The Ultimate Guide to

CONTENTCURATION

2

HOW TO USE THIS GUIDEThis 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. 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.2. WHAT content curation is, and how it fits in the context of the overall content marketing mix.3. HOW you can put content curation to work for your brand including a detailed, step-by- step look at what, when, where, and how to curate effectively.4. 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

TABLEOF CONTENTS

ForewordIntroductionContent Curation: The BasicsStep-by-Step Guide to Content CurationFind

Final WordAdditional Resources

CurateShareAnalyze: Measure & OptimizeCuration Objectives Resolved

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152327424762687678

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Pawan DeshpandeCEO and Founder, Curata

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 content-driven 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.

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.

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.

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?

Share this eBook:

Who is the Buyer 2.0?What Value is Content Curation?

Why Curation - Why Now?

INTRODUCTION:

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TODAY'S BUYER 2.0:An Opportunity for Best-in-Class Marketers

Taking a New and Much More Complex Road to ConversionThe 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?

A

B

7

EnterContentMarketing

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

CEOVertical Measures

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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 top-of-mind awareness and a brand’s position as an industry thought leader. Content curation helps you compete effectively and efficiently, and it provides unique benefits that are critical in today’s market.

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.

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Content Curation is Key to OvercomingFive 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] Source: B2B Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budget and Trends – North Americahttp://www.slideshare.net/mprofs/2015-b2-bresearch-final-39729380

#1 - Producing Engaging Content (54%): Curating 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

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.

The smarter we get, the better our tools

are, the more we can do that in a regular

and ethical and respectful way.

" "

#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 ROHRSExact Target

JAMIE WHALENManager

Content MarketingLion Bridge

My goal is to make sure that I am consistently answering the questions my customers have each and every day. The curation method of finding, organizing and annotating has been one that has served me very well. When you are finding (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 specified field.

The most important benefit 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 firm grasp of the challenges they grapple with daily.

BARRY FELDMANFounder

Feldman Creative

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Content Curation is the Ultimate Way to Boost Credibility and InfluenceWhile many marketers have evolved from a product-focused 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.

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.

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.

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Adding content curation to your content marketing mix also delivers these benefits:

In short, content curation helps you deliver an improved content marketing ROI, lower per-lead costs, greater efficiency and increased credibility.

IMPROVE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: Curated content becomes additional indexable pages that provide more doorways into your site via search engines.

ESTABLISH CREDIBILITY AS A THOUGHT LEADER: Curated content helps you develop go-to web resources that improve your credibility and encourage visitors to trust you as the authority on your topic.

SUPPORT LEAD GENERATION: Curated content drives incremental site visits that increase the potential for landing quality leads.

STREAMLINE LEAD NURTURING: Curated content is easily repurposed via newsletters, emails, and other channels to make lead nurturing simple and consistent.

COMPLEMENT SOCIAL MEDIA AND BLOGGING: Curated content supplements your social media publishing schedule and helps facilitate social media conversations not only with prospects and customers, but also with peers.

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Companies of All Sizes are Tapping Into the Benefits of Content Curation

Green Data Center News by Verne GlobalThe 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.”

Read the full case study.

IBMEven 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.

CONTENT CURATION:The Basics

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QUICK REFRESHER:

What Is Content Curation, Exactly?

"Content curation is when an individual (or team) consistently finds, organizes, annotates and shares the most relevant and highest quality digital content on a specific topic for their target market."

Curata

A person, not simply a computer algorithm.

Added value: perspective,insight, guidance.

Being discerning, discriminative and selective.

Not a one-time event or activity.

A laser focus on your audience.

Curation is . . .

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An Example of Content Curation

1

2

3

4

5

A new title and thumbnail are used to better contextualize the article referred to in this curated blog post.

Annotation: The marketer introduces the reader to the curated post, putting it in context for the reader.

Snippet: A couple of sentences are quoted from the original post.

Insight: The marketer adds their own insight to further contextualize the curated post and add value for the reader.

Clear attribution and link-back as part of ethical curation.

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The Art of Content Curationis 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.

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 thetable.

" "CARLA JOHNSON

PresidentType A Communications

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.

" "DAYNA ROTHMAN

Senior Content Marketing Manager

Marketo

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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 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 - 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.

• Content curation is not content farming, which involves unethically pirating third-party content and publishing high-quantity, low-quality 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).

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Content Curation's Role in the Marketing MixWhat is your [desired] content marketing mix for each type of content?

Created Content

65%

Curated Content

25%

Syndicated Content

10%

0%

Insight/Guidance• Enlightened content marketers strive

to create 65% of their content with the remainder being 25% curated and 10% syndicated.

The Objectives?1. Better leverage resources2. Improve the ideation process3. Better engage buyers through higher

value content

Best-in-class Marketing Mix

65% Created25% Curated

10% Syndicated

Curata's 2014 Content Marketing Tactics PlannerIf you use this graphic, please cite Curata and link to http://bit.ly/CMTactics2014

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BOB MEYERPresident & Co-founder

MPS Connect

“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.”

" "PAM DIDNER

AuthorGlobal Content

Marketing

The biggest benefit 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...'"

