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The Difference Between Content Curation and Content Creation

April 25, 2011 By 8 Comments

A few weeks ago, I was participating on the #prwebchat when someone posed the question, “what’s the difference between content creation and content curation.”

I responded, “Creators write, curators collect & aggregate. Anyone can curate, not everyone can create.” Apparently this struck a chord, because a lot of people were responding and retweeting to what was just a throwaway line which made me realize there’s a lot more to this idea than I originally thought.

Tania Said Schuler

That's my friend Tania (R). She's a curator at the Ball State Museum of Art. She's the only curator I know.

Thanks to the blog tools and plug-ins (like Zemanta, which lets you link to related articles), Twitter lists, and RSS readers, anyone can compile a list of the interesting stuff. It’s a matter of identifying the most interesting articles from very popular or esoteric sources, and sharing them with your network.

But I don’t think content curation is that valuable. It’s important, to be sure. With a semi-decent RSS reader, anyone can be a content curator. But it’s not that valuable. Think of what the curators are actually collecting: content that someone else created.

Truman Capote once said of Jack Kerouac’s literary efforts, “That’s not writing. That’s typing.”

A stinging rebuttal to be sure, but it’s one that explains the difference between creation and curation.

Think of the effort that goes into creating a single blog post. There’s research to be read, surveys to be compiled, and opinions to be formed. And then you have to be able to present it in a way that not only flows logically, but is compelling to readers.

Still, curators cannot exist without creators to provide them with material to share; creators rely on curators to make sure their stuff is shared. So I can’t entirely bag on the curators, since 1) I rely on them, and 2) I’m trying to be one myself too.

Occasionally you’ll get creators who can handle their own curation — and that’s what social media has done for us — but we always get a boost when other people do some curation for us. For example, I always see a huge traffic spike whenever Jason Falls shares my blog posts with his readers. And Jason is a great example of someone who both curates and creates in order to provide value to his network.

So which are you? Are you creating, curating, or doing both? Is one more important than the other, or are they equally necessary? Can content creation actually live without curation? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available on Amazon.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy.

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    Filed Under: Blog Writing, Blogging, Social Media, Social Networks, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

    The Problem With Corporate Blog Writing

    July 13, 2010 By 3 Comments

    As a professional blogger, I see a lot of different blogs, both small business and corporate. Some are good, some are terrible. Some are informative and engaging, some are daily commercials, some are stilted and formal. I can spot the blogs written by people who are passionate about their work, knowledgeable about their field, or exploring new knowledge.

    I can also spot the ones that are written by marketing professionals, committees, and the legal department.

    Blogging tends to make corporate types a little nervous

    It’s not that I have anything against marketers (I’ve been one for over 16 years). And I don’t have anything against lawyers. (Committees, on the other hand. . .)

    The problem is blogging has a different writing style, a different flow. In blogging, you don’t worry about being technically accurate, covering every contingency, option, variation, divergence, modification, and refinement, you just have to be right.

    But the blogs I see by marketers, lawyers, and committees don’t have that spark. Everything is written like a legal brief, or it uses all the proper product/service names, instead of what customers actually call it. Or it has that lowest common denominator feel of the committee, where every phrase is scrutinized, and meetings are filled with statements like “should we say ‘rediscover’ or ‘redefine?’” and then discussed heatedly for 30 minutes. (“Why can’t we say ‘rediscover or redefine?’” “But what about people who have not discovered or defined it in the first place?”)

    Marketing Copywriting and Legal Writing Are Not Good Blog Writing

    Blogging is informal. It’s written like people speak. It has punch, emotion, spark, verve. Sentences start with “and.” Or appear incomplete. While grammar is (and should be) used, people are a little more loose with some of the grammar rules. That’s not to say a blogger gets to write like an illiterate scribbler. But rather, they don’t need to march in lockstep with the grammar rules our 7th grade teacher drummed into us.

    A good blog has to capture the attention of the person reading it. It has to be well-written and interesting. Too often, corporate blogs are stiff, formal, and uninteresting. They’re literary yawn-fests that seem to want to drive away readers, not bring them in.

    I recently read a pro athlete’s blog that was hosted on his team’s website. And I could tell right away — see how I just started that sentence with ‘and?’ — that he didn’t write it. Or at least he didn’t have the final edit. That’s because the author or editor didn’t use team nicknames, and they made sure to include sponsor names.

    “We’ve been working hard at the Sheinhardt Wig Company Indianapolis Beagles Practice Facility all week, and are looking forward to facing the Cincinnati Rough Riders on Sunday at 4:00 p.m.”

