Well the original title from the Read Write Web is “How Tumblr is changing journalism”. But it doesn’t really matters. I think content curation activites, and related tools for that, already has, or for sure will change, the way we share stories with each other, as information junkies, as journalists. as PR communicators, as people.
A few month ago I wrote a post about “Why Marketers Should Care About Content Curation”. As a matter of fact I didn’t write it. I just curated another post by Derek Edmond from Search Engine Land with a similar headline “Why B2B Search Marketers Should Care About Content Curation”. And he wrote it from a SEO perspective:
“B2B search engine marketers realize new content creation is a critical tactic in an effective SEO strategy. But it is also realized, as illustrated in the Marketingsherpa chart below, the level of effort required to successfully develop new content may be significant, in comparison to other tactics. Therefore, with limited resources and immediate lead generation goals, it is not surprising when we find that new content generation falls behind other SEO initiatives on the priority list. Enter content curation. While not a substitute for new development, content curation can help B2B organizations provide important information to their market.”
Since Google launched the Panda I don’t know If this matters anymore? Because as you might know, Google Panda is the “filter designed by Google to spot low-quality content”, as Catch Pope from the Australien “Curated Content Agency” put it.
If you’re not sure what “low-quality content” is, maybe Amit Singhal, Google’s head of search, explanation on the official Google blog, make sense? He says:
“Below are some questions that one could use to assess the “quality” of a page or an article. These are the kinds of questions we ask ourselves as we write algorithms that attempt to assess site quality. Think of it as our take at encoding what we think our users want.
- Would you trust the information presented in this article?
- Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
- Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
- Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
- Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
- Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
- Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
- Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
- How much quality control is done on content?
- Does the article describe both sides of a story?
- Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
- Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
- Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
- For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
- Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
- Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
- Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
- Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
- Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
- Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
- Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
- Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
- Would users complain when they see pages from this site?”
And as you might see, some of these bullets seems to criticize the curated content; or at least some of the curated content seems to be “low-quality content”. And Google might punish your site for that, seen from a SEO perspective? But… I still think marketers (and others) should care about content curation, because that’s a great way to share interesting stories etc with your stakeholders, the people you care about. And not to forget – it’s not just about sharing, it’s about contribution and reflections as well.
Therefore I was not surprised when Richard MacManus recently wrote the article “How Tumblr is changing journalism” for Read Write Web.
As you might know Tumblr is a super easy and smooth blogging tool, but also a sharing tool, or a content curation tool. Becuase that’s pretty much how people are using it. Tumblr themselves says the tool “lets you effortlessly share anything”.
And I don’t know if the curation trend is one of the reasons why Tumblr, with it’s 12 billion page views per month, just hit knockout on WordPress, which is not a curation tool?
So I think it was just a question of time before the journalists, who are already experts on rewrites, would start using the tool (or others) “to power” their news websites, as Richard MacManus put it.
He mention the Tumblr-powered news service, ShortFormBlog, as an example.
“The concept behind ShortFormBlog is very simple: to publish really short posts throughout the day. The site publishes over 200 posts per week, an average of about 30 per day.”
Pretty successful as far as I know.
So now we’re waiting for the trend to really take off in marketers and PR staff’s newsroom.
As a matter of fact, IBM were using Tumblr when they already in November, 2008, launched the Smarter Planet project to help people grasp IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative. The site “uses frequently updated, “microblogging” entries to illustrate how the Smarter Planet vision is unfolding across IBM and across the world.”
Filed under: Blogs, Citizen journalism, Corporate blogs, Editorial staffs, Google, journalistik, kommunikation, Marketing, Media, Microblogs, New media, News agency, PR, PR 2.0, SEO, seo pr, Social media, Social media newsroom, web 2.0 | Tagged: blog, communication, content, content curation, curation, curation tools, Google, journalism, journalist, Media, panda, PR, SEO, Social media, tool, tumblr | Leave a comment »
Svara på 10 frågor innan du börjar lyssna på sociala webben
År 2010 står för dörren. Och surret på webben ökar i takt med att internetanvändare blir allt fler och allt socialare. Tiden är minst sagt mogen för alla som jobbar med PR- och marknadskommunikation att i någon mening lyssna på vad som sägs.
