Neil Movold's List: Content Curation

Reading is changing. And arguably, even more than e-readers, tablets, or “readers’ tablets,” smartphones are changing it.

My post about the 3 pillars of content curation elicited some good comments and debate around where self-curation fits within the model that I set out. My thought had been that it went across everything, but (in addition to this) that there was a passive and an active part of each element. The comments helped articulate this a bit more (thank you) and so, taking those points on board, I put together a crude visual (above) and a little more detail (below) to help explain it.

With the unprecedented levels of published information, it is very difficult for Internet users to stay up to date on what matters to them. This situation is especially dramatic for information professionals that must remain aware of new happenings in order to stay ahead of the curve. Content curation is the process of picking the most relevant and valuable content for a specific audience. There is an important human component to content discovery and curation because only users can fully understand the context of the information they are working with. Technology can support content curation by computing large volumes of information on behalf of the user by helping to discover new pieces of Web information.

Content discovery tools can allow Internet users to move away from tedious tasks, such as data aggregation and computation
In attempting to reduce noise, current tools are in danger of preventing unexpected discoveries by filtering out unpopular, unexplored information
Users have several skills that make them unrivaled candidates for content selection
Content discovery tools should provide the data from which the user selects what is relevant. Tools should facilitate the work of users to leverage their abilities and experience to make use of information

Does your nonprofit do content curation as part of its content strategy?  Content curation is the organizing, filtering and “making sense of” information on the web and sharing the very best pieces of content that you’ve cherry picked and shared with your network.   It is a great technique to keep up with your field. 

http://www.bethkanter.org/category/content/

"A talk given to the members of the Content Marketing Association looking at upcoming trends for the coming year in digital content"

"Curation is an active filtering of the web’s infinite content and it may be the most disruptive Internet marketing tactic. Curators do more than simply assign meta value via categorization. Great curators comment and share experience across content, authors and themes.

Great curators such as Robin Good or our host Jan Gordon see patterns others don’t.

I shocked Phil Buckely’s Raleigh SEO Meetup recently by suggesting the optimal ratio of curation to creation may be as high as 90% curation to 10% creation. Creating content is expensive. Curation, by comparison, is much less expensive."

"Joe Pulizzi and 59 other content marketing thought leaders and practitioners offer their best content predictions for 2015. Take a look at predictions from Jay Baer, Michael Brenner, Lee Odden, Kristen Hicks, Pawan Deshpande, Dayna Rothman, Doug Kessler and so many others. Leave a comment with your own content prediction!"

"With the amount of content that is shared on the Internet every minute, it’s no surprise that many people feel overwhelmed by the quantity of information out there. This is why content curation is becoming an essential digital literacy skill for teachers and students. The act of curation requires critical and creative thinking, as decisions are made around what to keep, what to discard and how to connect and present ideas. Social bookmarking tools allow collaboration across the world to share and build collections.

Thankfully, there are plenty of tools available to help us. In this article, I’ll explain firstly the different ways in which I curate, and then describe some of the different tools I use for curation."

"So, content curator “isn’t just someone who can find great “stuff” ,though it is an important skill in process of content curation. A curator is someone who creates a specific experience by using the found objects and contextualizes those objects within a limited space. A curator not only collects and interprets, but houses that work to create unique experiences.”"