    BLEAH! The only people who refer to anything by their sponsors’ names are marketers and race car drivers. The only people who refer to a team by their full name in an informal setting are marketers. Given that this particular athlete is not known for his eloquence, I could only assume this had been edited heavily, and not just for grammar.

    While I’m not a big fan of misspelled words, poor grammar, and text speak, I do think writers should be given their own voice, and not edited to sound like some marketer’s idea of what they think it should be.

    Basically, if you want to be a successful blogger, you need to learn to write like a real person. Loosen up the tie, disband the committee, unclench, and start to write like a real person. When you have an urge to fix something to as required by the marketing copy user’s guide, kill it.

    Learn to write how people talk, and you’ll start to figure out how people read. And then they’ll start reading what you have to say.

    Photo: St. Stev (Flickr)

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      Filed Under: Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Marketing, Writing Tagged With: , , , ,

      Content is STILL King

      September 24, 2009 By 2 Comments

      Jeff Bullas has written a post on a study he found called the “Internet Activity Index” released by  the Online Publishers Association.  The study shows how content sites are still King of the Internet for both eyeballs and time.

      Here are the highlights of the study:

      The 5 Categories and the the types of sites that were measured were:

      • Content (Sites like NYTimes.com, ESPN.com and Edmunds.com (Content sites)
      • Communications (websites offering email, and Instant messaging)
      • Community (Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn)
      • Commerce (such as Ebay, Amazon)
      • Search (Google, Yahoo, Bing etc)

      Here is Jeff’s interpretation:

      The study on online activity titled the “Internet Activity Index” released by  the Online Publishers Association shows the  trends of the types of activity that have occurred on the Internet over the past 6 years. The study’s findings has important implications for online marketers and how they should be focusing their time, resources and strategies in 2009 and beyond.

      Five key findings of the study?

      1. Internet users continue to spend a majority of their “time” with Content sites, up from 34 percent of total time spent in 2003 to 42 percent in 2009.
      2. Emergence of Community (it wasn’t measured in 2003 as it wasn’t statistically significant enough and not on the radar)
      3. Content is still king; the content rich sites continue to be a place where consumers spend the majority of their online time and provide an environment for brand marketers to reach and engage with consumers despite the emergence of  community sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace.
      4. Community sites are reducing the share of online time by communications sites due to community sites ability to offer the same activities such as email and instant messaging more efficiently.
      5. Time spent with Search doubled.

      Here is the report as it is reported on the Online-Publishers Site:
      Share of Time Spent Online (%)
      Jul08 Aug08 Sep08 Oct08 Nov08 Dec08 Jan09 Feb09 Mar09 Apr09 May09 Jun09 Jul09
      Commerce 14.1 13.5 13.1 12.8 14.3 16.0 14.1 13.4 13.2 13.3 12.8 11.0 10.9
      Communications 28.2 29.0 28.7 28.0 26.5 25.9 26.5 27.4 27.0 26.4 26.3 25.2 24.4
      Community 9.0 8.9 8.3 8.7 9.7 9.7 11.3 12.6 12.8 13.7 14.5 18.5 20.6
      Content 43.4 43.2 44.6 45.3 44.5 43.2 42.8 41.1 41.5 41.3 41.1 40.6 39.6
      Search 5.3 5.3 5.3 5.2 5.0 5.3 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.3 5.3 4.7 4.5
      % Change in Share of Time, Month-Over-Month
      Jul08 Aug08 Sep08 Oct08 Nov08 Dec08 Jan09 Feb09 Mar09 Apr09 May09 Jun09 Jul09
      Commerce 3.4 4.3 3.0 2.3 11.7 11.9 11.9 5.0 1.5 0.8 3.8 - 0.9
      Communications 2.4 2.8 1.0 2.4 5.4 2.3 2.3 3.4 1.5 2.2 0.4 - 3.2
      Community 2.3 1.1 6.7 4.8 11.5 0.0 16.5 11.5 1.6 7.0 5.8 - 11.4
      Content 2.6 0.5 3.2 1.6 1.8 2.9 0.9 4.0 1.0 0.5 0.5 - 2.5
      Search 1.9 0.0 0.0 1.9 3.8 6.0 0.0 1.9 1.9 3.6 0.0 - 4.3


      *Notes: Excludes .gov and .edu Web sites, as well as pornographic domains. Percentage change indicates the percentage increase or decrease from the previous month’s value (June 2009 % change not shown due to introduction of Nielsen’s NetView RDD//Online data). Share of Time data based on Total Time values.