MyNewsdesk lanserade nyligen ett verktyg för analys av våra kunders närvaro på webben. Detta som ett komplement till den statistik som visar hur många och vilka journalister som bevakar, prenumererar, läser deras information som släpps via MyNewsdesk.
Men inget av detta ger ännu så länge en fullständig bild av vad företagens marknad snackar om i den sociala delen av webben. Här finns en uppsjö olika verktyg som specialiserat sig på denna realtidskommunikation. Tids nog kommer MyNewsdesk med något som även tillgodoser dessa behov. Men tills dess kan ni själv börja med att kolla in denna lista av verktyg och liknande som spetsat in sig på sistnämnda. Listan är ingalunda komplett och inte helt up to date, men en bra start hur som helst.
Innan dess gör man dock klokt i att ställa sig några frågor kring användning av dessa verktyg. Jag snappade upp de här 10 nyckelfrågorna på en av aktörernas bloggar. Check it!
1. What kind of sites do you want to monitor? Are blogs more important or are the comments from Facebook what you are trying to listen to? Many tools are better at certain things, like blogs, forums, or Twitter.
2. What are you trying to monitor? Are you monitoring your brand or are you monitoring a keyword or phrase like “social media monitor”? Some tools will have special features if you are targeting a brand. Other tools are more focused on keyword monitoring.
3. How much money do you want to spend? There are some solid free tools as well as some extensive and expensive tools. How much you want to spend is probably related to the type of features you want as well. Sometimes, the free or cheap tools can help you get started and figure out what you really want to do.
4. What do you expect to get out of monitoring? As many social media people will tell you, you need to know what you are expecting. You can not start monitoring for your brand and expect additional sales to roll in. If you monitor, you need to have a plan of action. In some cases, you may just want to become more engaged with your customers. In other cases, you may be pushing discounts or promotions through social media that you want to track the success of.
5. Do you want basic social media analytics? Social media is quite a wide breadth of sites. There are basic metrics like how many times a specific keyword was mentioned, or maybe how many times a blog post was shared. These metrics can also be segmented by the type of site, i.e. social news or social network, as well as the sites themselves.
6. Do you want to hook into your web analytics? Tracking metrics for social media is only one piece of the puzzle. Even if you tweeted about a discount in your store, and it was retweeted several times, how can you tell that it had any effect? You can make a correlation to your basic web analytics metrics. You could include a campaign code in the URL that you post for a direct correlation to traffic, or you can make a loose correlation by looking at referral sources.
7. Do you want basic or advanced analysis features? Do you want some standard reports or the ability to slice and dice the data in any manner that you see fit? Some of the more advanced tools give you the ability to analyze data in something similar to a Microsoft Excel pivot table. You may also be able to export data to Excel or some other format.
8. Are you doing this work as an agency for other companies or do you have multiple people looking at the data? Some tools expect you to be an individual monitoring something. Other tools are built by marketing agencies for marketing agencies, where you can have a “workspace” for each client. There are options in between as well, where you can monitor up to a specific number of keywords or just allow multiple people access one account. Some tools also have white label or branded services, where you can go to the site and you see your own company’s logo and other branding elements. Typically, the branded services are separate costs in addition to the monitoring fees.
9. Do you want to be able to see mentions and reply to them in one application? Most social media monitoring tools are purely “listen only”. This makes sense given that they are monitoring tools. However, you may be ready to respond quickly to mentions on Twitter or Facebook. To do this, you typically need to use a different application to write your tweets. Some tools are now including some basic writing capabilities.
10. Do you want to create social media campaigns and then look and listen to the results in one application? There is another group of tools that probably fall into the marketing category that allow you to create social media campaigns, send data to the various social media sites and monitor these sites all in one. These tools are much more advanced than simple monitoring, and you can expect to pay more for them. However, some larger brands would really be able to take advantage of such capabilities.
Filed under: Information society, internet, kommunikation, Marketing, Media, Media monitor, Microblogs, PR, PR 2.0, Social media, Social network, Tools, web 2.0 | Tagged: comments, internet, Media monitor, monitor, monitoring, omvärldsbevakning, realtidswebben, Social media, Social network, tool, Tools, verktyg, webben, yacktrack | 2 Comments »