
new life to your existing content.
3. Extends your content distribution.
Content curation is Helping a brand showcase its
competence. When you curate you can't fake
true expertise. It shows through. You can only
curate what you really have had the courage to
explore, taste, digest and comprehend. To curate
provides one great opportunity to marketers who
can leverage subject-matter experts in their
niche: to position their brand instantly above all
others by becoming an information hub for
others in that space.
ROBIN GOOD
Top Tools for
Communications
Professionals
HEIDI COHEN
Chief Content O cer
Actionable Marketing
Guide
Curation can position your
company or brand as a definitive source for topics and
trends relevant to your target
audience. Adding in your own
unique angle and thoughts to
curated content can turn it up
. a notch higher and really drive
engagement.
JASON MILLER
Senior Manager,
Content & Social
LinkedIn
Most content marketing strategies rely on the same analytic measures as any other online
marketing campaign such as page views, visitors, and traffic growth. However, content
curation is unique among content marketing strategies because it relies on third-party offsite content. As a result, audience behavior is very different from traditional online marketing
campaigns where all content is consumed within a brand’s online properties.
Let’s take a look at metrics to pay attention to specifically for content curation
initiatives, and just as importantly, misleading metrics that you should ignore as well..
63
Site/Blog
Metrics
•
METRICS TO WATCH
Page Views and Visitor Growth. Similar to any
other content marketing campaign, to see if your site
is garnering a larger audience month over month, you
can simply track traffic growth month over month
in Google Analytics for page views and visitors. As
your site grows both in terms of authority within your
target audience by reputation, and in terms of search
engine optimization (SEO), you should hopefully see
a steady and healthy growth in your traffic numbers.
•
•
Count of Visits measures how many times
are your visitors coming back to your site. If
the content you are curating is useful, your
site will be good at retaining repeat visitors.
•
Days since Last Visit measures how often your
repeat visitors are coming back to your site. If you are
curating valuable content, this metric should reflect
the frequency of your curation and publishing habits.
Frequency & Recency. It’s especially important
to track if your audience is coming back to your site
for curation marketing initiatives. If you are providing
valuable content, then your visitors will keep coming
back to you as a trusted resource for a topic. If not,
your visitors will click off to a third-party article, and
will likely never return again. Either way, the metrics
will reveal this.
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Site/Blog
Metrics
METRICS TO IGNORE
•
Total Site Visits. The most successful curators
focus on a single specific topic for a select
audience. If you are doing a good job curating,
you are likely doing this too. As a result, you
should set your expectation appropriately when
it comes to the total addressable site visitors. If
you have a highly specific topic for a particular
industry niche, even if you have a few hundred
visitors a day, you may be doing a great job.
•
Comments. While commenting on your curated
content should not be ignored entirely, it should
be taken with a grain of salt. It’s naturally for your
readers to comment directly on the original article
where content is written. If your comment count is
low, that may be in fact be alright.
•
Engagement, Bounce Rate & Visit Time.
These tend to measure success of sites extremely
well on sites with large amount of original
content, where users can spend a lot of time
on the site in a single uninterrupted session.
However, with curated sites, the content
consumption dynamics are very different. Visitors
often leave the curated site to view interesting
third-party content, and return again to read more
content. As a curator, you should not be overly
concerned about engagement, bounce rate and
time on site numbers.
65
Email Newsletter
Metrics
METRICS TO WATCH
•
Subscriber
Growth. Assuming you have
a sign up form for your newsletter on your
site, list growth is one of the most important
metrics to watch. A steady growth in subscribes
demonstrates that people visiting your site
find your curated content valuable enough that
•
rate is important to see how valuable your content
is in isolation. If you find that you your audience
is clicking through on your curated content, then
its relevant, timely and valuable. However, on the
flip-side, a low click-through rate can be deceiving.
Many readers may simply get value by skimming
the headlines, even without clicking through.
they want the content pushed to them via email.
•
Click Through Rate. Monitoring your click through
Opt-outs & Unsubscribes. On the flip side, you
should keep an eye on opt-out and unsubscribe rates.
If you find that many of your subscribers are leaving,
there are a couple of things you can do: email them
less often (perhaps change from a daily to weekly
list), segment your list by topic (so the content is
more relevant to them), pay more attention to the
content you are curating (perhaps you are being too
self-promotional), or be more consistent (you may be
curating sporadically which makes you less trusted).
