The “why” is simple. There’s just too much unfiltered real-time data floating around. In his article for Fast Company, “Content Curators Are The New Superheros Of The Web,” Steve Rosenbaum, CEO of Magnify.net and author of Curation Nation, praises those who take it upon themselves to become content curators and gives us some numbers to ponder:

Yesterday, 250 million photos were uploaded to Facebook, 864,000 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube, and 294 BILLION emails were sent. And that’s not counting all the check-ins, friend requests, Yelp reviews and Amazon posts, and pins on Pinterest. [...]

And while algorithms have gotten better at detecting spam, they aren’t keeping up with the massive tide of real-time data.

In 2010 we frolicked, Googled, waded, and drowned in 1.2 zettabytes of digital bits and bytes. A year later volume was on an exponential growth curve toward 1.8 zettabytes. (A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes; that’s a 1 with 21 zeros trailing behind it.)

What is content curation? In another article, this time for Mashable, Rosenbaum defines content curation as “a combination of finding great content and following some simple best practices on how to successfully share that content.”

Beth Kanter, an expert on nonprofits and social media, likens content curation to curating an art exhibit. She writes on her blog:

Content curation is the process of sorting through the vast amounts of content on the web and presenting it in a meaningful and organized way around a specific theme. The work  involves sifting, sorting, arranging, and publishing information. A content curator cherry picks the best content that is important and relevant to share with their community.

Kanter’s big three cornerstones are “The Three S’s:  Seek, Sense, Share.” Rosenbaum’s tips somewhat echo those:

1. Be Part of the Content Ecosystem [...] not just a re-packager of it. [...] Created, contributed, and collected — the three ‘c’s is a strong content mix that has a measurable impact.

2. Follow a Schedule. Make sure to post at the same time each week.

3. Embrace Multiple Platforms. Today content consumers get their information on the platform of their choosing. That means you should consider posting short bursts on Tumblr, images on Pinterest, video on YouTube, and community conversations on Facebook.

4. Engage and Participate. Make sure you’re giving back by reading others and commenting on their posts.

5. Share. Don’t Steal. Take the time to give attribution, links back, and credit.

Speaking of stealing, Rosenbaum stresses that content curation is, of course, more involved than pushing a share button; and sharing online content also has its set of solid parameters that distinguishes it from stealing. Proper attribution, for instance, is crucial, including obtaining permission for the images or only using the copyright-permissible ones.

Rosenbaum suggests looking at these starting points:

1.  If you don’t add context, or opinion, or voice and simply lift content, it’s stealing.

2.  If you don’t provide attribution, and a link back to the source, it’s stealing.

3.  If you take a large portion of the original content, it’s stealing.

4.  If someone asks you not to curate their material, and you don’t respect that request, it’s stealing.

5.  Respect published rights. If images don’t allow creative commons use, reach out to the image creator — don’t just grab it and ask questions later.

Gianluca Fiorelli breaks down content curation into five basic types on SEOmoz. Check out his post for some specific examples and a list of tools, but here’s the rundown:

1.   Aggregation, which consists in curating the most relevant content about a topic into one single location. This is the most common way of curating content, and it is at the base of the majority of the content curation services actually present online;

2. Distillation, which purpose is to distill the overall noise about a topic to its most important and relevant concept. The best cases of social content curation can be catalogued into this definition;

3. Elevation, when curators draft a more general trend or insight from a mass of daily musings;

4. Mashups, or to merge different content about a topic creating a new original point of view of the same;

5. Chronology, which could be defined as historiographical content curation. Usually it consists in presenting a timeline of curated information to show the evolution of a particular topic.

Looks like the business world is taking note of the amazing growth of companies like Pinterest, moving to adopt content curation as a mainstream practice. According to Curata’s “2012 Content Curation Adoption Survey” results, “95 percent of marketers had curated content in the past six months. Of those respondents that indicated they had not knowingly curated in the past six months, 100 percent of them had, by sharing an article, blog post or other content with a prospect or customer.”

The survey also found that “more marketers cited finding high quality content as their greatest content marketing challenge compared to 2011 (30 percent increase), and three-quarters (75 percent) of marketers indicated that having the time to do it was the biggest challenge.”

According to the MarketWatch press release:

Curata recently found [...] that websites that are curated on a daily basis receive 18 percent more click-thru activity than those curated on a weekly basis. Curators understand the value of timely content, and today almost half (45 percent) of them indicated that they share content on a daily basis. This represents an 18 percent increase over the 2011 Content Curation Adoption Survey.

