You hear that content is king and the latest curations applications and tools allow you to take advantage of the content kings to manage your daily diet of news and information. With the large volumes of content being produced today by everyone from the major networks, businesses and local bloggers and enthusiasts, individuals have a huge amount of content to curate and share with others. RSS readers where the early innovators in curating the constant firehouse of information into our shotglass attention span but they were cumbersome and text heavy.
A few years ago I wrote about how aggregators like NetVibes and Pageflakes were allowing us to create mash up pages in minutes. These tools are great for listening stations and but lack the intelligence that the new generation of curation tools offer. These tools are also driving clicks like never before. These curation tools are helping us fill Facebook and Twitter streams, driving significant traffic volume, making corporate brands take notice. I’ve even noticed how Delicious has updated their interface since the last update a few months ago with the release of stacks.
Scoop.it is a nice tool to gather and distribute content from around the Web based on your interests and passions. Scoop.it creates a page with previews and links to content you “scoop”and has good community tools for following other curators. Most of these sites have the ability to “Re” post content another user has already flagged. Scoop.it has some great B2B curators in specific vertical markets and found it to be good resource to gather industry-specific content.
Marty Smith's "Business Intelligence Revolution" on Scoop.it
Paper.li seems to be the most used of the content curation tools among people I follow on Twitter and probably has the most traffic of any This site has really done the best job of attracting uses and generating links. The aspect of publishing a daily paper based off your articles of interest and giving recognition for the source as a key contributors via Twitter is both annoying and brilliant. Even though I don’t want a daily paper for myself I find myself clicking through to friends papers and enjoying the clean interface. And if you use Paper.li change your title to differentiate the daily tweets other than the typical tweets of “The YOUR NAME HERE Daily is out…”
Phil Buckley's "The 1918 Daily Amalgamation" on Paper.ly
Pinterest is the latest media story as it started popping into the list of sites driving the most traffic on the internet last month. For the most part the initial growth was driven by women using it as a virtual scrapbook for visual items of interest such as clothes, interior design and food. Pintrest is one part bookmarking and one part image gallery with a clean interface that allows you to create a more engaging curation. You can only “pin” images to a board, but the link is preserved to allow for the click thereby driving traffic to the source site. Also other community members can post comments similar to Facebook wall posts threads. Pinterest is different from traditional bookmarking sites like Delicious, Digg and StumbleUpon in that it pins an image, movie or other media object with link to page. However the ability to visually scan designs and rich media content is very nice.
My wife @MCDezigns showed Zite to me and we both love it. Zite not only has the best content for what I’m interested in reading it also has great one-click bookmarking, easy social sharing with flexibility using multiple accounts. I recently downloaded the iPhone app and use it everyday to quickly scan articles of interest and either read or bookmark them to read later in the day. Zite has simple thumbs up/down approval tool similar to Pandora to customize your content. The stream will even draw from your social stream with lesser presence than Flipboard. Zite has a large library of Sections to choose from and they have groomed their content well in terms of quality and frequency.
Flipboard definetly captured everyones attention when iPads first came out. Using simple swipe navigation it offers a great magazine of news and social media content. For social media content I like how photos are previewed in larger sizes and it’s easier to view photos than on your Facebook wall or Twitter stream as well as photos sites like Instagram. The latest release allows for multiple accounts so that you can share on iPad for multiple users as well as new iPhone version.
The latest entry tinto the curation space is Google Currents. Matching the new Google interface design it works best with Google+ but has sharing and bookmarking integration. No doubt that curation and clicks resulting from Google Current users are are going to factor into how the Google ranking juice is made. Currents has a library of major content sites as well as the ability to pull from any RSS feed in your Google Reader. There is also a trending list of links that you can browse that is similar to search results you would see in the “News” result of a Google Search. The clean interface and design is similar to Flipboard and Zite with the ability to simply swipe between pages and topics. What I think Google should have done was skip the redesign of Google Reader and instead migrated it into Currents with a website interface.
The last three tools listed here are only avaiable as a tablet or smartphone app. Scoop.it, Paper.ly and Pinterest all offer websites to create your pages and manage your account. These tools have bookmarklets and other simple tools to tag a page and categorize the content.
What’s your content curation tool of choice?
This infographic from KISSmetrics shows and provides case studies on how online marketing can drive offline sales. It’s a great starting point when working with all types of business, large and small to determine where to start your digital and social media planning to meet business goals.
