10. Content curation

10.1. Introduction

Content curation arises from the need by companies and marketing professionals to locate, filter and gather valuable, interesting information on a given subject, which is usually related to the professional role they develop. Once the information is obtained, their goal is to distribute it in their communication channels and social networks in order to become established among their target audience and clients.

The definition of content curation in Sergio Ortega’s blog is well-rounded and clear:

“Content curation is regarded as the capacity of a system or of a human being to find, arrange, filter and add value, relevance, significance… in a word, to make content useful; this content is based on a given subject and is obtained from several sources (digital media, communication tools, social networks…).”

Sergio Ortega. “Simplicidad, UX y curación de contenido” (“Simplicity, UX and content curation”. Available at: http://www.sortega.com/blog/simplicidad-ux-y-curacion-de-contenido/

According to the 4S method by Javier Guallar and Javier Leiva, the process of content curation is divided into four phases:

1. Search: searching the information we are interested in among the large volume of messed up contents we find when surfing the Internet. Several key words are to be established for the search and the places in which to search for the contents are to be defined.
2. Select: this is the most important step in the process: choosing the relevant information among the results obtained in the search. Several filters are established in order to focus on those contents that are considered more valuable and interesting.
3. Sense making: reading, analyzing, arranging and adapting content according to the curator’s criteria. Information is characterized and drafted and several applications are available to help us in this process (see “Tools” section). A blog may also be used for that purpose.
4. Share: distributing and sharing the chosen contents with our target audience using the channels that are considered most appropriate.

Content curation is not restricted to marketing professionals, documentalists, journalists or communicators: everybody may curate contents. Any user who cares about selecting interesting content to share with his/her online community is doing a content curation task. It is a matter of bringing sense to our own contents or to the contents that are shared by others and in doing so improving communication between users.

If we want to use the strategy mentioned below as users, the first three steps may allow us to quickly read on the subjects we find more interesting, in an efficient and faster manner, which will help us make the most of the surfing time that is available to us. This is a strategy to relieve infoxication, which was defined in the introduction of this document, telling “useless” contents apart from those that are really useful to us.

This strategy is closely linked to social bookmarks and to content syndications and subscriptions, which make it possible to select links and “subscribe” to the channels we choose in order to receive publications and contents in a given location without having to surf several websites searching for updates. Both strategies are linked to content curation, because they also include sharing results with other users. That is to say, they allow us to select information, label it and share our selection with the digital community or with a restricted group of users.

The last stage, sharing, can usually be found in professionals. After reading and redefining the relevant information that was found, information is shared mainly in social networks, to keep the target audience informed about the latest news, trends or changes in a given sector (corporate, cultural, journalistic…).

In his blog, Juan C. Mejia lists the different ways to perform content curation:

• Aggregation: gathering all the information in the same location. For instance, in an on-line newspaper such as Paper.li.
• Distillation: only the most relevant ideas or concepts are shared, instead of sharing the full content. When subscribing to a blog (e.g. using our e-mail), some authors allow for the reception of the full post; others only allow for the reception of a headline, thus making you access their page if the headline was interesting to you and you want to continue reading.
• Uploading: sharing and defining trends in small information capsules that are shared online (as happens on Twitter, for example).
• Mixture: mixing previously chosen content by creating a new perspective or approach. You need to read, redefine and provide a new idea through a personal blog, or else by writing on social networks.
• Chronology: gathering the information on a timeline with a view to showing how a given subject has evolved. For instance, storify allows us to organize the information chosen along a timeline.