Other interesting findings included:

• Establishing or improving thought leadership continues to be a primary objective of content curation: 8 percent more marketers cited it as their primary objective than a year ago.
• Social media is a preferred channel for both finding and sharing online content: 79 percent of marketers cited social media as their favored method for finding third-party content, and 76 percent responded that social media was their top choice for sharing content.
• Resources are being dedicated to content curation: 50 percent of marketers indicated that there were one or more people at their organization dedicated to curating shared content.
• Three quarters of marketers who identify themselves as content curators dedicate up to 25 percent of their marketing budgets to content curation.

It would be interesting to see how the “rules” and best practices of content curation evolve in a year or two, and what tools will come out on top.

Image of Flash is by mondi (Ramos Alejandro), used under its Creative Commons license.
Content curation graph by Cambodia4kids.org (Beth Kanter), used under its Creative Commons license.

That’s where the bumps in the road manifest themselves. Part of that growth recently has been Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, the hugely popular, smartphone-based photosharing app. Zuckerberg and company paid a cool $300 million in cash for Instagram, along with 23 million shares of Facebook common stock. (Anyone care to guess at the potential value of those shares if it does go public as planned?)

That raised red flags with the feds. Sources at the Financial Times have reported that a federal investigation of the deal is underway, citing potential anti-trust issues. Somini Sengupta takes note on The New York Times Bits blog that investigations like this are often triggered solely by the amount of money involved:

The Federal Trade Commission always investigates acquisitions of over $66 million, which is a number tied to inflation. (Hat tip to my colleague in Washington, Ed Wyatt, for pointing that out.) The agency has 30 days to conduct an initial review to make sure the deal does not break anti-competition laws. Some deals are picked for closer scrutiny. It isn’t yet clear whether this deal was.

Still, as Sengupta points out, an anti-trust case could take the stance that Facebook is limiting the market by purchasing a potential competitor. If Instagram’s phenomenal growth continued independently, there would have been a distinct possibility it could have driven advertising costs down. Deals that look like they will reduce competition also raise a read flag with FTC.

Venture Beat‘s Jolie O’Dell points out the fees Facebook will have to pay if the merger is not sanctioned:

If the FTC doesn’t green-light the deal, Facebook will pay out a $200 million breakup fee, as stipulated in the social network’s amended S-1 filing.

Facebook’s Instagram acquisition was expected to close in the second quarter of the year; an FTC probe could, but may not necessarily, delay the deal’s closing. We have not yet heard if the FTC’s questioning will have any impact on Facebook’s IPO timing.

I have to say, if the deal does not go through, it’s really Instagram that will lose out. Not because I think Facebook should own Instagram, but because the potential revenue represented by the shares on the table could dwarf the amount of hard cash involved.

It the Financial Times is correct, the deal won’t be that much of a worry. The publication states that experts expect the deal to eventually get approval. It’s also a safe bet that it will do little to dampen interest in the forthcoming stocks, not with the wild frenzy of interest surrounding it.

Image by trompevenlo, used under its Creative Commons license.

Everyone knows about the radical shift: Producing and distributing content is no longer the dominion of large, well-funded players. Today anyone with Internet access can produce and distribute content.

Two years ago I wrote about how content marketing is the exclusive tactic used to promote George Bowers Grocery, the specialty grocery/cafe/beer garden my husband and I own. Content is the key driver of our marketing initiative.

The freedom to create this “new currency” is exhilarating to business owners. Not just for small business owners, but for large corporations. Yet, confusion exists.

What content? How much? How frequently? Where, how, and why?

Blogging Remains Cornerstone

Chad Pollitt, Director of Inbound Marketing at Kuno Creative, recently released the “Content Marketing Manifesto,” a document that does a great job of explaining key content marketing concepts. Notably, he shows how one tactic — increased blogging — can dramatically increase the volume of Web traffic, social shares, and leads.

Easy, right?

Well, the world is awash with blogs! Simply blogging isn’t a magical, golden ticket once the writer hits Spell Check+Save. So what process makes results like the ones demonstrated in the “Content Marketing Manifesto” possible?

Team-Driven Blogging Necessary; Even Better Results

SixEstate has developed an effective system we call Newsblogging. Newsblogging is a collaborative process between journalist, editor, and search specialist that synthesizes original investigative reporting in a timely fashion for the sake of transparency and integrity, which doubly creates favorable search results and ongoing thought leadership credibility.

SixEstate clients can vouch for the numerous, positive effects regular blogging has on the bottom line when a company follows the industry news curve. Our clients have experienced similar, dramatic results. The benefits of regular blogging include but are not limited to: building credibility, establishing a firm thought leadership position, and enjoying widespread search visibility with the release of timely content.