METRICS TO IGNORE
•
Open Rate. While curated newsletters typically
enjoy the highest open-rates, more than lead
nurture, or promotional emails, open rates are often
misleading. Open rates for any email newsletter can
only be computed for readers who click through on
links or disable images in newsletters. So if you see
a 25% open rate, the actual open rate is likely much
higher
66
Social Meida
Metrics
METRICS TO WATCH
•
Followership/Fan Growth. If you are sharing
your content over social channels such as Twitter or
Facebook, a good metric to track is your followership
or fan page growth. While a larger number of
people may be viewing your content as they browse
Twitter, the ones who value your content and want
to continuously receive it will follow you, (or they
may simply be hoping for a follow back).
Feed
Metrics
•
Retweets. Another social media metrics to track
is retweets. While this is a metric for any content
marketer, curators can employ this little trick to
better track the spread of their curation efforts:
when you share a third party articles on Twitter,
retitle the headline of the article. This allows you to
share your perspective, make it more appealing but
also more cleanly track retweets.
METRICS TO WATCH
•
Views, Click-throughs, Subscriptions. To measure the success of a feed,
you will want to see if it's being viewed and if people are subscribing to it.
To track consumption (views, click-throughs) and retention (subscriptions) of
your feed, use feed analytics tools, such as FeedBurner and FeedBlitz.
67
WHAT'S NEXT?
While many of the metrics above are in common with
the usual content marketing metrics, curation does
change things quite a bit by providing a different
content consumption experience. By far, most high
level metrics stay the same, but new curators are often
thrown off by strange and often disturbing looking
metrics such as bounce rates which they should be
ignoring. Hopefully this provides you with a quick
overview of the metrics that work best for
curation.
By using these metrics to assess the
performance of all your content
curation initiatives, you will be able to
rank them in terms of reach, conversion,
and ROI against your specific business
goals.
686
"
The single biggest benefit of curation? Earning a specific market's interest - repeatedly
and consistently - by selecting and presenting the news, stories and ideas that a market
wants to see, based on a refined understanding of what drives them.
RYAN SKINNER
Account Directior
Velocity Partners
"
CURATION OBJECTIVES
RESOLVED
CURATION
OBJECTIVES
RESOLVED
Won't I lose my audience if I send
them to other peoples' content?
A frequent concern among new curators goes something like this: "If I am constantly linking
to third party content, sometimes even my competitors, why would people come back to my
site?" While this is a valid concern, for the uninitiated, there are some straightforward editorial and
technical tactics that increase the rentention rate of your visitors.
From an editorial perspective, if you are consistently delivering value to your readers by curating relevant
content, the majority of your visitors will come to rely on you as a trusted resource and return to your site on
a regular basis.
REAL WORLD EXAMPLE
On the Drudge Report, Matt Drudge offers only links to third party news sites such as Fox
News and CNN. And yet, the Drudge Report has become one of the most visited and highly
influential online publications in the news space. This is because, through consistent,
frequent, and well-done curation, he has earned a position as a trusted source for content
his audience wants. His readers keep coming back to his site because they believe it's the
only way to get all that information in one place. This is exactly the kind of mindset you
hope to create with your readers.
71
CURATION
OBJECTIVES
RESOLVED
Won't I lose my audience if I send
them to other peoples' content?
From a technology perspective, your content curation should offer at least three ways to
keep visitors engaged within your ecosystem:
NEW TAB
VS. SAME TAB
You should be able to configure
settings to pop open a new
browser tab when a visitor clicks
an article headline.
This leaves the original tab,
containing your site, available
to them when they are finished
reading the curated article at its
source site.
However, studies have shown
that opening a new tab can
actually decrease revisits, because
it disables the back button in
browsers.
SHARE BAR
A share bar is a narrow bar that
appears at the top of a thirdparty article when it is accessed
from your site. This bar reminds
the reader that they found the
content via your site and makes
it easy for them to share that
content and/or return to your
site. A share bar can often be
configured to include additional
article recommendations that will
improve your site's "stickiness" by
driving readers back to your site.
CONTENT
RECOMMENDATIONS
Another way to improve site
stickiness is to use a content
recommendation plugin that
appends a list of related articles to
the bottom of each article landing
page on your site. This encourages
visitors to dive deeper into your
site by serving up a continuous
stream of curated content that is
immediately relevant based on
their specific interests.
