BI Revolution

Excellent Slideshare on the curation and marketing. 

Backing Into Great Content Curation Greatness
Since the goal of every Internet marketing team should be creating a sustainable system of content marketing with an ever increasing return let's agree on a few important curation ideas: 

* Curation creates more reach faster than creation.

* Creation is still important, > than 20% is risky. 
* Curation is never random, strongest clearly themed.

* Scale means you do more with less, so scale = ROI.

* Real time is where the HEAT of content curation lives.

* The more you curate the better at it you become.

The second bullet is ironic. Even gurus I LOVE tire me out when they don't pick up other people's threads or react to mine. "Tire me out" is another way of saying I leave and reduce advocacy. 

This means EVEN if you have resources needed to create 90% and only curate 10% I would NEVER suggest that as a winning strategy. Create more than 20% and you risk "talking to yourself about yourself". I've come to the conclusion that the optimal ratio is 90% curation to 10% creation, but Argyle Social did a somewhat related study that came down 50% creation (promotion of your own stuff) and 50% curation. 

I think promotion is different than either curation or creation, so let's put that study aside for the moment.  

1. Define Your Curation THEME
Note that I use the singular "theme". Any beginning content plan should focus on ONE meme; one idea set, and devote all energy to that single theme. Don't go too broad either. Not Internet Marketing, but Internet Marketing / Email Marketing (if you are @Bronto) or Internet Marketing / New Ecom (if you are @Atlanticbt my employer). 

2. Research Your Theme's Ecosystem - Picking Gurus 
Who are the gurus of your theme? How social are these gurus? Do they respond when use @GURU? Pick a mix bag of 5 gurus to follow with 3 in the "approachable" camp and 2 in the uber-guru camp (pick the two with either the biggest following or that are most aligned to your thinking or both). 

3. Create A Content Map For Your Theme

Use the 10% creation and 90% curation rule to guide what kind of content you create and put where. Creation is best on OWNED properties. Curation moves easily between OWNED and SHARED (social nets). Don't only do ONE or the other tactic exclusively on one platform. Mix it up. Create short blog posts that are hybrid curation. Create themed Tweets that are almost like a blog post in 20 tweets. Others would tell you to use a blog to do X and a tweet to do Y. I disagree, surprise and serendipity keeps your content marketing alive. 

4. Create A Schedule, Stick To It
Leave 20% of your plan for "response", but do create s publishable schedule of daily, weekly or monthly features. Schedules = TRUST and you can never have enough trust. If you miss a scheduled date explain why and, "Dog ate my homework," is not a good excuse. 

5. Schedule Reviews & Summary Presentations
Watch 5 Key Performance indicators every single day of the MACRO (traffic) and MICRO (forms completed by Google visitors on keyword X) variety. Schedule a quarterly review with senior management since that too creates trust and makes you SMARTER due to the preparation and questions you will need to answer. 

6. Practice, Practice and Practice More
How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, Practice, Practice. The old cliché is true. Yes it will take getting used to the idea your "practice" is seen by OTHERS, but get used to it. I use Scoop.it as my practice field. I allow for a higher degree of errors (WHEN is Scoop.it going to add spell check for God's sake :) and stumbles because Scoop.it is about FEEDBACK and SPEED in our ecosystem. 

When something looks PRIME TIME on Scoop.it I tighten down the bolts (i.e. hire my great editor) and increase the investment. I move a longer and more keyword dense take to our owned properties such as our blog or website.

Our process doesn't have to be yours since there are infinite variations on the curation theme. The important idea is to curate a LOT of content daily, define a platform that is your "practice field" and always increase the speed of curation while reducing errors and increasing shares (what you are curating for).  

BTW, learned these tips from GREAT curators such as @RobinGood and @maxOz and others I listed on Google Plus: 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/102639884404823294558/posts/MzpAzkLAFfx 

Link is to an excellent Guillaume post linked to another great curation post. 

Creation Is Hard
I love that line from this great Scoop by Massimo Facchinetti. This post is a great companion to my ScentTrail Social Mentions Study (just posted to Curation Revolution http://sco.lt/6UD0W9).

I shocked my friend @1918's SEO Meetup recently by suggesting the best ratio of content curation to creation is 90% curation to 10% creation. There was an audible gasp in the room.

I explained that curation has greater reach. For every minute of creation you get 3x as much out of using that same minute to curate. I create a lot of content, but, as my companion post proves, even I don't generate as much content as the daily mentions @ScentTrail receives.

Content gets shared. Here's the rub and the BIG reason my ratio is set to 90% curation - your are statically more likely to get shares with curated content. Since shares are a content marketing CSF (Critical Success Factor) and what we are playing for curation wins.

Why? I used to work for direct marketing catalogers (when I was a Director of Ecommerce). They taught me to always double down on winners and let losers go. Curation allows you to select content THAT IS ALREADY WINNING.

When I write something I'm betting it will be shared. When I see a great post by Brian Yanish (@MarketingHits), Robin Good (@RobinGood) or Michele Smorgon (@Maxoz) I know their extensive networks of supporters means high shares are likely. With a tool like Scoop.it I can also see the shares.

The irony is I hardly EVER look at existing shares to decide what content to share. I think in terms of WHO first. I have a group of about 50 friends I trust and I have a group of about 5 topics that are near and dear to me. When a friend shares something cool in one of my 5 interest areas I share it.

I agree with this post. Even if you can't CREATE you can CURATE. Even if you CAN create you SHOULD CURATE :). M