Let’s not forget the additional benefits, either. Exhibit A: an increased number of leads blogging brings, as demonstrated in the “Manifesto”!

Kuno’s “Content Marketing Manifesto” brings to mind an earlier video produced by the U.K.-based Idio Platform. Using the same title, the video elegantly and effectively uses visual design to demonstrate content marketing principles.

The video may be momentarily jarring until you realize what’s going on… This is apt to those concerned with marketing a business today: It’s jarring when the old methods do not work, but exciting to understand how things have changed and what appropriate action to take.

Consistent, quality blogging is just one custom-content tactic that works. Today’s businesses should be investing in content because each piece adds value to the last. Content, after all, is the new currency.

Image by Kuno Creative, used under Fair Use: Reporting.

“Content may reign supreme on the Web, but the formatting of that content comes in a very close second,” according to Business Insider. “After all, if a user can’t process your information because of display or readability problems, it doesn’t matter how great it is. They still can’t read it.”

Indeed, as Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, demonstrates for Business 2 Community on a number of print and digital content marketing examples that have impressed him, a wealth of images, readability, and interactivity should be top priority.

A fitness mag, Experience Life, scores high points, for instance, because it builds a brand both online and in print, successfully blending its content across all platforms. Zappos ZN digital magazine integrates stories with reviews, and illustrates “content-to-commerce” concept successfully by offering to purchase directly from the iPad. An ice-cream company Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams is giving away recipes, and a high-end wine retailer LCBO distributes its magazine, VINTAGES, as a digital book.

Extending branding, as Heidi Cohen calls it in her “13 Content Marketing Steps” article on ClickZ, requires understanding that content marketing at the very least calls for “a human voice, photographs, and video.” Cohen says:

Present your content to get attention. Remember your content is fighting for consumers’ most scarce resource — time! Therefore, it has to stand out. This translates to writing killer headlines they can’t resist reading, magnetic photographs, especially of people, that draw them in, and bulleted, easy-to-scan information. [...]

While content marketing may not be as sexy as other forms of marketing, it breaks through today’s message-filled clutter because it lacks the buy, buy, buy of other marketing options.

While it may seem like a no-brainer — create irresistible, attention-grabbing, visually rich content, and consumers will come — there are ways to go about it and trends to heed.

Great Design Is the Future of Content Marketing

In his article for Mashable, titled “Why Great Design Is the Future of Content Marketing,” Chuck Longanecker stresses what he refers to as the “importance of visual storytelling,” pointing out that the “beautification of the Web” is here. Services like Facebook Timeline, Instagram, Pinterest, and the increasing popularity of mobile browsing are “forcing brands to think and act more visually,” he says.

In this light, Longanecker explores the 2012 visual trends that he thinks should be affecting the businesses’ content marking plans. Let’s take a look:

Apps and Their Intuitive Design

Companies like Microsoft, Facebook, and Google have taken note that “good design is good for business,” and are not just buying technology but also hiring designers to create “experiences.” Other popular and growing services, such as Flipboard, Path, Clear, and, again, Instagram, have put “strategic emphasis on the intuitive design,” notes Longanecker.

Special Effects

Users spend more time browsing on their tablets and smartphones, says Longanecker, rendering desktop navigation “archaic.”

Longanecker says:

This shift has led to a new crop of slick web designs that feature more complex interactions and visual effects, thanks to technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3.

For example, we’re seeing more interactive buttons, sliding and fading visual elements, parallax experiences on scrolling sites, and even elements of augmented reality.

Responsive Web Design

Instead of creating one site for desktop viewing and another for mobile browsing, businesses can use responsive design and adjust it “based on the viewer’s screen of choice,” says Longanecker. “For example, desktop browsers may get the full experience, while mobile users may see more ‘task-oriented’ content and minimal design.”

Minimalism

Longanecker reminds us how sites like Tumblr, Simple, and Square all feature user-friendly, “Google-esque” minimalism that inspires user loyalty because of its simplicity and respect for the customer’s time. Virtually page-free, slide-based sites and cloud-based storage services like Dropbox are all the rage.

Finally, Longanecker says:

The beautification of the web is also good news for startups. The old web was based on design standards born in the newspaper and magazine industries. Today, we’re in the midst of a renaissance that puts the online and mobile experiences first.

Image by Andy Mangold, used under its Creative Commons license.

Anyone who uses Google News is aware of the frustration you can feel at the seemingly haphazard array of results. Realtime presents you the long sought-after chronological view of a topic’s coverage. Press the button, and you get a screen where all the coverage of that topic appears, with the most recent at the top. (Needless to say, you do need to be quick if you’re looking at something that is trending. The items can scroll by pretty quickly in those circumstances.)

