Photo credit: Ranga Krishna Tipirneni (Flickr)
A few months ago, my introduction to content curation, which I had shared on this blog and Internet Billboards, got noticed by Robin Good. He promoted my slides on his Scoop.it page and website, with a lovely introduction.
Needless to say that I am really proud of this achievement. Good is one of the best content curators in the world — and I am a huge fan of his work.
Since the highlight, I have received several emails from readers who want to know why I am involved in curation. While I could write a book on the topic, I have chosen to stick to five major reasons for this article.
- Helping others is in my blood - Whenever I come across content that I know will benefit my audience (e.g, an article, infographic, tool, video…), I feel a tingle to the spine. The urge to share does not leave me until I actually do.
- Inspiration is not always there – Finding new ideas for articles on a weekly basis is hard. I am not one to write for the sake of writing, as I believe in quality over quantity. So, why should I keep the good content that I read away from my audience?
- Expertise does not stop at creation - Creative people rarely seek to reinvent the wheel. They take ideas, observe how successfully others have implemented them, and then tweak things accordingly. That is exactly what curators do. They cherry-pick the content, and present it in a way that makes sense to their audience. In the process, they often help authors get noticed more quickly.
- My brand has never been so visible - When I curate content, I always try to provide context and thoughts; I also mention authors on Google+ and Twitter. This has landed me some great recommendations and increased awareness of my work as a result. For example, my Scoop.it magazine (Social Media Tips, News, and Tools) now has more than 7,100 subscribers.
- Caring is of the essence - All the curators I know are selfless individuals. Look at Tom George and Robin Good, for example. You will be hard pressed to find any self-promotional stuff on their social media profiles. They spend their time putting others in the spotlight, especially fellow curators. I do not know a digital community that does a better job of supporting their own.
Are you a curator too? If so, why did you choose to become one?
content curation
This article by Cendrine Marrouat is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
