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To Curate or Not Curate: That is Not the Question

Posted by Cath Pope / in Blog, Content Strategy /

The real question is why are so many old school media outlets hung up about it?

The New York Times isn’t going anywhere (well, the online edition, anyhow). People rely on credible news analysis and confirmation of fact by the Establishment. That’s important.  And media outlets like The New York Times, The Gaurdian and Der Spiegel are in the business of confirming fact. Once it’s confirmed, the blogosphere is in the business of commenting on it. And that’s not bad – that’s good. Journalists who worked hard at college to get a by-line at the New York Times aren’t going anywhere.  For the rest of the journalism graduates, there’s the DIY by-line via WordPress. And plenty of those by-lines are well worth reading (but that’s a different argument).

The beef over content curation strikes me as strange. I live in Australia. I’m flat out spending time on our local Media Establishment sites like The Age to remember to visit the Times or The Guardian. I rely on curators to deliver me the best news and commentary of the day. And that includes my friends via my Facebook newsfeed and Twitter handle, and professional colleagues via my LinkedIn newsfeed. Then there’s Zite and my favourite news app of all time, Pulse News.  There are also websites that produce original and curated content – Daily Beast is a great example of getting the mix right. Yes, when I’m on Pulse, I’m viewing the introduction of the content in Pulse’s browser – which is ad free – but to read the article, I think click-thru to the source, in all its original glory. And if it’s a good story, the original source will get the benefit of hundreds of curators pointing readers in their direction.

Like I have the Times…

Of course, just like good and bad people and good and bad SEO strategies, there is good and bad curation practice. Stealing is not good. Not identifying the source is not good. Pretending it is your own personal wisdom when it’s not, is not good. What is good, is creating your own headline and description pointing to why reading the article in full might be a good idea. For time-poor people dealing with numerous digital interruptions on top of whatever else life is throwing at them, this is a good thing. A good and necessary thing.

Establishment news organisations that get cranky about curation should instead be thankful. I don’t live in New York City where bus shelters remind me to read ‘all the news that’s fit to print’ Or as The New York Times says these days: ‘We Don’t Just Cover it. We are It’. I need to be reminded to click through to an article. If there’s ten articles on Syria as news story of the day, which one should I read?  I rely on recommendations, and in turn, I have my own suggestions on what to read that I enjoy sharing.

Who Gets the Click-Thru?

Everyone wants traffic. Traffic is money.  And the New York Times knows this as much as the next guy. So why is it a big deal when a curator recommends I read an article published on www.nytimes.com , by telling me why in 25 words or less, why this would be a great read, then providing the click-thru to the article on its original site (let’s assume for a moment this exists in a world without pay walls.  Content protected by pay walls generally doesn’t get curated). This is a good thing, right?

The issue of content curation is a non –argument. We’ve been doing it for years anyway, and now there are experts legitimising it for us. I trust my tech curator to bring me the freshest, most important and relevant news and opinion of the day, just like I do with my news curators and art curators.

It makes my digital life a lot easier, and my brain a lot better fed, and the Establishment gets to stay relevant: WIN.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why the Email Newsletter is Back

Posted by Cath Pope / in Blog, Content Strategy / 2 comments

The Email Newsletter is back. Not that it ever went away: you just stopped subscribing to it. And if you were too lazy to do that, you clicked delete or arranged for it to go straight to the junkyard folder. But wait!

The value of electronic email marketing:

What’s changed? Beautifully designed cost-effective templates, a seamless user experience, users’ preference for curated content, third party integration and powerful social analytics packages are just some of the reasons email marketing is back to being a valuable marketing tool for businesses. Let’s also not forget they’re a little value-added package of goodness for clients (the lucky people who signed up for the newsletter).

Email Marketing is more than just open and click-thru rates

User interaction with electronic email is now measured in granular detail. Reporting includes data on who is opening the EDM, what parts of it they’re clicking on, (and what they’re ignoring) who they forwarded it to, whether they marked it as spam, whether it bounced back, who liked it on Facebook, mentioned it on Twitter or shared it on another social network. Some email providers can even show you on a map where the user is located when they open the newsletter– that gives a global perspective on where your subscribers are located and what type of device they are using to engage with your content. Throw in automatic Google Analytics link tagging to easily track your sales and conversions (leads people, leads!) and you’ve got yourself an impressively powerful email marketing tool.

‘Sourcing content to put in an email newsletter is too hard’. That old chestnut.

Wrong! As a business owner it’s your job to provide up-to-date industry-related developments and happenings for clients. That’s called a value-add and it’s a crucial part of any marketing strategy. It gives your clients confidence in their decision to place their business with you in the first place. An email newsletter is also easy for those satisfied clients to share – spreading the word about what you do and how well you do it. For the newsletter to have optimal effect, the content in the newsletter must deliver value. And there is a lot of really valuable content on industry specific topics currently being curated into EDMs (Electronic Direct Mail) and distributed to inboxes by savvy businesses intent on growing their audience and retaining their clients. Thousands of people get really excited when a subscribed to EDM hits their inbox not because they’ll get 80% off a leg wax, but because they’ll learn something about a topic or industry they’re interested in.

Those daily deal emails flooding the inbox has meant email newsletters are back in the bad corner – wrong.

Actually, thanks to those daily deal emails, the contrary is happening. Think of it this way: If you’re flooded by lousy emails, then you know a great one when you see it because quality has a habit of floating to the top. In other words, if the entire crowd is wearing black, you stand out a lot more wearing lime green. Lousy email marketing makes us truly appreciate good email marketing.

Email Marketing is primed for Content Curation

If you’re fans of ours, you’ll know this is a drum we beat as loud and often as we can. And we do it every time someone tells us their story of wanting but not being able to afford to publish high quality content. Again, we stress, online content is reaching saturation point and search, let alone users, just can’t keep up. We need content curators to organize and aggregate all that content  for us. Content curation is cost-effective content marketing that is probably the most up-to-date way of informing users (clients) that we know of and curators will become the big influencers on the internet (but that’s another article). The thing we’re getting at here, is an email newsletter is the perfect format suited to curation of content. And those people who cry ‘but we want to drive traffic to our site, not to someone else’s site/blog/forum’ just don’t get it. If I subscribe to a newsletter that curated a relevant article or blog that a, taught me something b, provided me with a great read or c, introduced me to a valuable resource to follow on Twitter or Facebook or connect with on LinkedIn – then guess what? I’m happy. I got something (knowledge) for free and that might help my business grow or my career progress.

I’ll open an email newsletter like that, any day.

*awesome carrier pidgeon picture by Mako@Flicker.