Another visual cue to what I consider to be one of the most important changes is the “Google+ Discussion” column on the left. If you’re logged into Google, your profile icon appears next to a text field that allows you to post the article and your thoughts directly to Google+. In addition, the G+ comments on the piece seem to be displayed beneath that form field.

Google’s News Blog describes it as follows:

Many news stories inspire vibrant discussions on Google+, and today we’re starting to add this content to both the News homepage, and the realtime coverage pages. This way you can see what your circles, journalists covering the story and notables like politicians or others who are the subjects of stories have to say about breaking news, and even contribute to the discussion directly from Google News.

A much tighter integration of news and social has arrived. Those of you who have not seen it yet should catch up with us over the next week as the guys at Google roll it out. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see how this tight integration flies with users.

It is easy to envision the creation of virtual “rabbit holes” as social signals gain weight, users descending deeper and deeper in echo chambers of self-reinforcing data rather than being exposed to the entirety of what the Web has to offer. This is where the Realtime aspect becomes important. Since it is based on publication time and date rather than other factors, it guarantees a wide range of data and views. Incidentally, I would have loved to have seen Realtime in action when Forbes managed to prank Google into giving a joke headline status.

Despite the many people who continually write about Google+ being dead or dying (an opinion I personally disagree with), it continues to grow. As I predicted a few months ago, it is slowly integrating with everything else Google has, making its ubiquity more assured each day.

Have you seen it yet? If so, what do you think? Is it an improvement, a distraction, or something else entirely? For myself, I think it’s too bad they can do this and yet I still cannot access my Google pages on the Google iPhone app.

Image by adamjonfuller (Adam Fuller), used under its Creative Commons license.

Outsourcing for “cost saving”

Tan quotes Nishith Arora, chairman of MPS Limited, who notes that in publishing, copyediting is often outsourced to the English-speaking countries like India.

Arora says:

Processes such as reviewing, proofreading, and proof correction go electronic — and, in some cases, online — for greater accuracy and faster turnaround. Delays caused by authors traveling have become a non-issue…

Indeed, the publishing process as we knew it consisted of quite a few steps, now eliminated by entities like Amazon that make self-publishing if not attractive, then at least doable. As Jon Evans notes in TechCrunch, the simplified “publishing pipeline” looked like this:

author — editor — copyeditor — designer — typesetter — printer — distributor — wholesaler — bookstore/library — reader

[...] Today, the absence of copyediting, design, typesetting, and above all, editing, means that will be one seriously amateur-hour book.

The recent news about publishers laying off their editors, designers, and copyeditors prove Evans right. Just last week, The Denver Post announced its plan to lay off two-thirds of its copyeditors by the end of this month as part of its “newsroom restructuring.” Michael Roberts, who has covered this development, notes that the move “prompted plenty of discussion about the state of journalism today.”

For instance, a reader named “Damocles” says:

One could argue that not only does raising revenue balance the equation as well, it makes for a more likely survival of the entity in question. When the price of oil rises, for instance, Exxon Mobil doesn’t dilute its gasoline with water; it raises the price of its product to a level that covers costs *and* allows for a healthy net.

if you produce content, you need a copyeditor

We’ve written several times about the virtues of copyediting. Basically, if you produce content, even if it’s online-only, you need a copyeditor. A spell-checker isn’t enough. Everyone is cutting corners these days, so your copyeditor can also multitask. For example, at SixEstate, I also blog, and I optimize the posts I edit.

Spell-check isn’t enough

In his blog post, “Spelling still counts, but not as much as that,” on the You Don’t Say blog at The Baltimore Sun, John E. McIntyre reacts to the news that the journalism school at the University of North Carolina has dropped the spelling portion from its spelling-and-grammar test, replacing it with a word-usage section. McIntyre is OK with that, unlike “the journalism-isn’t-what-it used-to-be crowd,” but he does point out:

Today, any writer who does not make use of electronic spell-checking to detect misspellings, typos, and inconsistencies in proper names is a fool. And any writer who is not aware of the limitations of spell-check is doubly a fool.

Just like every other part of the publishing process, copyediting has come a long way, evolving with the times. At SixEstate, we mostly adhere to the AP style, but we’ve also strayed from it from time to time, to keep up with the modern use of language, when we’ve felt that AP wasn’t quick enough to change its rules. Sometimes, I Google the word or phrase in question, and the version with the most entries wins.

