Design, Science and Technology

This piece was posted by Loren Sorenson for Hubspot, I selected it because as she says "If you aren’t prepared for the visual content revolution, you may be left in the dust.

 

Not convinced? Let's take a look at exactly how visual contentis positively contributing to marketing strategies -- it may just give you the push you need

 

"Learn why visual content is a critical part of your content creation strategy.

 

Here are some highlights:

 

**People remember only 20% of what they read

 

**83% of learning is visual

 

Condenses and Explains Large Amounts of Information

 

**Today, there is too much information on the Internet you have about 3 seconds to catch someone’s eyes so they'll consume your information.

 

Gives Your Brand an Identity

 

**Visual content draws people in, letting viewers better understand your brand's identity

 

Drives User Engagement

 

**If you've ever read a book with a child, you probably know they find pictures more interesting than words; but are adults really that different?

 

Selected by Jan Gordon covering "Content Curation, Social Business and Beyond"

 

Read full article here: [http://bit.ly/Ifujbp]

Via janlgordon

I’m sure a lot of you guys have looked into curation software available ...

Obviously with the radically different price points they all do different things, but here’s the gist – a whole lot of this you can do for free.

 

Step One – Define your Parameters

Define your parameters by where you want the goods to go. Make sure everything is accessible from the beginning so you can leverage your curated content efficiently from the start.

Step Two – Choose your Weapons

e.g. Timely.is; G+ and FB

 

Step Three – Be Intentional with your Schedule

I can’t speak to your industry/niche but I can tell you that when I do my curation at somewhere between 6 and 8am EST I find a goldmine of posts that are brand-flipping-new

 

Step Four – Be Crazy Time Sensitive

I make sure to only curate content that is timely [less than 1% of the time curate something more than 24 hours old]

Open up a google search and type in “content marketing” at the beginning of my day, and set it to the last 24 hours.

 

Step Five – Be Consistent

As long as you are curating the same general stuff over and over it will work for you.

Notice: Steps 1-5 are all about the setup or protocol. Steps 6-9 are the actual daily work.

 

Step Six – Prepare for Battle

Open windows to the following places:

Google search
Timely.is
WP dashboard to my curation site
Google +
Facebook
Twitter
I also have a Word document open

 

Step Seven – Get Rolling

e.g. search for the term “content marketing” in the last 24 hours as shown above; grab 5 or 6 posts that are relevant and make tweets about them and put them on timely/buffer/scoopit

 

Step Eight – Natural Overflow

Doing twitter first thing after curation is great, if you have the time.

20-30 minutes after you have your automated posts in place to interact with your feed, clean out the spam tweeps, follow back the real people, etc.

 

Step Nine – Use what you Learn

Use your curation is as the basis for your own blogs

Not regurgitation, but rather letting your new-found knowledge fuel your next post. Or, add to the list of blog ideas you have on a running list somewhere.

 

Setting aside this 45 minutes a day to get the most relevant pieces of content your industry has to offer can not only fill your feeds, but it can also fuel your entire day. And it should, because you should be talking about the latest things in your industry.

 

Great ideas by Amie Marse - http://bit.ly/HfET6B ;

Via maxOz, janlgordon

It's been said that if you want something, go find people who have what you want and ask them how they got it. Margie is a perfect example of someone who is successful, knows how to build community and definitely creates and curates consistent content.

Here's an excerpt from her latest post on curating:

This is what we're doing on scoopit!

I also ask people to let me know what they were reading that they liked. A lot of people took advantage of this opportunity, and when I did my round-ups I would credit those people by saying, “Xyz brought this post to my attention…” This helps you build your community on a lot of different levels, it exposes you to content you might not otherwise have seen, and you get to network with the new bloggers, too. It worked out pretty well for me in terms of teaching me the ropes of the online world.

My advice to you

If you want to get started curating some content, there are lots of different paths you could set your feet on. The most important thing is to make sure you keep it manageable. Like most facets of the online world, curating content can very quickly begin to eat your life. So here is what I would try:

Via janlgordon