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What is content curation? – Semji
Content curation is the practice of selecting, editing, and sharing the most relevant web content for a given query or topic. It improves the visibility of quality content. For curators, it is a way to feed a site with a minimum of spend.
What does content curation really cover? What are the stakes? An overview.
Content curation: the definition
Content curation is a process in which information is gathered, filtered, and presented in an organized, relevant way around a precise theme.
The method involves researching, selecting, ranking, and sharing quality content from different sources: blogs, articles, videos, infographics, or podcasts.
The content curator acts like a museum curator, who selects and organizes the works on display. They sort what is available on the web, chosen for relevance and quality, and present it to their target audience in a structured way.
Content curation complements content creation. The first technique takes less time than the second, but original content often captures more qualified traffic.
Creating your own content also lets you answer your audience’s questions and problems, far from duplicate content. Those pieces help strengthen the company’s brand image.
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How do you do content curation?
Monitoring and collecting information
Content curation means monitoring a given theme and selecting the most relevant pieces. In that work, the choice of sources and the collection of information are decisive.
Those pieces are then sorted and organized before they are made available to a target audience.
In other words, content curation is a human, not robotic, way of monitoring information on one or more given subjects. That monitoring lets you sweep a wider field of information and noticeably improve the relevance of what you share.
There is, however, a distinction between curation and monitoring proper.
Curation is subjective and driven by personal reasons. Whether it is done well or poorly does not really have consequences. The choice of collected information, keywords, and other related elements is subjective, and the action is not of capital importance. The results of a curation are then shared with the public.
Monitoring, by contrast, is a real company strategy, aimed at improving performance. It is rigorous and alert, playing the role of a radar. Its success is very important, even essential, to the company. As for the results, they are shared with few people, mainly the people who commissioned the work.
Content curation: information sorted by theme
The very principle of curation is to sort information by theme. First and foremost, it is an activity of processing information on the web. It answers the stakes of a digital culture on particular subjects. Identifying the theme is therefore a crucial step.
First, the curator should choose a theme that sits inside their area of expertise. That way they can judge the relevance of the information and the quality of the content. Otherwise they make a misstep or stay unproductive. The point is to know how to distinguish the most relevant information on the web from the pieces that add no value. Content curation points toward a better knowledge of digital data.
After the curator’s expertise, you have to consider the public’s interest, and especially that of a given target. That can be a customer base or a set of prospects with shared interests. The theme or subject is built around that shared interest. Even with a precise analysis to run, it should be broad enough to widen the fields of collection.
The advantages of content curation
Content curation lets you select pages for their relevance and the quality of their content. You can then rank them by theme, for convenience, and share them. The advantages of this activity are many, both for the curator and for readers.
The advantages of content curation for the curator
Content curation can sit inside a digital web-marketing strategy for the curator. They collect and share quality information on a theme they know well. Then they share those same pieces with their target audience. The filtering is no longer done by a robot but by a person. That tends to please people and capture a wider attention. Contextualization work lets them put more concise texts in front of their targets.
Another advantage for the curator is sharpening their critical mind while putting a communication strategy in place. For many students and young specialists, it is an excellent way to build skills on a given theme. Knowing how to tell real information from less relevant content, learning more about the field: that is also what content curation offers the person in charge of it. Curation is therefore part of any learning process, both for the curator and for readers.
The advantages of content curation for readers
It is probably for readers that the advantages of content curation are most visible. The activity first offers a real time saving when judging content on the web. Faced with the overabundance of information, it is sometimes hard to find your way and know what to take into account. The readers concerned no longer need to comb through the news to stay informed in their fields. If a piece deserves a closer read, the source is available.
For the sources, they get backlinks that can improve traffic to their page. Those backlinks can be of quality, because a curation page in principle contains only a limited number of sources, and therefore of links. Those links gain value when the curation page itself gains notoriety.
Finally, content curation helps avoid the Filter Bubble, a term for the gaps in algorithms and search engines that focus only on the topics the user already likes, at the expense of other content that is sometimes more relevant. That way of working locks many people into a fairly narrow view of the world, and a lot of enriching content falls through the cracks. Having a person run an expert digital watch lets many people benefit from pieces that algorithms would have dropped.