Language evolves

McIntyre, who always has a few things to say about AP, proposes to ignore the rules, the AP-sanctioned ones included:

I suggest that you ought to ignore rules that have no point. Give the stylebook editors something to see. The risks are minimal. Yes, some unenlightened editor may change things back. [...] Be bold, brave, and resolute. What you have to gain is your self-respect in wielding the language vigorously…

Kate Dailey at the BBC News Magazine asks whether the meanings of words that the language warriors consider improper are still “destined to take over.” She interviews George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, who says that “the rules are, there are no rules,” and that language purists need to cut their losses at some point and back off:

Don’t let someone misusing a word ruin your day. These ideas of rules came about in the 19th Century, when there were rich people who wanted to know how to talk better and other people who decided they wanted to make money teaching them.

Dailey says:

Though it’s useful to have understood definitions for clarity’s sake, if the masses decide that a word has a common meaning, that’s what the word means — no matter what the elite say…

Clarity, consistency, flexibility — these three aspects are important to today’s copyeditor. Beyond that, there’s always Google.

Image by Nic’s events (Nic McPhee), used under its Creative Commons license.

It’s a latecomer to the field, arriving in the wake of YouSendIt and Dropbox, among other cloud storage solutions. (Transparency note: I’m an avid Dropbox user and have already set up my Google Drive account.) Now that Google Drive is here, more attention is being paid to cloud storage, particularly the usage rights of the data stored.

Lets take a look at some pertinent parts of the Google Terms of Service:

• “Some of our Services allow you to submit content.” — It’s an obvious reference to Google Drive and its predecessor, Google Docs.
• “You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.” — A fairly straightforward statement meaning that Google won’t usurp your IP.
• Then there is the troublesome part: “When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.”

Let’s take a look at that last statement. In plain English, it states that Google, and any entity it approves, can basically do anything it wants with your content other than pass it off as theirs. This broad wording means that they have the right not only to collect general info — how many documents are stored, what file types, etc. — but also to potentially collect data about the content of those files.

Dino Londis of Byte points out another issue: Google’s reputation for pulling the rug out from under some users. He also points out that most people would be satisfied with a paid alternative, if it kept their data and demographics private:

Google Drive creates a new relationship with users. As a service provider, Google should be my advocate, but a profile of me can be built from my data and sold to advertisers like it is with Gmail. A paid service should exclude users from this. I’ve already seen some tools to encrypt files on Drive, but they’re clunky and can’t be used with Google Docs.

Finally, Google is notorious for deactivating accounts it finds objectionable. Users have lost years of training videos on YouTube, Google Docs, email, contacts. Users who upload media to Google servers do so at their own risk. See its Community Standards page, where ‘violation of these standards may result in the removal of your profile or deletion of your Google Account.’ What if they find your files objectionable? With so many competitors out there, working with Google might not be worth the risk.

Honestly, the latter is most worrisome to me. Potential for abuse exists within any social or hosted service, but these sort of terms are standard these days. As a matter of fact, the disturbing paragraph quoted above is part of blanket terms of service that have applied to Gmail, Google Docs, and Google’s other services since last March.

Michael Liedtke of Brisbane Times is one of the few journalists who look at this side of things:

Google says the language is actually standard legalese that gives the company the licensing rights it needs to deliver on services that users’ request.

The way Google keeps documents in its data centres requires the company to obtain a license to ‘host, store (and) reproduce’ the files. If, say, a screenwriter in China uses Google’s services to collaborate on a movie script written in Mandarin with a script editor in Hollywood who only reads English, Google needs the rights for ‘translations, adaptations or other changes’ to allow the two writers to work on the document in different languages and make revisions.

But it’s not just online collaboration that requires obtaining these rights, something as simple as watching a YouTube video would need this sort of release as well. Liedtke says:

Even everyday occurrences such as someone watching a video or pulling up a text file at an internet cafe requires Google to retain permission to ‘publicly perform’ or ‘publicly display’ such content.

That doesn’t mean Google will take a screenwriter’s work-in-progress and produce a movie from it, the company says.

Since I’m a privacy advocate, my own immediate reaction was one of displeasure, but as an Internet pro, I concede the reality of these strictures, if we are to adhere to contemporary copyright laws. I agree with the Electronic Frontier Foundation intellectual property lawyer Corynne McSherry, who stated that the wording of Google’s licensing requirements are “an artifact of copyright laws that no longer work in our modern world rather than any evil intent on Google’s part.”

One of the things we need to retool for the digital age is our treatment of copyright. Until that happens, we will continue to see language like this, and the potential for its abuse, in all of our platforms that involve online sharing.

Image by Adria Richards, used under its Creative Commons license.

