Beth’s Blog

What Can Nonprofits Learn from Robin Good, the Best Content Curator on the Planet?

Here are my slides and curated resources materials for a talk called “What Can Nonprofits Learn from Robin Good,  the Best Content Curator on the Planet?” that I will be presenting at the Social Media for Nonprofits.   This area, content curation, is a social media competency that I’m focusing  in my own learning and teaching.  One of the best ways to learn is the study, observe, or interview the experts.   That’s why I invited Robin Good to skype into my session.

Last week, in preparation for this talk,  I had a skype call with   Robin Good, one of the best content curators on the planet.   He  will join me via skype  from Italy for an interview and discussion.    I recorded the above skype interview as a technology back up – it is filled with great advice and worth listening to for 14 minutes.   (If you’re short on time,  I have a transcript linked to resources here)

The session will begin with a simple primer about content curation, the benefits, and a few examples of nonprofit content curators and their tools.   Then, if all works well, I will bring in Robin for a discussion.  If not, we’ll roll the video.  Either way,  you’ll learn a lot!

What is Content Curation?

Content curation is the organizing, filtering and making sense of information on the web and sharing the very best content with your network.   If you think about what a museum curator does, it is very similar.  The museum curator does research, is an expert in the artistic style,  selects the best examples, puts them together in an exhibit, provides important context with the annotation on the labels, and so on.    Not too long ago content curators used to be called journalists!

I like the metaphor of a sommelier,   They know the grapes, the winemaker and their techniques, and vintages.  They taste many wines to find the best of the best to match with the food in the restaurant.  They can answer questions about the wine to help diners navigate a wine list to make the best choice.    The content curator does this as well, although with information.

One reason content curation is becoming more and more appreciated because of the huge amount of information available on the web.   There’s some much of it that it is now measured in exabytes which is equal to a quintillion bytes.    The creation and sharing of content on social media and social networks is contributing to this information overload.   The average user on Facebook shares/creates 90 pieces of content a month.    With over 800 million global users on Facebook, if you do the math – that’s  a lot of information!

We can’t blame it all on the amount of information.   The problem is our  information consumption — we’re indulging too much at the buffet called the web.   We need to go on an information diet.    And guest what? Mindful consumption of information is at the heart of content curation practice.

Benefits for Nonprofits

There are benefits for both nonprofit organizations and the people who work for them.

• Improve staff expertise:  It used to be that we could be trained to do our work and we wouldn’t need to update and synthesize new information on a daily basis.   That’s less true.   One 21 century work place literacy is sense-making of information together and alone.
• Improve Thought Leadership:  If your organization is curating content on a particular topic, it can help with branding your organization as thought leaders in the space.
• Content curation forms the base of your content strategy pyramid.  It’s about curation, creativity, and coordination across channels.   Your content strategy is essential to the success of an integrated social media strategy.
• Content curation can help increase the shelf-life of your content – it gives it an extra half life.

A Simple Method For Getting Started

I’m a huge fan of Harold Jarche’s “Seek, Sense, Share” model.   I’ve written a lot about how nonprofits without a lot of time or money  might apply this easily to content curation to get started.

A Few Good Starter Tools

Robin suggests that you need two sets of tools: discovery and curation tools.  The discovery tools help you discover the best stuff through the use of RSS feeds and persistent search.  (You also have to know your sources!).  The second set, curation tools, help you organize and present your collection.   Robin has tested hundreds of tools – from free to enterprise level.   He kindly put together two mind maps with links to tools that are free and easy to get started with.   You”ll find them linked here.

The Practice

I will ask Robin some questions about his practice as an expert content curation to see what we can learn.    Here’s two resources I put together.  One is a collection of selected articles, slide decks, and interviews with Robin Good.   The other is a collection of content curation for nonprofit resources that I have to used to develop workshops and trainings.

Is your nonprofit doing content curation?   Let me know in the comments.

What Comes First, Content Creation or Curation?

Flickr Photo by Carissa Marie

This is definitely not a chicken and egg question!   A debate in content marketing circles is whether or not you should simply focus on creating original content and forget content curation.   Let’s be clear as my fellow content curator, Jan Gordon, says:  There is no curation without original content.

