A Marketing Mix

Are you creating value or noise?

"Il 73% degli attori di mercato afferma che la curation è una parte considerevole del loro mix di attività e quasi la metà  risponde che le loro aziende non trasmettono contenuti per quanto sarebbe necessario non riuscendo a conseguire gli obiettivi di curation che si sono preposti

 recent survey  by Trapit asked 131 US marketers questions about content curation and how it relates to their content marketing strategies. The findings were super interesting, and here are some of the key takeaways (presented via Marketingprofs):

- 74% of marketers say that content curation is an important part of their content strategy.

-60% of marketers say it's difficult to find original content to curate.

- 58% said that their companies need effective content curation in order to say afloat in their industries.

- 57% of marketers said that finding the right kind of content to curate is difficult.

It seems like those who will be the most successful will find a balance between content curation and content creation. With so much information bombarding us every day, the best of the best curators will be those who share curated content that adds the most value for their readers.  Time is such a precious commodity that people want a return on their time so curate and share valuable content. Understand what is valuable for your readers.

Netflix and Amazon understand something most "new to web" catalog merchants don't - information is both means and ends. Online scale depends on information more than money. 

This post is about how Netflix uses their reviews-based User Generated Content engine to disrupt online retailing. Where that disruption will end who knows? The advantage of online scale is, once built, you can point a scaled and increasingly intelligent system at any business vertical and win. 

Amazon will make more money from their cloud services than from book sales soon. Why? Because online scale presents ways to monetize one could only imaging at the beginning of the journey. Netflix's genius use of review curation shows, once again, the value of online scale and of thinking like an Internet marketer instead of print or brick and mortar based retailer....at least online.  

@Martin (Marty) Smith says,"Amazon will make more money from their cloud services than from book sales soon. Why? Because online scale presents ways to monetize one could only imaging at the beginning of the journey. Netflix's genius use of review curation shows, once again, the value of online scale and of thinking like an Internet marketer instead of print or brick and mortar based retailer....at least online."

An eye opener on striking the balance between content and conversion.. The "How-to" list is worth multiple visits.

Robin Good  of Content Curation World breaks the findings down thus:

a) what people curate as relevant is not generally among the top ranked results according to popular metrics. Good stuff is not the same as what is considered normally popular or authoritative stuff.

b) content curation allows a community to synchronize around specific issues and subjects (as anticipated by Clay Shirky)

c) better and more appreciated curation is of the "structured" kind, providing additional info, meta-data and categorization.

d) curators that are highly appreciated are characterized by consistent activity and by a variety of interests (or viewpoints under the same theme) that they are capable to cover.

This is rather my experience; however, I usually explain it to my clients this way:

a) You can be doing an excellent job, but never receive the recognition, popularity, or traffic you deserve.That doesn't mean you won't be appreciated greatly by the smaller group of people who do find/read your curated works.

b) No matter the popularity of your curation, you can build and have conversations -- but remember, community cultivation not only requires additional time, but a different skill set.

c) If you're going to do it, do it well. Use tools, such as labels and tags, and *always* provide context as well as proper credits and links.

d) Consistent activity is nearly as important as showing some personality along with your knowledge. Your topic may be narrowly focused, but offer additional topics and information about you personally (not just professionally) so that people get a sense of you.

A research paper by Zhong, Shah, Sundaravadivelan and Sastry, King's college London, 2013

See the excellent notes from Robin Good below. Interesting to see more work emerging in this field.

Great stuff