Let’s get one thing straight first. Incase you didn’t know, brand publishing is a marketing strategy where brands don’t actually treat themselves as advertisers, but as content publishers. But how can the creation and curation of content help your brand publishing campaigns, and is there any value in doing so?
Content means more than your simple blog post. It also encapsulates videos, white papers, newsletters, infographics, social media, podcasts, print publications and interactive visualisations. Of course there are many more, and there is sure to be more which become prevalent as digital marketing matures, which it will.
Forgive me now, but there are plenty of C’s in this blog, and if you find yourself tripping up over yourself trying to understand the differences, these points will be all you need.
- Curation (sourcing and then sharing quality content to the relevant audience)
- Creation (creating blogs or videos from scratch etc)
- Choice (Make the right choices, so that customers choose you)
- Conversions (The point behind all of this, elevating the brand in order to sell)
Utilising all this content correctly and effectively is an important process. Content curation is very much like the role of museum curator. The role is to find the very best, and most interesting content on the internet, before then presenting it in a meaningful way to the correct audience.
A message to CEO’s: don’t get left behind
Here are some thoughts on why brands should listen when brand publishing is proposed to them, as well as an insight into the past, present and future of digital marketing.
Who knows which startup will have been bought out by Facebook in the coming years; will Zuckerberg’s social empire still be populated with likers, pokers and selfie obsessed users? Snapchat was released in September 2011 and as of May 2014, the app’s users were sending over 700 million 10 second or less photos and video every day – just think about how widespread its usage is now, were you even aware of it two years ago?
You see, it’s pretty tricky to predict the future. Money is being thrown into things like native advertising, brand publishing, content creation and content marketing, and if you’re a CEO, you’d be pretty foolish to dismiss the beforementioned digital marketing formats.
Think progressively.
All this reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine about Twitter, where he essentially dismissed it’s usefulness for both business and personal use. But what he fails to see is that it is the modern communications. When the Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson invented the telephone, my friend would have dismissed it as a new fangled invention that in no way could have helped his cause.
Failing to adopt, embrace and essentially misunderstand how the world changes, not just in marketing, but in day to day life, will ensure you’re left behind. If you’re a CEO or MD, you have two choices, either you hop on board the brand publishing bandwagon and start curating content, or you don’t. Here’s one more thought provoking statement before I’ll move onto the major points of this blog post:
“A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You Know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.” – Alvy Singer from the movie Annie Hall.
Don’t let your brand be the dead shark, think content curation.
How can content curation help your brand?
If done properly, content curation can help you:
- Develop brand loyalty
- Increase social and search visibility
- Develop another source of traffic to your website
Listen to marketing experts and what they have to say. But as marketers, we know that it’s not always easy to understand the immediate value of curating quality content, especially when looking at ROI and measurable impact on the bottom line, but the great thing about ‘big data’ is that we now can offer sceptics concrete evidence, either in the form of reports or infographics.
Money talks, but so does content, especially if it is created in such a way where it stands apart from the crowd. And once you’ve sold brand publishing to a client, or have decided to go out on your own with an in house strategy, it is only the start of the hard work.
Let’s be honest, there’s oceans upon oceans of content on the internet, with more being uploaded every single second. So creating or sharing something of real quality which is also perfectly executed will allow your brand to satisfy internet users. But remember you’re targeting individuals who’re looking for instant gratification, with ever decreasing attention spans – which is quite an obstacle i’ll admit.
So by satisfying the intent of those who’re eager to learn, research and entertain, it’s possible to engage positively with users, elevating your status to a ‘thought-leader’. You will then be well on the way to becoming an authority within your sector.
Five types of content curation
Brand publishing isn’t all about your own content, according to the Content Curation Manifesto, there are now five types of content curation:
Aggregation
Aggregating is the act of curating the most relevant information about a particular topic into a single location.
Distillation
Distillation is the act of curating information into a more simplistic format where only the most important or relevant ideas are shared.
Elevation
Elevation refers to curation with a mission of identifying a larger trend or insight from smaller daily musings which are posted online.
Mashups
Different content about a topic merged together to create a fresh and unique perspective on a subject.
Chronology
The form of curation which brings together historical information, organised based on time to show an evolving understanding of a particular topic.
Is the content curator the next social media executive?
Not only is the digital world constantly changing, job roles are also evolving. This is because they need to. With our ever accelerating culture, and with the evolution of the internet (as explained in the opening paragraphs of this blog) there are plenty of jobs which didn’t exist just a few years ago. Here’s a list of ten jobs which didn’t exist a decade ago:
- IOS Developer
- AndroidDeveloper
- ZumbaInstructor
- Social Media Executive
- The Data Scientist
- The UI/UX Designer
- The Big Data Architect
- The Cloud Services Specialist
- The Digital Marketing Specialist
Experts predict that the amount of content on the web will soon be doubling every 72 hours – thats a lot of content. With all of this new stuff being uploaded onto the web, is the content curator set to be another prominent job role which appears upon jobsites?
A content creator, or content marketer has the task of creating engaging digital media, but with so much being produced, how is it possible to make sense of it all? The people who take on the role of discovering which types of content to create, and how to collect and share the best online content will then be known as the curator.
How can content creation improve your brand publishing campaigns?
Brands can learn a lesson from the five types of content curation listed above, and hopefully they will use it to help them not only filter out bad content, but to help them find or create and then distribute valuable content which is then executed to its potential.
Perhaps they will move forward and alter the structure of their agencies, and in the future they could, and probably should include the following roles, maybe some even do already.
- Content Editor (one singular editor)
- Content Distribution (social / content strategist)
- Content Curation
- Content Creation (numerous)
Curation and creation are different, as those working in content creation won’t be able to carve out useful and engaging work if their curator hasn’t worked on a strategy, ensuring that time isn’t wasted. Their strategy might mean simply rehashing old blogs, or retweeting an archived video when a relevant and searchable topic hits the news channels.
By utilising data gathered by a team of data analysts, the data curator can understand what has worked in the past, before choosing a strategy for the future. The Editor and the Curator will work on the tone of voice, while a distribution team will help find key influencers online across the many social media networks.
It isn’t just about your in house publishing powers, many brands take time to share relevant stories across social media which will appeal to their target market. When done correctly, followers will begin to gain value from the stories you share, forming an emotional connection. It works like this:
Find
- Discover the best content (15 minutes 2x daily)
Curate
- Organise annotate and contextualise (30-60 minutes)
Share
- Publish and promote (15 minutes 2x daily)
The secrets to great content curation
We’ve learnt that content curation is the process of sorting through the vast amounts of content on the web, before then presenting it in a meaningful and organised way. It involves sifting, sorting, arranging and publishing information – a content curator will source the best, and most relevant content to share with their community.
If you’d like to find out more about content curation please contact us via Twitter, we’re always on hand to answer your questions. Both our social media and content teams are experts and will more than willing to answer any questions.