Click on the graphic below for an enlarged view:
About The Author: Sean Work is the marketing coordinator at KISSmetrics. Follow him on twitter (@seanvwork) and ask him for a free cup of coffee :)
With mobile usage and traffic growing by huge numbers recently there is a rush to create mobile friendly versions of your website. But it does not end there, what about a iPhone or iPad app? What about other smartphones: Droid, Blackberry, etc? Just thinking about it can make your head spin!
I’ve had many discussions with my peers and others about what the best choice is and always come back to the same answer. It’s contingent on your customers both current and present. Here are the questions I find myself asking those seeking advice on mobile marketing.
This week I had the opportunity to sit in with JT Moore @j_t_moore of ASPE ROI @ASPE_ROI for an hour long webinar on Google Analytics. We discussed how to get started with Google Analytics and explained some of its basic features including:
You can listen to the archived webcast online. Drop me a comment if you do and let me know what you liked or thought was missing.
Thanks to JT and everyone as ASPE for inviting me to do the webcast I had a great time.
Last week during the first Monday Night Football game I watched the ad for The Johnny Cash Project on ESPN. I was blown away for two reasons.
I found this DIY Infographic Production by Voltier Creative that both informs and educates on infographic benefits and production. I find infographics like this instrumental in educating novice users about how infographics are more than an educational tool. The section where it talks about SEO, marketing and advertising is great to justify having your graphic designer spend time creating a great infographic. From a project management view, this graphic outlines your major tasks and gives you a roadmap for your project plan.
Created By Voltier Creative
Prior to 2011 the .CO domain was the Internet country code for Colombia. Now it is available to the general public to purchase. It is possible that the .CO extension will be as widely used as .COM due to its similarity and opportunity for global branding.There are several reasons why purchasing a .co for your company and brand names makes sense:Check out http://www.opportunity.co./ and o.co as examples.
This past year has been very exciting, frustrating, fun and challenging all at the same time. After spending several years as a marketing director for Zencos Consulting I found myself at a crossroads about 15 months ago. I decided to take a chance and works as an independent freelancer and did that over the past year. As much as I loved the creativity and freedom I found it to be very challenging in certain areas.
Therefore effective this Monday I will be hanging up my freelance hat and donning a new one at MedThink Communications. I will be a Senior Digital Strategist at MedThink and I am so excited about this opportunity for several reasons. First is that I will be joining a talented team at MedThink. Jeff Hill and Jon Barlow are two of the more talented digital marketing professionals I’ve had the pleasure to meet and now work with.
Second is that MedThink focuses on pharma and healthcare clients. A new field for me and a growing area for digital marketing. After marketing hardware, software and manufacturing for 15+ years I have been wanting to get into a new market and subject matter.
Most importantly, this opportunity allows me to build upon strategy and tactics I’ve learned doing web development, online advertising, social media, analytics, and mobile. I will be able to work with a team of talented professionals in account management, analytics, design, and other areas to develop and implement campaigns that deliver for clients and foster the agency/client relationship.
I want to thank many people who have helped me over the past year in various ways but most importantly by being a good friend including (but not limited to) Angela Hall, Dave Thomas, Shane Johnston, Janet Kennedy, Karen Albritton, Greg Ng, Dan London, Phil Buckley, Chris Moody, Grant Martin, Jeremy Smith, Jason Peck, Geoff Dunkak, David Rose and the entire Triangle AMA board and membership. (Oh by the way , did I mention I start my term as Chapter President for Triangle AMA next month too? Guess I’m a glutton for punishment!)
Also I want to thank Ben Zenick and Joe Costanzo of Zencos. I started working for Zencos as a consultant when they launched the company out of Ben’s living room 10+ years ago, came on full time in 2006 and created, launched and nutured the Zencos and SignalShare brands. I wish them continued success in their business. All my co-workers at Zencos were quite simply, kick ass and I cherish my 6+ years working with them.
A huge hug and thanks to my family, especially my wife, Maura that has been by my side the whole time as well as my two beautiful kids. My brother Sean has been my oracle of wisdom and shining example of how to be a great professional, father, brother and knows exactly what to say and how to say it.
Finally I want to thank all the readers of this blog. You have helped me stay motivated, given me feedback and desire to create great content. As long as you are reading I will keep writing and sharing my experiences in marketing and maybe even add some other content to keep you entertained.
Here’s to a great second half of 2011!