I might qualify this a bit by saying, there is no curation with awesomely addictive social content!  And that means creating content – blog posts, tweets, Facebook updates, YouTube Videos – that is valuable and high quality.   Not sure if you have awesomely addictive content?   Noland Hoshino recently pointed to this excellent checklist from the Content Marketing Institute.

But, remember don’t think content creation vs curation or as  is an either/or.  It is a both/and.

I might also add:  There is not social content creation with content curation.     Content curation, the process of seeking and making sense of the best content on your topic or issue from other content creators,  can be the foundation of a content strategy.   It can not only help you create original content, but also helps you builds your audience or network.

There are many other benefits to content curation – it can help build your staff expertise in a topic area, build thought leadership,  reduce mindless information consumption, and inspire  high quality original content.     While content creation and content curation are two different activities, requiring different skill sets,  there are a couple of places where they overlap.

Curated Content Formats

We know that content curation is much more than slapping together links or engaging in “push button” sharing with your circle of friends.   Professional content curation is making sense of the topic by researching what’s out there.  I like to think of content curation is going the library to research sources for your term paper!

This post from Social Examiner called:  26 Tips for Writing Great Blog Content is an excellent example of a blog post that is curated from many resources.     I’m being a little ironic pointing out an example that includes lots of excellent resources and links to how to create awesomely addictive content for your blog.    If your organization is writing a blog,  this post is worth 30 minutes of your time to sit down and to explore with your team.  You’ll come away with some very useful tips for taking your blog content to the next level, from the technical stuff like SEO to getting into the writing zone.    (There’s a very simple and useful blog editorial template)

Newsjacking

A big hat tip to Nancy Schwartz for curating on Pinterest this blog post from Kivi Leroux Miller summarizing David Meerman Scott’s e-book on Newsjacking which is well worth the $6.99.      Newsjacking is piggy-backing on timely news or Meerman points out “the second paragraph of a news story.”    It is done by creating original content that takes advantage of timely events that are getting mainstream media attention and providing your organization’s view or take on the topic and sharing it with your audience, including journalists.

Now, this is exactly what one does with curation on a day-to-day basis.   Once you discover related content, you describe giving it your point of view or relating it back to your organization’s programs.   A good curator will do with content that is not, at first glance, related to their subject (This skill is called “Transdisciplinarity,” or  ability to understand and translate concepts across multiple disciplines)

Kivi suggests making Newsjacking part of your staff meetings – because you have to be agile to be able to pounce on the news.  Leveraging current events as part of your content strategy – either by curating or creating original content – can also help your get more attention, but provide useful content for your network.

How are you creating awesomely addictive content for your organization’s strategy?   Is content curation or newsjacking part of your strategy?

Best Practices for Content Curation for Nonprofits at Social Media for Nonprofits Conference

On January 30th, I’m speaking at the Social Media for Nonprofits in New York City. (You can get a discount of $20 off the registration by entering the code “Beth” when you sign up although the discount only works on the more expensive tickets).    This year, since content curation, is a social media competency that I’m focusing  in my own learning and teaching , I’ll be doing a conversational presentation on the topic.   Robin Good, one of the best content curators on the planet, will join me via skype  from Italy.   In preparation,  I’m doing a pre-recorded skype interview with Robin as a back up for a live interview.   As is my presenting style, this will be an interactive session.

Here’s why I think content curation, especially the practice, is very important for us to embrace in the nonprofit sector:

On an individual practice level, with more and more information being shared and published on the web,  the act of content curation can actually reduce our information overload.       I believe that sense-making both individually and in collaborative contexts at work or networked projects will be the key to navigating the digital information landscape and finding relevant content efficiently in the future.

I also think that 2012 will be the year of content curation.   It is becoming an essential component of your social and communications strategy, and we’ve already see  content curation deliver results on a number of levels as Shel Holtz points out and master curator Jan Gordon summarizes.   Content curation can provide visibility, but before you can reap results you have identify the opportunity — a campaign, announcement of a new program, or release of policy information –  to curate news and information around your topic.   Also, you need, as Jan Gordon points out in the skype video interview, to know the audience’s content consumption patterns and interests.

