Editor’s note: at Scoop.it, we’re obsessed with how our customers use the platform and what improvements they make to their content process by using it. Here’s a time-saving Scoop.it hack by Joseph Rizzo, whose agency iNeo Marketing helps implement Marketing Technology.
As curators, we may have different objectives and different ways of pursuing those objectives, e.g., some curators scoop only the article without Insight, some focus almost entirely on Insight, hybrid of both, etc., etc. But there is something that is common to all curators…
Cutting down on the time to curate.
If you’re a curator that scoops and summarizes articles for your readers, then I have a method that may cut down on your time-to-scoop, enhance your presentation, and drive more viewers. I started using this method a few months ago, and my views have increased 50% since then.
Here’s the approach:
Combining tools: Readibility, Awesome Screenshot and Scoop.it
First, there are a set of very convenient tools I use that are free and easy. I use Chrome as my browser with two Chrome extensions: Readability and Awesome Screenshot:
- Readability takes a web page and strips away all the non-essential elements, e.g., social sharing icons, ads, etc.
- Awesome Screenshot permits you to screen shot a page of any size, and includes visual editing tools.
Cleaning the article
When I find an article to share with my audience, I’ll first click on my Readability icon, which opens a clean page of the article, usually the headline, the top image, and the article’s copy. But I don’t want to scoop the whole clean article. All I want to do is summarize the article in the author’s words, and not my words. How can I do this?
Zooming in on key sentences
Invariably, I can find 2 or 3 paragraphs that can summarize a complete article, however they are separated by other paragraphs, so I need to find a way to remove those impediments from my desired 2-3 paragraphs so that my targeted curated content is continuous. To remove these impediments, I select one of the offending passages, then right mouse click to select “Inspect element.” This opens up the source code for the page in an editor that allows me to delete that unwanted passage: that section of code is highlighted in the editor, and all I do is DELETE. Perfect: that section is kaput. If there is more content that I want to remove, I just cursor my way down the editor, select the other passages, and delete, delete, delete. I close the editor, and voila: I’ve got a clean article where the main image and the desired paragraphs are contiguous!
Capturing the essential to give a summary
Time to scoop. I’m still in Readability, so I click on the back key, and there’s the clean web page with only my desired paragraphs with a main image. Next step: I open Awesome Screenshot which permits me to capture a selected area of a web page, and I want to capture the main image with my targeted 2-3 paragraphs. I drag, capture, click Done then save the image as a file. Yes: IMAGE! What I’ve effectively done is captured the articles main image and the 2-3 paragraphs, and saved the whole magilla as an image!
Publishing a curated post through Scoop.it
I’m now ready to scoop. I close Awesome Screenshot, click on my Scoop.it Bookmarklet, then upload my new file as a Scoop.it image. End result: my scoop is an image of the desired, condensed article! It’s clean, convenient, and very readable.
Now why has this increased views? I’m only guessing as I haven’t conducted a study, but I think scoop-as-an-image is a quasi-infographic where the font style in the curated content is different from my Scoop.it account’s font style, i.e., it just looks different, stands out, and draws attention. But as we advise clients when considering a change: TEST! If you’re interested in this approach, test it first and see if it is easier while drawing more traffic.
For more Scoop.it hacks, here’s a list of 10 that you might have not used yet. Want to share some of your own hacks? Reach out or let us know in the comments.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Some of your Scoops have used far more than three paragraphs. As a content creator, I’d not be happy with that. The idea of dissecting an article to extract its best three paragraphs does not sound like it has anything to do with sharing content. That’s repurposing someone else’s hard work for your own end. Why should anyone click to read an article if you have already given it to them? Lead them to the source, ask questions that the article can and will answer, show people the value of being part of the give and take that makes the… Read more »
There’s opinion, and then there’s data. And our data shows that far more often than not interested parties click-through to read the full article. Now why is that? Our services delivers a digest of the full article for our B2B Marketers, so as the reader scans the digest, they click-through for more detail as they know that “God is in the detail.” B2B Marketers need the details behind a particular thought/technique/announcement before proceeding further (or not). Example: you can’t possible provide sufficient information in a scoop pertaining to Predictive Analytics, but you can give enough information that gives the reader… Read more »
Different fields have different levels of ethics and definitions of what “sharing” and “curation” mean, but the reputation of a tool like ScoopIt reflects back on all its users. It also makes would-be new users hesitate to come on board. At what point does deep Scooping sink to the level of a form of scraping? I know that blogs do what you’re doing, as well.
The content creation pool is getting pretty shallow at the quality end. I did like your top ten stories Scoop with direct links to the stories. That’s a great idea for a Scoop!