      Source: OPA and Nielsen Online

      For years now, the principals here have been preaching that content is king.  Not only for search engine optimization (SEO), but also for it being the hub of a social media campaign.  A colleague of mine, who is the Chief Marketing Officer of a large travel company has validated these findings with their strategy.  Quote:  “Blogging is the hub of a social media campaign.  Social Media alone is not a strategy for corporations wishing to participate.”

      The numbers Jeff shared this morning kind of validates this approach.  From a hub, there are spokes to other platforms through sharing.  The valuable asset is the content generated.

      Paul Lorinczi is the President of Professional Blog Service. The goal of the company is the help clients use Blogging and Social Media to expand their business online through planning, execution, and measurement.

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        Filed Under: Blog ROI, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Research Desk, Social Media, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

        The Challenges of Hiring a Ghost Blogger

        August 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

        Ghost writing is a tool. Hiring a ghost writer lets people who either don’t have the time to write or don’t have the talent to write communicate.

        Without ghost writers, many people who have great ideas and insight would never blog.

        It’s not because they don’t want to, it’s because the average blog post takes a non-professional 1 – 2 hours to write. If you think CEOs write every last one of their own blog posts, you are mistaken. They don’t write the letter in front of the annual report, they don’t write their speeches to shareholders, they don’t write their financial reports. Some of them don’t even write their own emails.

        Would you really want a person who’s making $1,000 per hour spending 1 – 2 hours every day writing a single blog post instead of running the company? For that matter, if you’re making more than $35 per hour, do you really want to spend 2 hours every day writing blog articles?

        If you bill or get paid more than $25/hour, writing a blog post may not be the best use of your time. The time you spend researching, writing, and editing is time you could spend billing and generating revenue.

        The challenge is that hiring a ghost writer is tough because there are no real professional standards in the business. There is also no clear definition of “professional ghost writing.” Our professional experience has taught us that ghost writers and ghost bloggers generally fit into five buckets:

        • Cheap and Dangerous copywriting sweat shops typically charge $10 or less per post and usually promise keyword rich copy. The challenge is these writers rarely are paid enough to do original work (after overhead, they have $3 – $5 left to actually pay the writer). As a result shortcuts are the rule. Dangerous shortcuts like stealing content from other websites, using non-native writers, skimping on editing, and failing to do any fact checking can come back to haunt you later.
        • Solo Practitioners are often very good at what they do, except during their day job’s regular working hours, while on vacation, some weekends, or when life gets a little busy. The challenge with a solo practitioner is simply making sure they have time to meet your deadlines, can work with your legal department and are highly responsible. You’ll also need to make sure you have time for doing more editing on your own, as solo practitioners rarely have an editor. Solo practitioners can be a great value if you want to manage them. If you can find a solo practitioner who does this as a regular job, hang on to them. They’re worth what you’re paying them.
        • Social Media “Experts“ should generally be avoided. The general rule of thumb, at least according to Malcolm Gladwell, is you’re considered a top performer (an “outlier”) if you have 10,000 years of experience, and you’re considered “good” if you have 8,000. The problem is, a lot of social media tools like Twitter aren’t even 10,000 hours old, so it’s hard to become an expert in a field like this. Plus there are too many social media tools to truly become proficient at. You can have a passing knowledge about a lot of them, but a passing knowledge doesn’t make anyone an expert either.
        • Ad and Marketing Agencies are usually a good source for writers, but this isn’t their core business. They do ad campaigns, marketing campaigns, and online marketing. But they also have higher overhead, because you’re paying for people who typically don’t work on your project or technology.
        • Professional Blogging Agencies usually cost a little more, but have advantages, especially for businesses and high profile clients. Professional ghost writers should have a solid editorial process, access to a diverse stable of writers, provide safeguards against copyright infringement, have no issues with deadlines and can accommodate your compliance department.

        When you’re looking for a ghost blogger, pay careful attention to your budget, your blog requirements, and whether you have any special requirements you need to meet, like passing posts through your legal department. Then see if you can work with a solo practitioner, a blogging agency, or whether you want to cheap out and risk it all with a sweat shop.

        Mike Seidle is currently the CTO of Virtual Payment Systems, Inc, and is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service. Mike currently serves on Professional Blog Service’s board of directors.

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          Filed Under: Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Ghost Writing, Social Networks, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

          Who Should Hire a Professional Blog Service

          March 4, 2009 By 1 Comment
          Average Time to Create a Business Blog Post

          You started a blog, great. When was the last time you updated it? Do you have readers? More importantly, do you have the 4 hours a day needed to develop a post concept, write the post, edit it, post it and then promote it across your social networks?

