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Curated Content

Directors Briefing January 2012

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Curated Content

What is curated content?

In essence, curated content is any online content that has been shared through a social network. This element of curation has been picked up and translated into ‘curated hubs’ or websites that display collections of curated content. Some websites hook into social streams to automatically curate content based on a theme or content shared from a group of people. Active Social Network users who regularly share unique, timely and relevant content are often seen as ‘curators’.

Curating content is different to creating content, in that curators are sharing content not creating their own content.

Two examples of curated content sites

Pinterest is currently the hot site for curated content. It is a social network of users connected by existing relationships (e.g. Facebook friends) and or by shared interests. Any users ‘pins’ content they like to their pinboard. Usually the user creates multiple pinboards based on their interests, e.g. one board for infographics, another for interior design ideas. These boards are seen by anoyone following or when the pin is liked or repinned. In essence this is a visual version of likes and retweets on Twitter or likes and shares on Facebook.

Pinterest users can find content either by resharing other pins or using a bookmarklet to pin any content seen on the web. In the main all of the Pinterest content is visual or video in nature.

Pinterest is currently populated by consumer pinning, there is no automated content curation - unlike another example Paper.li

Curated content is a hot topic right now due in part to the growth of Pinterest which has dominated headlines in early February 2012.

If you’re not familiar with Pinterest,it is a social sharing site where you ‘pin’ images and videos that you like to a virtual ‘pinboard’. These pins can are then available for others to view and like or ‘repin’ (share). Pinterest has gained a lot of attention for its own growth but also the traffic [and sales] potential it is offering other websites. Some recent reports have put the traffic driving potential [of Pinterest] above Google+ and other social networks.

We believe Pinterest is an important channel and a great ecxample for the power of curated content for both consumers and brands. We will look specifically at Pinterest for a future briefing. In this Directors Briefing we look at the overall market of curated content, how it works, how brands can harness curated content and what sites or tools can be used to great effect.

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Curated Content

You may have seen Paper.li updates on Twitter. The standard headline appears as ‘The xxx daily is out…’. Paper.li is a smart, automated content curation tool that creates a daily ‘paper’ of curated content. The content is relevant to the user, either by scanning and including content from the users’ Twitter account or by content, identified through keywords.

Every day paper.li creates thousands of ‘papers’ and shares them on Twitter. By including the ‘@’ reference of Twitter users included in the paper, Paper.li encourages visits , retweets and occasional thanks in your Twitter stream without doing any work!

Benefits of Using Curated Content

Consumers, or ‘social network users’ can often grow their audience and standing (authority, reach, influence) by seeking out unique and relevant content to share. This sharing grows the presence and potential reach of a consumers’ social profile without the need for creating unique content. At the very least, retweeting content to their following has a potential value if the networks are not connected. (e.g. retweeting Mashable articles if other followers are not connected to Mashable.

In the main, curating content removes the need to actually ‘create’ unique content in order to achieve social network relevance. The automated solution, like Paper.li turns this into a push button method of growing your social content without doing much

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Curated Content

work. You will find references to curated content in many of the ‘How to become a Twitter Ninja’ or ‘How to grow an audience with only 10 minutes per day’ type of article.

The Relevance of Curated Content to Brands

Curated content has a great opportunity to support brands on social networks. We identify threee different types of curation that will help brands.

1. The consumer curates your content, drives increased social awareness of your content and potential site link benefit.

In simple forms, encouraging your readers and followers to share your content is the first valuable step to gaining benefit from curation.

If the content is good enough to be shared, there is potential for your brand to reach a wider audience. With curated content sites like Paper.li and Scoop.it - there is even wider potential to gain exposure and to generate traffic.

Some of these curated sites also work well for SEO listings. Therefore a listing in Scoop.it may also deliver additional benefit through SEO links on the web.

To succeed with this first point you must ensure creation of good content with easy sharing functions like AddThis buttons or the personalised Like, Tweet and +1 buttons from the major social networks. Don’t be afraid to share your content more than once in the day or in the week to ensure it reaches the maximum possible audience. Paper.li, for example, picks up recent tweets to create their paper. If you have shared content you can benefit from the paper.li and other curating tools.

