E-Learning-Inclusivo (Mashup)

Notwithstanding the viral content-marketing tam-tam keeps selling the idea of content curation as a miracle-shortcut to work less, produce more content and get all of the benefits that an online publisher would want to have, reality has quite a different shade.

To gain reader's attention trust and interest, it is evidently not enough to pull together a few interesting titles while adding a few lines of introductory text.

Unless your readers are not very interested themselves into the topic you cover, why would they take recomendations from someone who has not even had the time to fully go through his suggested resources?

Superficially picking apparently interesting content from titles or even automatically selecting content for others to read is like recommending movies or music records based on how much you like their trailers or their cover layouts.

Can that be useful beyond attracting some initial extra visibility?

How can one become a trusted information source if one does not thoroughly look and understand at what he is about to recommend?

This is why selling or even thinking the idea of using content curation as a time and money-saver is really non-sense.

Again, for some, this type of light content curation may work in attracting some extra visibility in the short-term, but it will be deleterious in the long one, as serious readers discover gradually that content being suggested has not even been read, let alone being summarized, highlighted or contextualized.

Content curation takes serious time.

A lot more than the one needed to create normal original content.

To curate content you need to:

Find good content, resources and references. Even if you have good tools, the value is in searching where everyone else is not looking. That takes time.

Read, verify and vet each potential resource, by taking the time needed to do this thoroughly.

Make sense of what that resource communicates or represents / offers and be able to synthesize it for non-experts who will read about it.

Synthesize and highlight the value of the chosen resource within the context of your interest area.

Enrich the resource with relevant references, and related links for those that will want to find out more about it.

Credit and attribute sources and contributors.

 Preserve, classify and archive what you want to curate.

Share, distribute, promote the curated work you have produced. Creating it is not enough.

(While it is certainly possible to do a good curation job without doing exactly all of the tasks I have outlined above, I believe that it is ideal to try to do as many as these as possible, as each adds more value to the end result you will create.)

These are many more steps and activities than the ones required to create an original piece of content.

Curation is all about quality, insight and attention to details.

It is not about quantity, speed, saving time, producing more with less.

 Robin Good

Maintaining a steady stream of content that's unique and interesting to your target audience is a challenge. But with a big dose of creativity (and a little help from content idea generators), you can create content that's not only valuable to your market, but also stands out from the sea of information.

44 Fantastic Types of Content
There are tons of options out there for content you can create. Forty four content types are outlined below, so look through the list and see which ones would make a perfect fit in your marketing plan....

Have you ever heard of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? It’s a useful concept for sales and marketing to create better connections and relationships with prospects and clients. Abraham Maslow wrote a paper in 1943, “A Theory of Human Motivation” and subsequent book, Motivation and Personality, where he summarized the 5 needs most people search for. The more basic needs are represented at the bottom of the pyramid.

Contently has applied this concept to content marketing which you can read below. It’s a more strategic approach to creating your content to better connect with readers. I think for each layer, we can add other elements depending on your target market.  How are you or will you incorporate Maslow’s Hierarch of Needs into your content?  

Marty Note
I like Biznology's 3 Tips to increase engagement so much I added a few:

Biznlogy

1. Ask Questions, Respond to Answers

2. Personalize

3. Test ‘Em

Scenttrail
4. Curate Simple (i.e. not mean) controversy.
5. Curate Social Content.
6. Tap Branded Content (manufacturers or gurus).

7. Polls and Surveys.
8. Guest Posts.
9. Ambassadors.
10. Test for Engagement with new KPIs

Controversy
When Moon-Audio.com ask their customers Fostex or Audese? They got headphone lovers to weigh in on what they like about their favorite brands and why. This kind of simple controversy is great for creating online community since it doesn't destroy the "we are in this together" feeling.

Curate
When site sponsors and owners use THEIR content (User Generated Content) that action says, "We listen" more clearly than words. Follow those who follow you on social media and curate their content into your streams, websites and blogs with permission and attribution to increase engagement. Nothing like using what they've shared in a material way to prove the value you place in sharing.

Tap Branded Content
When you use a Seth Godin riff or TED talk you increase authority and authority helps promote engagement.

Polls & Surveys
When in doubt ASK and publish results. We are bench mark seeking machines we humans so always share results and incorporate results into blog posts and website content to reinforce value you place in those who vote (see #5).

Guest Posts
When you ask someone to help out you prove how much you value others. Your community grows when its open to outside influence. Salesforce increased blog traffic by 1,000% when they asked for guest posts. Guest posts have high built in engagement too since the writer is sure to share with his/her social net.

