Content Curators and the Challenge with Organizations

Content curation has received increased attention and is a major industry topic among marketers and journalists.  Jeff De Cagna writes “One of the most significant innovation opportunities for associations is content curation that helps their stakeholders make sense, make meaning and make better decisions around their personal and professional challenges.” 

Rohit Bhargave explicates:  “In the near future, experts predict that content on the web will double every 72 hours. The detached analysis of an algorithm will no longer be enough to find what we are looking for. To satisfy the people's hunger for great content on any topic imaginable, there will need to be a new category of individual working online. Someone whose job it is not to create more content, but to make sense of all the content that others are creating. To find the best and most relevant content and bring it forward. The people who choose to take on this role will be known as Content Curators."

The future of the social web will be driven by these Content Curators, who take it upon themselves to collect and share the best content online for others to consume and take on the role of citizen editors, publishing highly valuable compilations of content created by others. In time, these curators will bring more utility and order to the social web. In doing so, they will help to add a voice and point of view to organizations and companies that can connect them with customers - creating an entirely new dialogue based on valued content rather than just brand created marketing messages.

It is quickly becoming obvious that content curation is vitally important for the future of web content publishers.  So just how does content curation fit into your organization?  Have you added a curation component to your content marketing mix?  While pondering the question, you might want to note that a recent survey conducted by content marketing authority Junta42 shows that companies, especially small businesses, for the third straight year, are planning to spend significantly more on their content marketing efforts. 

Robin Good takes the time to write an eight-part guide dedicated to explaining and illustrating what emerging news curators do, what is the difference between them and automatic aggregation, what skills and tools they require and what their future is going to look like. More specifically:

• what real-time news curation is,
• why it is going to be so relevant,
• how it came to be,
• how it is done?
• what tools and skills you need to do it?
• what are the tools and technologies needed?
• which are the existing services and tools?
• which is the ideal news curation system features set?
• what is the future going to look like?

Here is everything you need to know to understand and/or plan on managing information overload and what real-time news curation, is all about. 

Food for thought:  

Curation comes up when search stops working, says author and NYU Professor Clay Shirky. But it’s more than a human-powered filter. Curation comes up when people realize that it isn’t just about information seeking; it’s also about synchronizing a community.