          Unless the economy’s worse than I think, I doubt it.  Oh, and that web guy that got you into blogging and sold you your blog site, he got one detail wrong: Blogging is not a technology problem.  It’s a people problem. Turns out you need more than a little software and a hosting account.

          Blogging Takes Two Things: Time and Skill

          Let’s be clear about how long it takes for a complete blog post cycle – about half a business day plus lunch:

          Average Time to Create a Business Blog Post

          Average Time to Create a Business Blog Post

          Starting your day at three in the afternoon is one thing, but for someone who can make $100-$200 an hour billing or $200 a day in sales commissions ($200 in commissions usually means $600-$1000 in profits), writing blog posts is a wast of money, too.  It’s not efficient.  It’s bad business.  Especially bad considering you can get a professional to handle it for somewhere between $75 and $175 and keep the revenue flowing.  Do the math.  You can lose $500-$1000 in revenue doing something that would have cost $135 to outsource.

          Skill
          The other reason boils down to talent, experience and education. Blog writing may seem easy, but if it’s so simple then why are there so many orphaned blogs floating around the Internet?

          Blogs die for two reasons: lack of content and lack of readers.

          If you don’t know how to expand the readership of the blog or promote a blog post, you’ll be yelling fire into an empty theater.  Promoting a blog isn’t that difficult, but just like writing posts it takes time doing the right things to expand readership.  It takes about a year of trial and error to know what the right things are.   Not a good use of time and, again, not efficient.

          Finding the Right Partner

          There are two predominant types of blog writing services out there. First, there’s the guy who charges $10-$15 a post and writes bad formula content or worse yet, plagiarizes and borrows from other site’s content. Most of these writers focus on single topics or s specific keyword. The end result? Generic, disconnected text with little to no personality, poor quality control and the risk of a copyright infringement leading to your website being taken down or a lawsuit.

          Then, there are professional blog writing services who take the time to do in-depth interviews and research designed to capture your personal voice, your ideas and your branding message and convert those into well-organized blog results. Professionals also take steps to guard against plagiarism and ensure posts are made on time every time.  It’s genuine, it’s in tune with your message and will engage the reader.

          Which would you prefer?

          Mike Seidle is currently the CTO of Virtual Payment Systems, Inc, and is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service. Mike currently serves on Professional Blog Service’s board of directors.

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            The Biggest Mistake “Business Bloggers” Make

            January 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

            Before you rush into business blogging there’s something you should know:

            Blogging does not work in a vacuum.

            Every week someone calls us and asks if we can just ghost write blog articles for super cheap for their business blog. There’s a name for these spammy business blogs, and it sounds like something that grows in that goo that accumulates in the drain pan under the fridge: splog.

            Splogs are blogging’s answer for the guy at the fair who yells “Hey you, with the face! Step right up…” So, after discovering that our future client has a splog, our first question is, well, if we are just writing, how is the blog being promoted? The answer from our prospective client is nearly always:

            “We don’t care about that. We just have the blog around to mop up on some keywords on Google. It needs lots of new content, but we don’t really care what it says. We just want Google to index it.”

            After we take a look at the prospects blog, we usually find three things are true about the aforementioned business blog:

            1. It’s written by fake people. Not real people with pen names, but fake as in department store mannequin with a bad wig and big sunglasses.

            2. The content isn’t personal (it’s written in third person), usually isn’t well written and isn’t tracking in the search engines for keywords that actually get traffic. It’s usually just more spammy content that will end up on page 8,500 in Google’s search results for a fourth rate keyword.

            3. The business blog is screaming fire in an empty theater at three in the morning on a Sunday after the popcorn ran out. It gets 20 clicks. Per month. Meaning a visitor is more likely to be a hacker’s spider looking for unpatched scripts than a person, anyway.

            Cheaply written business blogs which are put up for an audience consisting of a search engine spider and a ranking algorithm don’t work very well if you are trying to actually market.  To engage, you have to actually communicate with people. Which raises the biggest mistake that people make when they start business blogging: failing to be genuine.

            Blogs which are written by real people that can be called on the telephone are the most effective if you want good marketing.  That does not mean you have to write the article, but it does mean that every blog post needs to be your ideas, and said in a way that is personal and genuine.

            Why? Because, people do business with people. It’s that simple.

            What are you going to do when someone calls and asks if Mr. Fake Person can speak at a trade show or come on a sales call? Hire an actor? Good luck with that.

            Think about it.

            People do business with people. People network with people. Sites like Facebook and LinkedIn connect people to people. It’s called social media for a reason, and the blog is the foundation of it all.  Spammy business blogs are anti-social.