72
"
BETH KANTER
Social Media Expert
The single best benefit to
content curation to content
marketing is that it helps
build the expertise of
the organization and the
individuals who work there
which in turn builds thought
leadership and can give you
a competitive advantage.
"
"
With the overwhelming
volume of content available,
using a content curation
tool is absolutely essential.
It saves you significant time
and helps you identify the
diamonds in the rough. That
is the great content you
never want to miss out on!
"
IAN CLEARY
Founder
RazorSocial
CURATION
OBJECTIVES
RESOLVED
Is content curation ethical?
Content creation can be perfectly ethical, as long as you abide by the following
best practices:
1
CURATE FROM A WIDE VARIETY OF
SOURCES
Consistently sharing content from the same
one or two sources could put you into an ethical gray
area because you'd be benefitting almost entirely
from the content of one or two authors. This could also
give your readers the impression that you aren't very
knowledgeable about other industry resources. Avoid
these pitfalls by curating content from many different
sources. This exposes your audience to a wider range
of information and ideas and also positions you as an
authority who's widely read and well-rounded.
2
DON'T REPUBLISH THIRD PARTY
CONTENT IN ITS ENTIRETY.
Copy and pasting a whole article from another
site isn't content curation; it's actually piracy if you
don't have the content creator's permission! If you
republish a complete piece, there's no need for your
audience to click through and read the full piece,
which deprives the original content creator of that
traffic. Reproduce only those portions of the headline
or article that are necessary to make your point or to
identify the story. you should be linking to the original
source and providing your own commentary around
any direct quotes you excerpt from the full piece.
The more you link to third parties' original content,
the more likely they are to link back to you, which
ultimately improves your SEO.
74
CURATION
OBJECTIVES
RESOLVED
3
Is content curation ethical?
ATTRIBUTE AND LINK TO THE
ORIGINAL SOURCE.
Clearly attributing the original creator shows
your audience that you value that content and
are curating in an ethical manner. This also gives
respect to the original creator and potentially
sends them traffic, which most content creators
really appreciate. Make sure you're linking to the
original creator, not another curator who has
shared the content just as you are doing.
4
ADD VALUE BY INCLUDING YOUR OWN
POINT OF VIEW.
Instead of simply summarizing or repeating
what the original piece said, take curation a step
further and provide your own context or insights
on the piece. This increases the value your readers
get from your curation, reduces the potential for
ethical issues, and helps your content stand out from
the pack. Make sure that your own commentary
is longer than any sections you excerpt from the
original piece.
75
A FINAL WORD
CONTENT MARKETING IS NOT GOING ANYWHERE
It is the natural evolution of the marketing conversation. Fueled by technologies that give customers
broader, deeper access to information and insights, the path to purchase has expanded far beyond its
old, narrow boundaries. Today, the buyer journey is a wildly twisting path through a veritable jungle of
brand-, industry-, and customer-generated content.
Your job as a maketer is to help prospects find their way through the jungle - hopefully - to your front
door. Your created and curated content gives your prospects a trail to follow. It helps guide them, stepby-step, from Point A to Point B. But, because the path is long and each prospect's journey is unique, your
content has to cover a lot of territory. It has to be there at every fork in the road, or your prospects will
pick up someone else's trail.
CONTENT CURATION GIVES YOU THE ABILITY TO BE IN MORE PLACES MORE OF THE TIME.
It's the efficient way to cover more territory without
having to expend substantial resources. It helps
you meet your customers wherever they are on
their journey and provide exactly the information
and insight they need at that moment. It also
helps you increase your credibility by establishing
your brand as a subject matter expert and industry
thought leader. Done right, content curation
positions you as the go-to resource and trusted
guide for your entire industry. That's a good place
to be.
The most effective marketing is no longer just
about your product or even your customer's needs.
Today's most evolved marketers understand that
their stratedgy needs to include a larger ecosystem
that considers their entire market and industry. We
hope, having read this guide, that you now have
a better understanding of exactly how content
curation helps you do just that.
As with any marketing initiative, content curation
will only succeed if you begin with a strong strategy.
You need to have a clear sense of what you hope
to accomplish and an initial framework for how
you're going to deliver against those goals.
