F.A.R.E. Content Marketing

5 Practices That Are Working in Social Content Curation

Content curation is becoming a prominent component of individual as well as marketer behavior on the web. There are new tools and new research that demonstrate the growth trend in this practice. But, what content works best across the various channels?

This week in NYC at the NYU Media Talk, social media experts from BuzzFeed, Flipboard, and the Washington Post’s WaPo Labs joined David Carr of the New York Times to talk about what’s working in curating social content.

Devon Glenn, a blogger at the Social Times covered the event and revealed the 5 practices that are working on social content curation:

1. Content Discovery through Social Networks as opposed to search: “Each social network has its own merits. “Twitter is great for traditional beat reporting.” “Facebook favors content with a real emotional core…like cat pictures.”
   
   
2. Content Discovery though APPs as opposed to websites: At Flipboard, “people are starting in apps. They’re not starting in websites.”
   
   
3. Stories That People Can Feel Good About Sharing: “People favor the stories that give them a positive image — a sort of “intellectual jewelry,” said the NY Times’ David Carr.
   
   
4. Numbered Lists and Animals: “No one knows why they work so well, or why certain numbers are more appealing than others, but stories with odd-numbered headlines like “31 animals who have disappointed us” are right up there with good, long-form writing in terms of sharability,” said BuzzFeed’s Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith.
   
   
5. Reddit: “Reddit guards its community and prevents publishers from gaming it,” said Smith, “unlike Digg, which became a bunch of boring links to news articles.” 

So, to get more out of your content curation practice, try these techniques. Have you found other things that are working? What has been the most successful content type or practice for you in your content curation work?

14 June 2012 ·

• Tags
• content marketing
• content curation

3 Insights the Twitter #NASCAR Campaign Reveals to Marketers

Twitter traffic is exploding. Nearly 3 years after the Wall Street Journal announced that it had gone mainstream, Twitter has gone mainstream again. This time on television, with its own Ad campaign to show big Brands how they can use Twitter for a rich, real-time, interactive multi-platform experience with tens of thousands of engaged fans. 

But, it would seem this weekend’s #NASCAR page demonstration, although attended by a top team from Twitter, was also meant to remind smaller businesses and potential advertisers of the value of using the platform to provide compelling content and to target a niche with a #hashtag. 

As Twitter expands its advertising offerings and continues to promote the platform to the masses, its value to content marketers will only increase.

Here are some takeaways I had watching the #NASCAR campaign:

1. Storytelling with images: Some might still be thinking Twitter is just text, and only 140 characters. But that’s far from the case with Twitter’s re-design last December. Photos are featured prominently and provide a real-time view well beyond just the text. So, consider how you might gather images from unique viewpoints and tell a compelling story along with your text.
   
   
2. Content curation: Twitter’s #hashtag pages uses “a combination of algorithms and curation to surface the most interesting Tweets”. That means, Tweets with the most interaction (Re-Tweets, Replies) and those about the most trending topics within the main #hashtag topic will be shown more prominently in the stream. This of course was unique to the #NASCAR event. But, this is only the beginning. There will be more events such as these that businesses can contribute their voice to. 
   
   
3. Twitter is going to increase its push into the mainstream: If the Ads on TV and its partnership with NASCAR (one of the most popular mass media attractions in the U.S.) aren’t evidence enough that Twitter is seeking to grow its audience, then just look at their blog post for this weekend’s event; 
   
   “Anyone watching the Pocono 400 on Sunday — even if you’re not a current Twitter user — can visit twitter.com/#NASCAR watch the race unfold from every angle, and get insider access to all the places the cameras can’t take you.”
   
   Access for non-Twitter users to Twitter content, will continue to grow. How will you take advantage? 

What takeaways did you have? 

11 June 2012 ·

• Tags
• Twitter
• content marketing
• content curation

Pinterest Rival LoveIt Brings the Love to Search and Discovery

Content curation continues to grow along with apps that help us share inspiring content in a beautiful and elegant environment.

LoveIt is the latest app to tap into the trend. According the site:

“LoveIt is a visual, powerful platform for individuals & groups to discover, collect, organize, and share the things they love, in public or private collections”

Visit the site and check it out for yourself, to see how it might fit into your content curation strategy. Determine if your target customer might spend time here interacting with the content you share. 

What do you think? Is this a tool you might beging to use if your customers are there?

7 June 2012 ·

• Tags
• Content Curation
• Pinterest
• Apps
• Social Sharing