Tech advances and social media’s increasing role as a marketing channel have changed the game considerably, true, but, de Vries says, marketing content still requires “creativity and skill.” Hence de Vries’ shares recent examples from several companies that, in his opinion, have gotten this whole business of content marketing down:

• 1. Don’t Skimp on Design. “This may seem obvious, but if you want to be taken seriously by consumers, it’s important to make your content visually compelling.” Example: GE’s ecomagination site, with focus on innovation and environment.
• 2. Do Make It Multimedia. “Varying the type of content you use is essential to providing an engaging, well-rounded user experience that sucks people in and keeps them clicking for more.” Example: The Tory Blog (by fashion designer Tory Burch), with its visuals, tips, and even playlists.
• 3. Don’t Go for the Hard Sell. “The focus is on educating, entertaining, and delivering value to the consumer, rather than giving a hard pitch for your products or services.” Example: The Adrenalist, “powered by Degree Men,” spotlights extreme sports, racing, and adventure, not the product itself.
• 4. Do Strike a Balance. “[T]here’s no doubt that enlisting professionals is key to any good content strategy, but incorporating the consumer voice is equally important.” Examples: KraftRecipes.com by Kraft Foods and Tablespoon by General Mills both feature user-submitted recipes.
• 5. Don’t Leave Any Dead Ends. “The best time to engage your audience is when they’re already in content consumption mode, which is why every page on your site should offer plenty of links to further content.” Example: L’Oreal’s beauty how-to, Makeup.com, offers plenty of links, tip “of the day,” further reading suggestions, and trending stories.
• 6. Do Make Sharing Easy. “If you create great content, there’s a good chance that you’ll garner some fans along the way, which is why it’s so important to give them mechanisms to share that content with their friends.” Example: Marketo prominently displays Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google + buttons for an easy share by the reader. (Also, take a look at this blog and its “Share” buttons on top.)
• 7. Don’t Forget About Offline. “A solid offline strategy can be one of the keys to bringing your online content to life, engaging your audience, and attracting new eyeballs.” Example: Red Bull has a website, magazine, and organizes various sporting events.

Crosby Noricks’ notion of what constitutes successful content marketing echoes de Vries’, at least in the areas of shareability and how to use multiple platforms to build — and keep — an audience. Noricks, who is director of social media at Red Door Interactive and founder of PR Couture, says in his recent guest article for Fast Company:

Whether your goal is to galvanize public awareness around an important social issue or showcase new spring denim colors, aim to deliver relevant, sharable content for your customer across multiple touch points that connect to their life moments.

Marketing strategies, Noricks says, will only work on limited basis, or fail altogether, as long as you expect loyalty from your customers but don’t invest time and resources to create content worth sharing, thus failing to connect with your customer.

In his article, Noricks shares four main points that are in his opinion indispensable to creating what he refers to as “brand content people actually care about”:

• Start with what you already have. “There are likely many existing content resources that with a bit of shine can be revitalized into powerful content marketing pieces…” Example: The New York Times‘ incorporation of existing photos into its Facebook Timeline.
• Let the social conversation lead. “The social web is a goldmine for business intelligence. Make a point to listen and learn from what people are saying about you, your competitors, and the world at large.” No example was given, but Noricks advises to look at trending topics on Twitter, top YouTube videos, and your own feeds for inspiration.
• Abide by your customer’s to-do list. “[D]evelop an editorial calendar that takes into account key dates not only in your industry, but those that matter to your customer.” Example: Free People Festival Paint DIY video by Free People, created for the Coachella attendees.
• Make transmedia your best friend. “Get the most value out of investing in content by including multiple platforms and varied content around singular campaigns.” Example: “Behind-the-scenes still shots at a video shoot can be published to Instagram, and money-saver tips used as website copy can be turned into a series of illustrated JPEGs and posted to Pinterest.”

With all these great tools and technology at your disposal, Noricks says, now is a great right time to develop a marketing strategy for your content. He sums it up:

Whether you imagine your brand storytelling like the great American novel, celebrity blog, or must-see television comedy, know that sales are a natural outcome of placing value, connecting your brand to the broader issues and ideas that interest your customer.

A few final pieces of advice come from the answers provided by the members of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) to the question, “What’s one thing businesses new to content marketing need to do before getting started?” They were published in Business 2 Community.

Allie Siarto, Loudpixel, says (emphasis ours):

Listen loudly. Take a look at the conversations that are already happening. What types of content really resonate with your industry? How can you differentiate yourself? Who can you build relationships with? Who could you partner with?