" "

STEP-BY-STEP GUIDEto Content Curation

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5 Steps to Successful CurationThere are five primary activities required for developing and maintaining an efficient, effective, and ethical content curation practice:

1 DEVELOP YOUR CURATION STRATEGY: objectives & topics

2 FIND your sources

3 CURATE by organizing and editorializing

4 SHARE via a variety of channels and mediums

5 ANALYZE and optimize yourcontent curation performance

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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. (marketing@curata.com)

Be aware, however, that there are efficient and not-so-efficient ways to curate. While the vast majority (more than 80%) of respondents handle content curation in-house, 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.

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DefineYourObjectives

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:

MARKETINGShare 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.

PUBLISHINGBuild an online

destination that can be

monetized via advertisements

or sponsorships.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENTEducate 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.

FIND

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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.

In the next few pages, we will walk you through a proven, step-by-step process to help you pick a winning topic.

RAND FISHKINFounder

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.

" "

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The 3 Elements of a Perfect Curation TopicThere 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?

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

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:

CompetitorLandscape

AudienceInterest

ContentLandscape

Not relevant totarget audience

Saturated. Toomany audience

Insufficient contentfor curation

1

23

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STEP1

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 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

CAN I CURATE BETTER THAN THEY CAN?

IS THERE A BETTER PERSPECTIVE OR OPPOSING POINT OF VIEW?

CAN I BROADEN OR NARROW MY TOPIC?

Can you make your curation site more attractive to readers by offering greater depth of coverage, relevancy, and/or consistency?

Can you curate the same content from a different angle, highlighting a unique take on the 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?

is most relevant to your audience.

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:

1 23

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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:

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.

Plug your desired topic into Google

News

Sort your results by date to see how many articles are being created per

day or week.Do the same

exercise in Twitter,

Facebook, and LinkedIn

Review blogs that cover your topic,

either consitently or intermittently.

STEP2

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STEP3

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.

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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."

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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.

JAY BAERConvince & Convert

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." "

TODD WHEATLANDAuthor

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 broader than what you could create on your own.

" "

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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.

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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

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

FIND: Discovering & AssessingNew Content Sources

2 ADDITIONAL SOURCES To supplement your regular, go-to references, explore these additional resources for relevant content: 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.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.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.

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Example of Sources Determined for Lenovo

Finding known and relevant sources to your industry is the first step in the curation process.

COMPANY RELEVANT SOURCES

SCOTT ABELThe Content Wrangler

The act of curating starts with research. Therefore, the single biggest benefit 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.

" "

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Fine-Tuning Your SourcesHOW 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.

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PROTIP

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.

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.

""

LEE ODDENCEO

TopRank Online Marketing

" "

CARLOS ABLERLeader, Online Content

Strategy3M

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 audience a ton of time in wading through channels in pursuit of relevance.

CURATE

43

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.

CURATE: Content Selection & Editorialization

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 youshare someone else's ideas and expand upon them with your own, you gain

credibility, share your knowledge and make whatever you curated morevaluable in the process.

" "ARDATH ALBEE

CEO & B2B Marketing Strategist

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Deciding What to Publish

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:

RELEVANTIs 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?

CREDIBLEIs 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?

DIVERSEDoes this content offer an alternative viewpoint (maybe not one that my organization or I agree with, but one that makes the discussion more interesting?)

VALIDATINGDoes the content offer additional insight that validates my point of view?

UNIQUEIs 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?

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 LAMOREAUXWriter/EditorAct-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

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FAQ How Often & When Should I Curate Content?

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.

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.

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

Daily 3 days per week

Weekly Monthly Quarterly or less

Never

% o

f P

art

icip

an

ts

Content Curation Frequency

Best-in-class marketers are

curating at least once a week.

INSIGHT / GUIDANCE:16% of marketers are curating for their audience every day, 48% are curating from third party sources at least once a week.

Leaders curate more frequently to support their own original content and plan to increase curation in the coming years.

Source: Curata's 2014 ContentMarketing Tactics Planner

SHARE:Getting Content in Front

of Your Audience

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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 well-respected publications.

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 SHAREEach 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

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Dedicated SiteA 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.

LISA RHODESVP Sales & Marketing

Verne Global

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." "

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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:

- 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.

- Whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with the original content’s author, you should include: A brief summary of the article (including some context around why you curated it)

from the original article (this is optional, but adds credibility) , opinion, and/or context

- Always include proper attribution. - Questions help contextualize the content and increase reader engagement.

- 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.

" "

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NewslettersOne 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.

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0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Weekly or More often

Monthly Quarterly or Never

% o

f R

esp

on

de

nts

<1,000 1,000 to <10,000 10,000+

39% of the Best Business Bloggers Use Newsletter Promotion at Least Weekly

If you use this graphic or framework, please cite and link to bit.ly/bloggingstudy

How often do you send a newsletter with your

blog content to your subscriber base?

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.

" "CHUCK EBERLEVP Marketing

Connance

PROTIP

of page views #

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Email NewslettersA 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.

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Curated Newsletters

vsCorporate &

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.

