Curation Revolution

I’m seeing more Scoopit links in my Twitter stream and I’m not crazy about it.  Sure it’s quick and easy to share with Scoopit.  But it not quick and easy to consume. For me it's all about the econ...

Marty Note (here is comment I wrote on Dr. V's blog)

Appreciate Bryan’s and Joseph’s comment, but I rarely use Scoop.it as a pass through. More than 90% of the time I’m adding “rich snippets” to content I Scoop.

Rich snippets are “blog” posts that fall between Twitter and the 500 to 1,000 words I would write in Scenttrail Marketing. I often create original content ON Scoop.it because whatever I’m writing falls in the crack between Twitter’s micro blog and what I think of as needing to be on my marketing blog.

I was taught NOT to pass through links on Scoop.it early on by the great curator @Robin Good . Robin has well over 1M views on Scoop.it now and his advice along with the patient advice of other great Scoop.it curators has my profile slouching toward 150,000 views.

Bryan is correct that some curators new to Scoop.it haven’t learned the Robin Good lesson yet. I agree it is frustrating to go to a link and not receive anything of value back, to simply need to click on another link. Curators who pass through links won’t scale, so the Darwinian impact will be they will learn to add value or die out.

For my part I always identify my Scoop.it links, probably about half the content I Tweet and about a quarter of my G+ shares. I also routinely share my favorite “Scoopiteers”, great content curators who taught me valuable lessons such as don’t simply pass through links but add “micro blogging” value via rich snippets.

When you follow or consistently share content from a great curator on Scooop.it you begin to understand HOW they shape the subjects they curate. I know, for example, Robin Good is amazing on new tools. Scoop.it anticipated this learning and built in a feature where I can suggest something to Robin.

This is when Scoop.it is at its most crowdsourcing best because I now have an army of curators who know I like to comment on and share content about design or BI or startups and they (other Scoopiteers) keep an eye out for me. There are several reasons Scoop.it is a “get more with less effort” tool and this crowdsourcing my curation is high on the list.

So, sorry you are sad to see Scoop.it links and understand your frustration. You’ve correctly identified the problem too – some curators don’t know how to use the tool yet. I know it is a lot to ask to wait for the Darwinian learning that will take place over generations, but Scoop.it and the web have “generations” that have the half life of a gnat so trust that the richness of the Scoop.it community will win in the end and “the end” won’t take long.

To my fellow Scoop.it curators we owe Bryan and Joseph thanks for reminding us of what Robin Good taught me – add value or your Scoop.it won’t scale. That lessons is applicable to much more than how we use Scoop.it.

Marty

Added to G+ too
https://plus.google.com/102639884404823294558/posts/TUsNtsAsjWp

Curation Works
Doubt the value of curated content? Have skeptical CFO who doubts the value of "inbound marketing" in general and curation in particular? You may want to introduce your CFO to Robin Good.

Robin is an uber-curator who knows about every cool tool moments after they push live and who speaks, teaches and explains content curation. Robin's Scoopit just reached 1M views. 

Your CFO may say, "Views don't matter, only conversion does". Let's grant your CFO his statement and ask a question. All things being equal do you think conversion increase in some synchronous dance with views? Let's continue to ask what small % your CFO will grant for conversion.

Lets say your CFO says 1%. The law of large numbers says we would rather have 1% of a million than one percent of a smaller number. 1% of 1M is 100,000. Even if what you sell cost a dollar Robin's curation on Scoopit just produced $100,000.

The other discussion for your CFO is to discuss Robin's cost basis. If you publish 1M words with a cost of $.05 a word you will spend $50,000. Even if you have the 50,000 creating that much content isn't always a good idea. 

We've created a new metric at Atlantic BT called Link Efficiency Index or LEI. LEI judges the ratio of content created (pages in Google) to inbound link support. Increasing page counts without social shares (links) lowers LEI and so makes a post Panda and Penguin Google unhappy. 

Curation can increase views, subscribers and conversion without lowering LEI especially when using a tool like Scoopit (if you embed Scoopit inside your stack you may want to keep Google's spider out or LEI can be hurt and dupe content issues may become an issue, an issue easily avoided with robots.txt or rel no follow). 

 Curation, especially when you are as good at is as Robin, generates views, subscribers, engagement and conversion while costing a fraction of the fully weighted cost of creation. Curation also avoids the, "Talk to yourself about yourself," trap 1M words of creation might create. 

Congratulations to uber-curator Robin Good. As I've written this Robin has had 500 views (amazing).