“Keep a narrow focus and establish yourself as the go-to expert in your field and create your content with that at the forefront,” advises Kelly Azevedo, She’s Got Systems. Finally, this may seem obvious but may be difficult to execute: create an editorial schedule, says Nathalie Lussier, Nathalie Lussier Media. Matt Mickiewicz, 99designs, also notes that possibly outsourcing content creation “makes sense,” as long as there’s a publishing schedule and some sort of consistency, with content appearing regularly.

Images by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com (top) and owenwbrown, used under their Creative Commons license.

You usually hear about this in the form of stories about someone getting fired for posting pictures of themselves enjoying a cocktail or doing something else that could be deemed inappropriate by their employer. That is only the beginning.

Nicky Phillips of The Sydney Morning Herald brings up another situation that is becoming increasingly common — inappropriate relationships:

In a health industry publication, lawyer Joanna Burton, wrote of four incidents where a trail of social media posts were used to show that health professionals had engaged in inappropriate sexual relationships with current or former patients.

In one case, messages from the online dating website RSVP were used as evidence that a psychologist was pursuing more than friendship with a patient.

In the past, these cases often had little evidence to prove an inappropriate relationship whereas new technology and social media platforms could leave a permanent online footprint over which participants have limited control and which could be used against them in a court or disciplinary tribunal, said Mrs Burton, a senior associate at Barry Nilsson Lawyers.

As I pointed out in my recent “Creepy Apps” post, there is a stunning amount of info about most social media users, available at the touch of a button. Most people have no idea how much transparency they have inadvertently adopted.

Even your private postings are in danger of causing you trouble. In a move that is spurring legislation in a number of states, some employers are asking interviewees to hand over their used ID’s and passwords (usually for Facebook). Not only is this against the Facebook terms of service (ToS), but it can also put both the prospective employer and the interview subject on questionable legal footing.

Imagine being a hiring manager for a company that has a policy of this nature. You interview a candidate who looks like a good fit, and then you log in to her Facebook profile where you see pictures of her with her girlfriend. If you end up not hiring her, she can then easily say, whether it is accurate or not, that she was passed over for her sexual preference. This path rapidly leads to discrimination lawsuits.

On the other side of the interview desk, the prospective employee has the disadvantage of submitting his or her private affairs to scrutiny, much like allowing someone to read your mail. In some cases, all it takes is one image of the subject drinking a beer at a football game (the horror!) to get dropped from consideration.

In some places, it seems that saner heads might prevail, if they can get their legislation passed. At the moment, Maryland is the only state to have passed a bill denying employers the option of asking for social media log-ins. People on both sides of the argument are waiting to see if the governor will sign it into law. If so, it will probably help give legs to other, similar efforts going on in seven other states (according to the National Conference of State Legislatures).

The Washington Post reports some other reactions:

[Bradley] Shear [a Bethesda, Md.-based social media attorney], who pushed for the Maryland legislation, said giving employers access to password-protected information not only violates people’s privacy, but hampers technology development, which relies on users to trust the security of the websites.

‘There’s a whole generation of future leaders where they’re going to be our elected leaders, our judges, our lawyers, our business people,’ Shear said. ‘Do we really want all those people to think it’s OK for the government to see our private content without any warrant or subpoena or anything like that?’

Facebook director for state public policy Will Castleberry applauded the bill.

California State Assembly member Nora Campos is one of the people who gets it. People frequently post to social media platforms with the expectation that it will be as private as a written diary. Much like a written diary, that privacy must be respected, and due process adhered to (in the form of a warrant for the info, if needed) — just as with any other personal property.

Campos makes some excellent points about the current state of affairs in a recent column for The Sacramento Bee:

‘When we seek employment, we would never be expected to provide our prospective employer with personal information, such as family photos,’ said Assemblymember Nora Campos. ‘The same expectations must be applied to social media, where a user’s personal profile is just that — personal.’

In addition to the prohibition the bill would place on requirements that applicants provide prospective employees with access to their social media accounts, AB 1844 specifically eliminates an employer’s responsibility to search or monitor social media before hiring the employee as part of its duty under existing law to exercise reasonable care in employing a person and is required to use reasonable care to discover whether a potential employee is unfit or incompetent.

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, there are 129 cases from across the nation before the National Labor Relations Board in which employer workplace policies around social media are being scrutinized. In California, this ambiguity in social media policies has led to a broad coalition of support for AB 1844, including from the CalChamber, ACLU, AFSCME, and members of the tech community.

The line between public and private has never been thinner. Since legislation moves at a far slower pace than innovation, it’s hardly surprising that these issues are only now reaching the government level.

Have you been asked for your social media data by a prospective employer? If so, did you relinquish it, or did you refuse? Why?

