Photo: Ally Greer of Scoop.it.

Everyone, Meet Ally

I met Ally during Community Manager Appreciation Day 2014. It was a virtual meeting: Ally moderated a panel discussion (via Google Hangouts) on the topic of " Communities Around Content." A few short weeks later, I had the pleasure of meeting Ally in-person at CMX Summit in San Francisco. Ally helps manage the #Leancontent Meetup in the Bay Area. Check out their Meetup page for further information.

Content Curation Explained

Q: What does “content curation” mean to you?

A: Content curation is the meaningful selection, organization, publishing, and sharing of content based upon a specific topic. Curation is more than just gathering information and sharing it en masse. It involves finding the best content on a certain topic, adding value to it as an expert on that topic, and presenting it in a way that ensures readers will benefit more from reading it than if they were simply given a list of articles.

Content Curation for B2B

Q: How can B2B brands leverage content curation?

A: Content curation is, in my humble opinion, the best way to stay top of mind to your potential customers, as well as your existing audience. When you're relying solely on creation, it's highly unlikely that you'll have enough content to constantly be posting and sharing fresh, relevant information. 

Supplementing this with meaningful curation is an amazing way to exponentially increase the number of times you're posting on social media and providing your clients - current and future - with the relevant information that they need in order to move forward in the buying process.

Q: Name a few B2B brands who are doing content curation well?

Image: Bonitasoft's curated blog, powered by Scoop.it.

A: Bonitasoft is doing a great job with their curated blog. They have a gorgeous introduction and have even used curation to engage with their community by encouraging post suggestions. It's not easy to build community in the B2B space because most of your clients want your solution and nothing more. 

However, connecting over ideas and information is a great way to build relationships. RealChange is also doing a great job of this by sharing information specific to Silicon Valley, where they're located.

Additionally, Modallic, a mobile health marketing agency, uses curation to showcase their knowledge and become a resource for current and potential clients. Once they've established themselves as knowing everything they need to know about the space, they're more likely to be trusted by their future clients.

Using Content Curation

Q: Are there any dangers with doing content curation?

A: There are many ways to do it wrong. Sharing links isn't curation - it doesn't add value and the original author might feel as though the curator is trying to take the lazy way out. Relatedly, not giving proper credit can result in negative reactions from original creators as well as potential legal issues. When done properly - read: adding value and perspective and always giving credit - curation can only help boost your online presence and brand.

Q: What’s the most creative use of content curation that you’ve seen?

Image: the University of San Francisco uses Scoop.it for content curation.

A: I just love what the University of San Francisco is doing with content curation. They have all of their students sharing photos, articles, experiences, etc across all social channels with the hashtag #usfca. Then, a team of curators goes through these posts (brought together in the Scoop.it suggestion engine) and posts the best ones with some context. As a result, they have an awesome, interactive, community-curated page of all the happenings within the USF community.

Measuring the ROI of Content Curation

Q: How can marketers measure the ROI of their content curation efforts?

A: There are many ways curation can have an impact on business goals. In fact, here's a report from a survey we conducted on just that! There are many ways to measure the ROI of content curation, but the first step is to figure out (before you create your curation strategy) what you want to accomplish. 

Photo source: Simon Cunningham on flickr.

If you want lead generation, then you can use curation to build a webpage filled with content that brings in new leads. If your goal is audience engagement, you can use curation to fill your online presence with a consistent stream of relevant content that's appealing to your audience and see which pieces of content garner the most reactions. Curation isn't going to be the answer to all of your business goals, but its impact can certainly be seen as a part of a greater content strategy.

Q: What’s the one thing marketers are NOT doing well in content curation?

A: In my opinion - and there might be a theme starting to form here - most marketers don't fully understand what content curation entails and what's required in order to be a successful curator. There are so many tools out there claiming to be "curation" tools, while they're mostly just aggregators. 

Collecting content and spamming your social channels with it isn't going to be useful in any way (unless your goal is unfollows! :)). Relatedly, a lot of marketers fail to see the benefit of curation because they're seeing others do it incorrectly and think that that's what it is. If I could make marketers aware of one important thing about curation, it would be that you must take the time to add value to the content you're sharing to set a better example for other marketers as well as to achieve success with your business goals.

Miscellaneous Content Curation Topics

Q: Which curators do you follow or subscribe to?

A: Here are some of my favorite curators on Scoop.it.

Image: Some of Ally's favorite curators on Scoop.it.

Q: What’s the future of content curation?

A: Content curation has already begun making the transition from an unclear buzzword to an actual digital marketing strategy. At Scoop.it, we view it as such: 

First, curation was a word only associated with museums and "real life" art collections. Then, around 2011-2012 it started making the rounds as a marketing buzzword that no one actually truly understood, but the important thing that the conversation had begun. 

In 2013, curation was the up-and-coming strategy that the early adopters and experts claimed would be the next big thing and everyone became aware of the fact that it was increasingly necessary. 

Now, 2014 is the year where curation is somewhat mainstream in the marketing world and everyone knows that it's necessary. This year, the question is why. We're past the stage of knowing it's important, and this is the year where the results will start coming through and digital marketers will finally see the value and, eventually, it will be a regular part of content strategy.

Outside of the marketing world, curation is taking over the web in 2014. Think about all of the top websites of today: Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Upworthy, Business Insider. They have one thing in common: they're operating with a healthy mix of original content creation and curation. 

As more and more information is published online (anyone can write a blog post these days!), the ones who succeed and manage not to get lost in all the noise will be the ones that embrace the large amount of content and curate it along with their original content, instead of being intimidated by it and giving up altogether.

About Scoop.it

Q: Tell us a bit about Scoop.it, including your role there?

A: Scoop.it is a platform that allows anyone, from students trying to get into the professional world to consultants to small businesses to large enterprises, to discover, organize, and share ideas that matter to them. If you're sharing content online, chances are you're already a curator and don't even know it. 

Scoop.it provides a content discovery engine to help find the best and most relevant content on your or your brand's topic of expertise, as well as a place to publish this content with your personal insight (value add!) and share it to all of your social networks in one click. 

On the larger scale, Scoop.it is revolutionizing the internal knowledge management processes of large organizations by working with enterprise clients to create private information sharing networks within companies. If you'd like to learn more about that, well that's easy, just ask!

5 Incredibly Valuable Ways Marketers Can Use Branded, Online Communities

By Marisa Peacock

I'm Scoop.it's Director of Community & Content and in this position, I represent three out of the five main use cases of the Scoop.it community. 

1. As a community manager, I lead efforts to maximize customer success and happiness through support, as well as ambassador and advocacy programs within the Scoop.it community and a meetup series beyond our community. I use curation to back up the content of the meetups as well as building advocacy through content. 
2. As content director, I run the Scoop.it blog which is filled with original content created by myself and our team, content from a guest writer program (want to write? Tweet me!) and of course, curated content from our Scoop.it pages.
3. Finally, as social media manager, I share content to build the Scoop.it brand as a thought leader in the content curation space, as well as to engage with our audiences on multiple platforms.