2. The brand curates relevant content on their social channels.

Content curation has the potential benefit to add content to the daily social updates such as Facebook and Twitter. Look at Twitter.com/flyawwway for an example of how a brand can use curated content to drive tweets and grow followers.

By curating relevant content your brand account adds value to followers by delivering timely and relevant content without just talking about yourself. This removes some of the strain of keeping the channels supplied with fresh content, allowing you to deliver the key messages at the right time and to a more engaged audience than would be achieved with sporadic periods of silence and updates.

By creating a paper.li account @flyawwway also works to share others’ content which in turn brings interests, thanks and additional retweets.

In most cases the curated content is shared on Twitter/Facebook - linking directly to the source. In the case of Flyawwway we wanted to look more about the benefits of “on site” curation could achieve for site traffic. It is our belief that curated content can also help brands grow site traffic by hosting curated content on their own site and using social channels to drive traffic to their own site from which they can pass on curated content.

This approach is effectively what paper.li, scoop.it and others are doing from which they can sell ads.

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Curated Content

3. Curated Content on your site to drive traffic and search indexing

The challenge with much of the curated content is that the SEO value benefits another site, not your own. The other downside for curating content is the additional ‘step’ created between your social audience and site traffic. If a consumer clicks on a link they are taken to the curated page, not directly to your site. The consumer can then potentially click on to your website but the curation has added another step to the conversion process.

With the right tools, the brand website can become the place for content curation. Again look at www.flyawwway.com as an example. This site is almost all curated content.

Using IFTTT.com Flyawwway is updated througout the day with content from Google News, defined by us [all travel content, airline content etc.]

Every update is then shared on Twitter which in turn grows the audience base and the traffic.

Google also likes this content as 50% of our traffic now comes from Google. As we used Google approved content [from its news portal] it is ‘pre defined’ as good content. The frequency of updates only adds to the value assigned by Google to this site.

For other brands curated content could be used to generate traffic to lesser focused parts of the site or to help populate micro sites allowing time to focus on the key content and other selling points of the business or brand.

The combination of frequent content updates plus automated tweeting [and Google+/Facebook] offers the potential for traffic from which to build other strategies.

The Pitfalls of Curated Content for Brands

Brands and indeed consumers have little control over curated content if it is automated. Therefore if you are sharing content that is ‘branded’ you run the risk of assocation - your brand sharing innapropriate content.

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Curated Content

Content Curation Sites & Tools

Paper.liAn online ‘paper’ connected to a Twitter account.

www.paper.li

Scoop.it

Scoop.it is similar to Paper.li but allows only one curator per topic. So you need to pick your topic quickly or use someone else’s. For example, the flights topic may already be curated meaning you cannot benefit directly from those links nor can you choose the sources to curate from.

To embed the Scoop.it data into your site and to brand it yourself will cost from $79 per month. Try the free version before committing.

Pinterest

Pinterest will be the subject of our next briefing. In short Pinterest is a great way of sharing ‘visual’ content from photos to images, infographics etc. By using the ‘pin it’ boomkarklet you can share images from their source website. Pinterest then includes the click through link with the image which in turn has the potential to generate traffic to your site.

IFTTT.com

IFTTT stands for ‘If This then That’. It is still relatively unknown because it is so good! With IFTTT you hook in API’s and create actions.

For Flywwway we check the Google Travel RSS feeds every ten minutes. If there is new articles meeting our criteria we post them to Wordpress. Another task then tweets new blog articles which generates the automated tweets and ‘fire and forget’ site growth.

A nice feature of IFTTT is the recipes, allowing you to share your tasks or to see what other smart tasks have been created form IFTTT.com.

IFTTT.com is still invitation only.

Ask if you need one.

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Curated Content

Summary

Curated content is a hot topic today but has been a valuable marketing tool for some time and will be long after the Pinterest hype dies down.

For brands looking to enhance their social presence or grow site traffic, curated content has the potential to help. Do remember, the pitfalls of connecting your brand to others content, with little control.

Curated Content can help as part of a marketing strategy, not as a marketing strategy alone.