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THREE NEWSLETTER TYPES& Why Each is Important

CORPORATENEWSLETTERS

LEAD NURTUREEMAILS

CURATEDNEWSLETTERS

PURPOSE:Keep prospects and customers apprised of your organization's updates.CONTENT:Announcements and press releases regarding your organization. FREQUENCY:Monthly or quarterly.

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.

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 well-curated 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.

DOUG KESSLERFounder

Velocity Partners

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." "

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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.

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A good newsletter template should include the following:NEWSLETTER TEMPLATE TIP - Let your audience know what you're delivering

- This can include blog posts, infographics, webinars, or any other content that your audience will find useful and/or interesting.

-You may include articles you've curated via your blog and social media profiles.

- Invite your readers to click through to learn more, download an eBook, request a demo, etc.

- Make it easy for readers to reach you and to share your content with their colleagues.

MIKE VOLPECMO at HubSpot

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." "

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Social Media ChannelsStatus 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.

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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

New Title - Don’t be afraid to edit the title so it’s as relevant as possible to your audience.- Include additional insight, opinion, and/or context.

- Encourage readers to get involved in the conversation. - Always include proper attribution.

CONTENT TEMPLATE TIP

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 MarketingAternity

Curation ROI

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FeedsReal-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.

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Embedded WidgetA small pane integrated via code on your existing web properties and used to display content that is delivered via a feed.

• 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.

• 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 IS AN

EMBEDDED WIDGET THE

BEST FIT?

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 third-party content with minimal effort.

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 CONS

ANALYZE:Measure & Optimize

. JASON MILLER

Senior Manager, Content & Social

LinkedIn

Curation can position your company or brand as a defini-tive 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.

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 con-tent and other people’s con-tent. 2. Enables you to find and give new life to your existing con-tent.3. Extends your content distri-bution.

HEIDI COHENChief Content O cerActionable Marketing

Guide

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 whocan 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 GOODTop Tools for

Communications Professionals

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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 off-site 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..

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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.

• 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.

• 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.

Site/BlogMetrics

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METRICS TO IGNORE

Site/BlogMetrics

• 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.

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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 they want the content pushed to them via email.

• 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

Email NewsletterMetrics

• Click Through Rate. Monitoring your click through 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.

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Social MeidaMetrics

FeedMetrics

METRICS TO WATCH

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).

• 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.

• 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.

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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.

WHAT'S NEXT?

6

RYAN SKINNERAccount DirectiorVelocity Partners

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." "

CURATION OBJECTIVES RESOLVED

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Won't I lose my audience if I send them to other peoples' content?

CURATIONOBJECTIVESRESOLVED

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.

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Won't I lose my audience if I send them to other peoples' content?

CURATIONOBJECTIVESRESOLVED

From a technology perspective, your content curation should offer at least three ways to keep visitors engaged within your ecosystem:

NEW TABVS. SAME TAB

SHARE BAR CONTENTRECOMMENDATIONS

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.

A share bar is a narrow bar that appears at the top of a third-party 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.

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.

BETH KANTERSocial 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. "

"

IAN CLEARYFounder

RazorSocial

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!

"

"

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Is content curation ethical?CURATION

OBJECTIVESRESOLVED

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.

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.

2

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Is content curation ethical?CURATION

OBJECTIVESRESOLVED

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.

3 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.

4

A FINAL WORDCONTENT 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, step-by-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.

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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.

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.

CONTENT CURATION GIVES YOU THE ABILITY TO BE IN MORE PLACES MORE OF THE TIME.

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.

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Additional Resources

eBook:The Comprehensive

Guide to Content Marketing Analytics &

Metrics

eBook:Business Blogging Secrets Revealed

eBook:Content Marketing

Tactics Planner

eBook:How to Feed the

Content Beast

eBook:Content Marketing

Done Right: Ethical Curation

eBook:5 Steps to Becoming a Content Curation

Rockstar

eBook:4 Steps to Content

Marketing Enlightenment

eBook:Look Book Content

Curation Case Studies

eBook:Stop Egocentric

Marketing: Content Marketing Strategy

LinkedIn Group: Content Marketing Forum

And more onlineat curata.com/

resources

�� 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.

CurataWho are we

A few of our customersA Quick Snapshot ...

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Curation Software to Fuel Your Content Marketing Engine

#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.

Checklist: 12 Tips for Content Curation Tapping into the power of curation to complement your created 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 .

#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.

#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.

#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.

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#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.

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.

CurataWhat does our software do?

�We started at zero and now at 8,000 to 10,000 page views per month and growing approximately 10% each month.��

�We doubled tra�c this quarter over last.��

�Curata makes me look good.��

�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.��

"...we see a 10% growth in page views per month...��

�Curata helps me save time... what used to take me a few hours, I can do that in a matter of a half hour.��

�����%���,#$%�(���� ����&��������(��curated two articles in the newsroom that were immediately syndicated and picked up by Google as a news source."�"If I woke up tomorrow without my

Curata platform, I'd be looking to ,���� #��� %��#�!# �&�%$�% �replace it."�

CurataWhat are our customers saying about us

Get a demo of Curata at curata.com/demo

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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.

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