Image by Topgold (Bernard Goldbach), used under its Creative Commons license.

Why Aren't You Blogging?

The Internet is saturated with marketing how-to’s on making your online content more authoritative and trustworthy. The tricky part is to wade through it all and find what works for your business, budget, and workflow without compromising your style, integrity, wallet, and long-term goals.

Biserka Anderson cites a recent study by TNS UK in her Business 2 Community article that supports the notion of “information obesity” (“infobesity”). “[T]he sheer amount of data spouted out into the digital space seems to be too much for consumers to digest, causing a consumer backlash against the information overload,” Anderson says.

Food references aside, it’s important for businesses “to understand how their target audiences process information,” says Anderson, and take it from there.

If you want a company blog, ask yourself whether you need one to begin with, and whether to do it yourself or to outsource it to the pros. Rather than give “birth to a mediocre blog,” the recent Small Business Trends article in Business Insider advises business owners to consider the following points:

• Do I have something to say? Your true experience is valuable but a collation of generic facts found online is not.
• Will my words help the reader in any way? [T]he blogs [should have] a combination of an experienced author with a lot of deep research. [...] Are you providing the same value?
• Why am I doing this? You do not have to start giving out tips just because there are many other examples out there. Listing your sites in the right places and doing the occasional guest blog might be more rewarding than pushing yourself to produce content every day.
• I want to talk to my target audience. [I]f you are bent on taking on the challenge of maintaining a blog — find the right people. [...] You can get professional help from such companies to get the right content around your product and business. It does not have to be everyday — you could do a deeply researched piece once a week.

At SixEstate, we maintain a set of Newsblogging standards and guidelines, and train all our bloggers to adhere to them — for consistency, transparency, maximum efficiency, and for everyone’s sanity.

There a few things you should do when starting a business blog to become a leading online voice and achieve thought leadership within your industry or around your cause.

Build and maintain a reliable, good-looking platform

It’s entirely possible to put together a solidly designed site and outfit it with plugins and other helpful tools for a reasonable amount of money. If you can’t do it yourself, outsource. You can even buy a premium WordPress theme from WooThemes or StudioPress for about $70-$100.

Create fresh, meaningful content

Ideally, aim for a well-written, strategically optimized, and copyedited daily blog built around your keywords. If you can’t commit to doing it yourself or can’t write, it’s best to leave it to the pros.

No ghostwriting. Transparency is crucial: bylines, bios — your readers should have no doubt who is behind all this writing.

Your posts should link out to news sources or other resources that will benefit your audiences and add credibility and additional perspective to your content.

To protect yourself and to appear credible to your reader, add a related, copyright-permissible image, with a proper credit and link in a footnote (source citation) to each post.

Also, mention the journalists’ names from your sources and include their titles or brief descriptions of what they do. You never know — they might Google themselves, find your post, and that could bring in some desirable visibility among the industry experts and influencers who are covering the same topics.

Engage your audience

Even if you’re not the principal blogger or you have someone else write for your blog, your expert opinion is still valuable and should be heard. Customize your content by inserting your perspective (in an occasional guest post, perhaps, or by supplying a quote to your bloggers). You can also spice it up by providing a case study with some original research and its analysis, and by publishing firsthand interviews.

Also, enable comments and respond to them. Responding to comments in a timely fashion, and extending the discussion, is a great way to build a loyal and active audience.

Keep it clean, keep it consistent

To accommodate the ever-shrinking attention span of today’s online reader, “[a]s writers and editors, we need to communicate as clearly and concisely as possible,” writes Laura Hale Brockway in her piece for PR Daily, “20 phrases you can replace with one word.”

Also, post regularly, optimize, and edit. Every blog post needs an editor, or at least a fresh pair of eyes. At SixEstate, we have editors who edit, strategically optimize, and schedule all of our client blog posts. You need someone to catch that typo you’ve been staring at (and not seeing) for the past hour, and make sure links and facts are accurate.

Another important aspect of the editing process is establishing a certain style, or picking an existing one (like AP or Chicago), and sticking to it. It doesn’t matter if you still spell “web site” as two words, or worship the double dash but banish a serial comma — just be consistent. Train your bloggers to be consistent.

At SixEstate, we’ve ended up with AP style, but with a few deviations. Sometimes, when we can’t decide on a version of a word or a phrase, we Google it, and the search result with the most entries wins.

I’d like to finish with one of my favorite quotes from John E. McIntyre, a copyeditor at The Baltimore Sun, who writes the You Don’t Say blog:

Accuracy first, then clarity, then precision, and last, if there’s time, elegance.

Image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com, used under its Creative Commons license.