Content curation: the importance of sources and of relevant information
Identifying the sources
Once the theme and subjects are set, you have to identify the sources. Those sources matter a great deal and should be mentioned in the web content. The notoriety and, above all, the reliability of the sources guarantee the relevance of the pieces. They should also be multiple, so you have enough points of view for the targets to cover the question quickly.
With broader themes, you get a maximum of resources that let you offer quality content. By considering a main theme and related themes, you can collect pieces that are both relevant and diverse. Once collected, sorted, and structured, the content can be shared directly.
To keep a minimum of intellectual honesty, never forget to mention the sources. On top of that, an audience of specialists wants to know the source of each piece before they judge the relevance of the analyses or points of view. Some of them also like to go deeper on the question. In that case, you give them a real opening.
The relevance of the selected content
The content must first of all be relevant. That is the basis of any content-curation strategy. Given information overload and the huge competition that prevails on the web, relevant pieces are what let you earn a place with your targets.
To keep competitors at a distance, do not hesitate to improve the pieces. Content curation does not require that step, but concision and a concentration of information are essential.
In principle, content curation lets you exploit all the potential of the web. That is why the sources should cover every format. They can come from specialized blogs as well as news sites, RSS feeds, online newspaper articles, and various platforms.
The writers of the original pieces can therefore include experts, journalists, promoters, opponents, and other professionals.
Sharing relevant information
After you have defined the theme, the sources, and the added value on the pieces, it is time to share them. You have to take the behavior of your targets into account to make this step work.
In those conditions, it is essential to decide which channels will reach the targets. Do not hesitate to use them if you have identified one or two in particular. You can also bet on a multichannel strategy by connecting them. You can send a catchy summary on social networks or to the professionals concerned, with a link pointing to a web page.
To share relevant information, many tools are particularly well suited. That is the case with Pearltrees (literally “pearl trees”). This online service is entirely free. It lets you keep, organize, and share content found on the web. The pieces can be very diverse: photos, web pages, articles, notes, files, or videos.
Curation on social networks: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn
Content curation on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn is a common practice that lets you share relevant information with your community.
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On Facebook, the curator’s role is to define the page’s editorial line precisely, choose the content to relay, and share it with fans.
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On Instagram, curation accounts are dedicated to a particular theme or a set of keywords, called hashtags.
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On LinkedIn, content curation can help increase your brand’s notoriety by sharing relevant, valuable information with your network.
You can schedule and manage posts on these platforms with tools such as Creator Studio for Facebook and Instagram, or Hootsuite, which lets you follow and organize your social media feeds by network, topic, keywords, and hashtags.
Content curation on these social networks should always respect copyright and mention the source of the original publication.
What monitoring tools are there for curation?
To make content selection easier, several curation tools stand out for their effectiveness and their specificity.
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Feedly is an RSS-feed aggregator that lets you follow the content published by sites or blogs according to your interests.
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Curata is an all-in-one platform that handles research, identification, organization, editing, and publication of content in your field of interest.
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Buzzsumo is a tool that lets you search from a keyword and displays a list of the most shared pieces on the topic.
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Pocket lets you save articles, videos, and other content to consult later.
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Listly helps you create and share lists of content.
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Quora is a question-and-answer platform that can be used for content curation on specific topics.
These tools offer different features, and each person can find the one that best matches their expectations and their curation needs.
Curation in the content-marketing strategy
In a marketing context, content curation is an effective technique for enriching your content strategy. It lets you add value for your audience without necessarily producing original content, and it also improves your visibility and notoriety.
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Curation helps you widen the themes you cover, by treating new problems that are relevant for your audience.
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It lets you position yourself as an expert in a field, by sharing quality pieces selected and organized with care.
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Finally, content curation makes social networks easier to use by offering regular, relevant content to share with your audience.
In practice, curation sits in your marketing strategy as a complement to content creation. It does not replace the production of original pieces, but it offers an alternative for keeping an active, relevant presence online.
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