77
Additional Resources
eBook:
Business Blogging
Secrets Revealed
eBook:
The Comprehensive
Guide to Content
Marketing Analytics &
Metrics
eBook:
4 Steps to Content
Marketing
Enlightenment
eBook:
Content Marketing
Done Right:
Ethical Curation
eBook:
5 Steps to Becoming
a Content Curation
Rockstar
LinkedIn Group: Content
Marketing Forum
eBook:
Stop Egocentric
Marketing: Content
Marketing Strategy
eBook:
Content Marketing
Tactics Planner
eBook:
How to Feed the
Content Beast
eBook:
Look Book Content
Curation Case Studies
And more online
at curata.com/
resources
78
Curata
Who are we ?
Curation Software to Fuel Your Content Marketing Engine
A Quick Snapshot
Founded in 2007 in
Cambridge, MA.
Founding team from MIT,
Google, Microsoft.
Content marketing
thought leadership
recognized by Forbes,
Huffington Post,
CMO.com, Content
Marketing Institute,
MarketingProfs, Heidi
Cohen, Joe Chernov and
others.
A few of our customers ...
Checklist: 12 Tips for Content Curation
Tapping into the power of curation to complement your created content.
#2: Did you include only a small portion of the
original content?
Reproduce only those portions of the headline
or article that are necessary to make your point
or to identify the story. Do not reproduce the
story in its entirety.
#3: Is your excerpt too long?
If you are re-posting an excerpt from the
original article, make sure your excerpt only
represents a small portion of the original article.
#4: Is your image thumbnail size?
When sharing images only share a portion of its
original form, such as a thumbnail, unless you
have explicit permission to share the full-size of
the image.
#5: Did you retitle the article you curated?
Retitling curated content means you are no
longer competing for the same title in search
results. You can add your own spin and you
can incorporate keywords that are important to
your organization.
#6: Is your original source clearly identified?
Demonstrating that you have curated content
from a wide variety of sources, and content
from some very reputable sources, makes you
more credible as well.
#7: Is there a clear link back to the original
source?
Linking to the original source may drive
tra c away from you momentarily, but makes
you more credible for identifying relevant
content in other well-known publications.
#8: Is your original source link buried?
Link back to the original article prominently, not
buried all the way down at the end of post.
#9: Does your share bar have a close button?
If you are using a share bar or iFrame, give the
reader an option to close the iFrame or Share
Bar to view the content without it.
#10: Are your no-follows turned o ?
The no-follow attribute on hyperlinks tells
search engines not to give SEO credit to the
site you have linked to. Don’t use no-follows on
your links to the original publisher’s content.
#11: Did you include your own commentary?
Inject a bit of creation in all of your curation
e orts. Add your own voice to your curated
content. (e.g., provide context for the material
you use, add your own insight and/or guidance
for your audience)
#12: Is your annotation longer than the
excerpt?
Make your commentary longer than the excerpt
you are reposting. This is also good for SEO
because it reduces the amount of duplicate
content.
#1: Have you curated from multiple sources?
Check the number of articles that you leverage
from any single source; specifically curating
those articles that are directly relevant to your
audience. Good curation is just that, sorting
and searching through the content to find the
best stu .
5
Curata
What does our software do ?
Curata’s content curation software helps content marketers find, organize,
annotate and share the best 3rd party content to their audience to complement
their own original content on any digital property.
Curata
What are our customers saying about us ?
We started at zero and now at
8,000 to 10,000 page views per
month and growing
approximately 10% each
month.
We leverage Curata as a means for
providing news fodder on our
Facebook and Twitter pages as a
means for driving bi-directional
tra c.
Curata helps me save time... what
used to take me a few hours, I can
do that in a matter of a half hour.
"If I woke up tomorrow without my
Curata platform, I'd be looking to
replace it."
Curata makes me look good.
Get a demo of Curata at
curata.com/demo
We doubled tra c this quarter
over last.
curated two articles in the
newsroom that were immediately
syndicated and picked up by
Google as a news source."
"...we see a 10% growth in page
views per month...
Curata, Inc. is the leading provider of business grade, content curation software that enables
marketers to curate and create the most relevant and highest quality content as part of a
successful content marketing strategy. Best-in-class marekters across a wide range of industries
rely on Curata to quickly find, curate, share and analyze content on specific issues or topics
in order to establish thought leadership, own industry conversations and drive qualified web
traffic. Curata was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
www.curata.com
www.curata.com/blog