Once you have a strategy plan in place, the next step is to select your curator.    This may or may not be your social media manager or staff person.  They should know the topic area, but also understand practice of curation.   The secret to good curation is the selection of the best and most relevant material.  A curator needs to have superb social media monitoring and listening skills — that means knowing the right keywords on the topic and sources, agility with “aggregator” tools, and the daily discipline of foraging for the best content and evaluating your finds before sharing.   A content curator should never share something they have not actually read and thought about.   The practice of curation is being able to sift through daily whirlwind of tweets, blog posts, and other content streams quickly in order to pick the right pieces that create an accurate view of the subject matter.

Moreover, adding context is another curation skill.  Now that you have shifted through all this material, and selected the best.  What’s the context that you an share to help your audience understand it better. Content curation also includes engaging with your audience around the content shared, but adding value.    For example, commenting is about adding context or furthering the understanding of the topic or asking audience to contribute their knowledge to the conversation.

In an age of push-button sharing with tools like Pinterest, content curation is more than pushing a button!   It isn’t quickly slapping links together.  This issue has been a hot topic amongst master curators like Jan Gordon,  Robin Good, and Howard Rheingold.

Robin Good recently curated this excellent piece about the difference between content curation and aggregation with this  post by Ryan Skinner.  The two big takeaways for nonprofits who want to incorporate content curation into their strategy:

• More than a link: This is the era of frictionless sharing, goddammit. Friction is a demonstration of care. Anyone can send a link. If you’re going to curate and share, add something. Some insight. Commentary. But no more than necessary.
• Slap asses: If you’re going to curate someone’s content, you owe it to yourself and to them to be open about it. Preferably, it’s someone you follow and share comments with. And be sure to give them credit.

Jan Gordon points out why content curators need to be highly selective in what they share with the audiences.     She points us to this curated post from Stanford about using more care with the Twitter Retweet Button (the best example of what we mean by “push button sharing”).   Curation is more than sharing a link or putting together a link list.  It requires attention to detail and delivering value.

Now that curation tools, like Pinterest, are becoming more popular for nonprofits, good curation practice is more important than ever.    As I watch nonprofits embrace these tools enthusiastically, I feel it is important for us all to grasp what good curation is and use best practices – if we want get results.

The best way to learn these skills is study how the experts work.  So, with a little help from my colleagues on making video skype interviews,  I reached out master curator Jan Gordon.

Jan Gordon curates Content Curation, Social Business, and Beyond at Scoop.It.   I have been following her fpr six months. She curates several topics at Scoop.It, including her newly added “Pinterest Watch.” I have learned a lot of about the techniques of good curation just from observing her practice. If you browse through her collection, you’ll notice that she does just not aggregate links, but reads each one, adds commentary, and changes the headlines so it provides relevance for her audience.  She also acknowledges the original source as well as the work of other curators.

Jan practices what she preaches about engaging with your audience about the content your curate.  Here’s a great example of the dialogue that accompanies great curation on this article by master curator, Robin Good, “What Makes A Content Curator Great?”

Q: If you are just starting out, what is your recommendation for beginners?

Tell the right the story with content you are collecting so that you audience finds it relevant or places of connection. You need a deep understanding of what content meets their needs.

Understand your audiences content consumption habits – where they look for information, what format they want, and when. Know how to share in those areas.

Q: What is your best time saving tip?

Best time saving tip is to find the best aggregation tool (a tool that searches the web based on keywords and pulls in the content that you’re looking for). Bundlepost is my perferred aggregation tool. It is very important because you could spend your entire day searching for content in the wrong places. You want to find the good stuff quickly and aggregation tools help. You want to spend your time sharing your content when your audience is in the process of consuming it. It is also important to spend time engaging with your audience arond the content so they better understand the context. Curation tools like Scoop.It and others help you do that.

Is your nonprofit embracing content curation as part of its content strategy?    Are you using best practices or are just slapping links together?