Ambassadors
We are big believers in ASKING FOR HELP. Inside your traffic 1% wants to share high value UGC, 9% will vote and share that content too so find your 10% Ambassadors and ask for their help.

Testing for Engagement
We need new Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that value UGC, shares, likes and links. If your content is creating engagement double down. If not review these 10 tips and test something new. Make sure your "winner" metrics include KPIs that speak to core content marketing and engagement values such as time on site, shares, comments, likes and links.

Content manager and content marketers lives can get a bit hectic. They spend a lot of time identifying what is seen as relevant and valuable content, in relation to their product, with the intent of changing or enhancing consumer behavior.

That is content marketing and the belief of this marketing strategy is that if you help increase the intelligence of your consumer base by putting more information in front of them, valuable information, then they’ll reward you with their business and loyalty.

This often requires long hours of internet research to find what is considered relevant and valuable information that will elevate your target audience, putting together posts that have both great content and great visuals, and doing it on a consistent basis. These are 15 free content marketing tools that will help you deliver that amazing content to keep your customers coming back for more...

Do you want to know what the social media marketing pros are doing today?

Keeping up with the latest social media changes is not always easy, but here you’ll find ideas worth exploring.

We asked 18 social media pros to share the best marketing tactics worth doing today....

Inforgraphic with a step-by-step list of important actions you can take to get your content in front of the eyeballs that matter and generate leads. Social Media, Los Angeles, CA

The influence of search on content beyond Google, Bing and Yahoo is pretty amazing. Just think of all the social media monitoring platforms that have launched – they’re all essentially search engines.

Another category of online tool that relies on search are content discovery tools (just like Google is a content discovery tool).  Except this category of content discovery weights content shared on social media channels more heavily and often provides the ability to organize and flavor search results based on an analysis of what your own social networks are posting and sharing links to.Real-Time content discovery tools are handy for a number of reasons, namely being able to identify upward trending content aligned with topics or entities you are tracking.

The idea is that if you can be part of sharing upward trending content early and even add to the conversation, you can capture the draft of that upward swing in attention – reaching new audiences and better connecting with those you are already engaged with....

Content marketing is about attracting attention. But attracting traffic and attention is getting harder.

Here are some content marketing tips that will help in getting your content shared....

In today’s climate of radical transparency where everything your business says and does is subjected to scrutiny, the most valuable way to attract leads and sales is through education and trust. The vehicle for education and building trust is content marketing.

What Delivering Real Value Means Today
Real value is manifested in the content you inspire, create and publish.

Informative, helpful content that educates your buyer and helps them decide on their purchase.Informed customers make better decisions.Better decisions make happy, loyal customers.Happy, loyal customers are inspired to tell others....

Content marketers teach, engage and persuade with words in a variety of channels. They need a strong grasp of language to write engaging content that stands out in a crowd and positions their company in a positive light. But writing content is not the only thing that a content marketer has to be capable of. Here's the real portrait of a Content Marketer: More than a marketer.

Learn more:

- http://gustmees.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/learn-every-day-a-bit-with-curation/

- https://globaleducationandsocialmedia.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/pkm-personal-professional-knowledge-management/

- http://blog.scoop.it/2011/11/30/lord-of-curation-series-gust-mees/

- http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=Curation

- http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=PKM

- http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=PLN

You can't throw a stone at a marketing conference without hitting someone talking about brand newsrooms. But what does this brand newsroom of the future—this entity that will transform brands from the sloths of the content world to jet-packed cheetahs shooting to the head of the media pack—actually look like?

We ve updated our Ultimate Content Marketing Tools list to include over thirty new tools and several new categories such as localization, digital asset management, web analytics and social media analytics.

Become storytellers: Modern marketing is less about selling and more about creating brand experiences fueled by brand storytelling. You only have about eight seconds to catch consumers’ attention. To make those seconds count, thoroughly investigate your customers.

Some ways to do this: Start with exhaustive persona profiles to build buyer paths from high-level awareness down to purchase so that you’re creating the right types of offers to deliver the appropriate content at every stage of the buying process.

Persona research should include: raw data (surveys, internal sales, and analytics data), interviews with sales and support teams, and discussions with or polls sent to existing customers. Add Interest to Email. Despite news of its demise, email is still a marketing workhorse.

However, businesses must stop the “spray and pray” method in lieu of incorporating smarter strategies driven by automation to get the most out of the medium. Ways to standout in... keep reading