            Mike Seidle is currently the CTO of Virtual Payment Systems, Inc, and is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service. Mike currently serves on Professional Blog Service’s board of directors.

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              Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , , ,

              Should You Pay For Traffic to Your Business Blog?

              January 2, 2009 By Leave a Comment
              moneyburn

              moneyburnLast year, the promoters behind the award-winning film Prince Among Slaves tried to hire freelancers to Digg their movie to the front page of Digg.com. You can read about it here. And yes, this story is from January ‘08, but this backwards mentality still persists. Online marketers are still trying to pay for mass traffic – whether it’s hiring diggers, paying for links or even opting in for reverse pay-for-view schemes.

              Too bad that’s never going to work.

              You Have to Be Genuine
              Not only will tales of paid-for-traffic haunt your business and your reputation, it’s ineffective and a waste of money. In the new Web 2.0 world, traffic has to be earned, not purchased. You need to attract visitors with genuine interaction and content that’s both valuable and sincere. And yes, you can outsource some of the content, but work with them closely and be sure that what gets published is real.

              It’s not about paying for hits, hiring diggers or spamming – it’s about being transparent and genuine and really engaging the viewer.

              So, how do you do it?

              Stop Thinking About Demographics
              If you’re running a blog for your business, stop thinking about demographics. Put away your assumptions that everyone who visits your site is 40-65 and female. Remember, iVillage’s visitors are 44 percent male while AskMen.com’s visitors are almost 25 percent female.

              Instead, group your communities by interest, encourage their feedback and use [Read more...]

              Mike Seidle is currently the CTO of Virtual Payment Systems, Inc, and is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service. Mike currently serves on Professional Blog Service’s board of directors.

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                Should I Start My Social Media Program With A Blog?

                December 27, 2008 By 1 Comment
                chickenegg

                chickeneggOne question that gets asked a lot by new clients is “Should we start with a blog or should I start with building social media profiles?”

                Some social media experts say this is a bad idea because a blog is worthless without a network to read it. They argue you’ll get more eyes by guest blogging on a bigger website. They’ll say that you need to develop relationships with “influentials” or “A-List” bloggers.

                And they are right…

                I do agree you need to work on building a social media network. I do agree you should guest blog. I can’t agree more that it takes a lot of time to get serious blog traffic.

                That said, I disagree with putting off blogging [Read more...]

                Mike Seidle is currently the CTO of Virtual Payment Systems, Inc, and is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service. Mike currently serves on Professional Blog Service’s board of directors.

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                  Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , , , ,

                  Fresh, Hot Content

                  November 20, 2008 By Leave a Comment
                  xmag

                  Background Info: I have been in the search engine optimization business for over seven years.
                  More Background Info: I just left SEO land for good.  There is a better way.

                  First, I can tell you what isn’t working: traditional Search Engine Optimization. I could make up a lot of really impressive, buzzword rich, techno-spam to explain why. Instead I’m going to cut to the chase: search engines want fresh, hot content.

                  So the game has changed from old fashioned keyword rich, quality content with a million high page rank links to a model where the best, fastest content factory wins.

                  searchSearch your name: you’ll find social networks and social news sites own it.

                  Search your product names: chances are you’ll run in to social media sites like dealstreamers (Fat Wallet type social deal sites), blogs and membership forums.

                  Search for your core products: Unless your product is described by uber competitive keywords, you’ll find blogs, forums, and news articles.

                  All of which have one thing in common.  The content is usually fresh, or at least surrounded by fresh content. And the funny part is that content is not difficult.  It takes some talent, some training, time and lots of discipline. Oh, and a maniacal dedication to getting more content. And more content. You can’t stop.  And that’s why most companies are struggling with dealing with the 2009 model of internet marketing.  They are stuck worrying about the wrong things like link structure, gaming Google (good luck with that), rich media and widgets, when the real issue should be having lots of fresh, hot content.

                  Making fresh, hot content is exactly what ProBlogService does best. And it’s why I get up in the morning. Somewhere, there’s a company that needs content.  We want to supply it.  Content is the new rocket fuel for your marketing program.

                  Mike Seidle is the CEO of ProBlogService.com, a full service blog and social media agency.  ProBlogService.com provides blog writing, management and promotion services for business.

                  Mike Seidle is currently the CTO of Virtual Payment Systems, Inc, and is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service. Mike currently serves on Professional Blog Service’s board of directors.

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                    Filed Under: Business Blogging Content, Ghost Writing, ProBlogService Tagged With: , , , ,