The Scoop.it Content Curation Blog

How content curation can help you to engage your audiences

4 Years of Professional Growth & Good Vibes, Curated

Posted on
March 4, 2015
by

Dear Scoopiteer,

Ally here, as usual, bringing a special newsletter-themed design to the Scoop.it blog today, mostly because I have some news to share with you.

I started a college internship at a brand new company called Scoop.it on June 15th, 2011. Exactly one year later, on June 15th 2012, I started as a full-time community manager. Just about two years after that, in May of 2014, I took over the role of Director of Community & Content.

Now, after four amazing years, I’m turning in my Scoop.it hoodie (not literally, though, don’t worry) and taking on a new adventure.

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Posted in
Team

5 Ways to make time for content marketing when you don’t have any

Posted on
March 4, 2015
by

Who has time for content marketing?

Who has time for content marketing?

While small businesses are called the backbone of the American economy, they are also challenged with smaller budgets and less employees, which can make things like marketing and advertising very challenging. Content marketing is more than a valuable addition to a successful advertising strategy, it can also help:

  • With brand reputation, management and awareness

  • Connect better with existing and potential customers

  • Increase website traffic and gain new leads

  • Increase visibility for the brand and business

But for our struggling small business owner, who has the time for content marketing these days? The answer to this question is, make the time. Here are some tips on how to have a successful online content marketing strategy without spending an inordinate amount of time or money:

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6 SEO Content Strategies That Still Work

Posted on
March 3, 2015
by

6 SEO Content Strategies That Still Work in 2015

It’s the start of a new year and that means a re-evaluation of the viability of your SEO strategy. And, all good Internet marketers know that their SEO content strategy needs to be evaluated every so often in order to retain its functionality.

There are a lot of SEO changes that have happened over the last couple months and in order to stay on top of your game, you need to be aware of what still works and what doesn’t. Your SEO strategy is usually based around a handful of reliable methods that work for you.

Let’s see if yours makes the list of SEO content strategies that are still relevant in 2015: keep reading!

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Toward On-Demand Marketing

Posted on
March 2, 2015
by

The rapid incorporation of digital approaches has made marketing an industry of silos. It’s time to rethink the way we build our teams and our skill sets to break those walls apart.

Source: moz.com

How is Marketing structured in your company? 

I’ve been thinking about how this translates to SMBs as obviously not every company has to do “government relations”. But whether the Marketing team is big or small, there are interesting distinctions made in this slide in terms of the skills they represent.

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How To Develop a Winning Social Media Management Strategy

Posted on
February 24, 2015
by

It’s 2015: you’ve probably sent a Tweet in your lifetime. You know all about Snapchat, and you’ve even lost a few hours to Instagram. But does that make you a social media guru? Of course not—unless you consider your 13-year-old niece a guru.

So how are you expected to out social-media half the U.S. teen population, and create a winning strategy you can be really proud of?

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Content is the fuel of email marketing: here’s how to ignite it

Posted on
February 17, 2015
by

This post contains excerpts of our recently published ebook: “ROI or RIP: the lean content marketing handbook for SMBs” that you can download for free here.

According to research performed earlier in 2014 by Gigaom and reported by eMarketer, email marketing is still the most commonly used method of digital marketing, with a whopping 86% of respondents claiming to use it. If that’s not enough, though, over half (59%) of B2B marketers surveyed by HubSpot say that email marketing is the most effective channel for generating revenue.

Email marketing needs content and content marketing needs email

Why are email marketing and content marketing such a great match? And what does it mean for your marketing strategy?

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7 Actionable blogging tips for content marketers that are proven to get results

Posted on
February 12, 2015
by

Blogging remains the pillar of content marketing, particularly for SMBs. But when you browse many company’s websites, you realize their blog is under optimized.

 

So why is blogging for content marketing so difficult?

1. It’s hard to maintain the discipline: even when you have an in-house team of content writers, creating content is time consuming and it takes a lot of efforts to maintain the rhythm. Publishing great content on a consistent basis costs a lot.

2. It’s easy to get demotivated by the lack of impact. Initially a blog doesn’t get much traffic so for ROI-driven management team, it’s tempting to dismiss it into the “tried this; didn’t work” category.

Fortunately, getting results out of your content marketing in general and out of your blogging efforts in particular is accessible to anyone. Sure, it requires some particular techniques but the good news is they’re not particularly hard to implement.

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Throw an influencer lovefest – a guide to influencer outreach and content creation

Posted on
February 11, 2015
by

In a world of constant content, it’s no secret influencers can help you augment your content marketing efforts, rise above the noise and generate results.

 Screen Shot 2015-02-09 at 4.18.26 PM.png

It’s important to determine the influencers who can generate the most impact, and build a streamlined process for engagement, relevant to your goals. When I’m planning our content for Traackr, I focus on a few main groups of influencers who I know will help move the needle for our brand. By sharing my model and process, I hope it helps you strengthen your own influencer marketing practice to create really great content!

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Create great content by leveraging your analytics

Posted on
February 10, 2015
by

content marketing analytics

It’s 5:02 a.m. on Friday as I am writing this. The dog is on the floor licking…something (he likes to lick a lot!) and my wife is asleep beside me in bed.
The last 10 minutes have gone something like this:
• What’s happening on Twitter? Boring.
• How about Facebook? Someone else got engaged. Yay for them.
• Any new emails? Delete. Delete. Inbox Zero!
• Hmm…

Source: blog.bufferapp.com

We’ve all been where Bryan Harris was when he wrote the above introduction to this post. As bloggers or content marketers, we always hear that voice in the back of our heads.

When are you going to just sit down and write that post? What are you even going to write about? How are you going to actually make an impact with the finished product?

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Website 101: Why virtual hosting is favorable over free hosting

Posted on
February 9, 2015
by

Editor’s Note: At Scoop.it, we’re strong advocates of the content hub and building a place for marketing content to live. Website and SEO expert Drew Hendricks has some answers to one of the more technical questions involved in creating a content hub: what type of hosting should I use?

Virtual hosting is one of the most common options people choose when buying hosting services. It is affordable and easy to use. If you use free hosting, you could be losing valuable sales.  Spending the few bucks to upgrade to virtual hosting can really help you spike your sales as well as conversions. Read on to see how you could be missing out – and what you can do about it.

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ROI or RIP: The Lean Content Marketing Handbook for SMBs

Posted on
February 4, 2015
by

lean content marketing handbook

Some say content marketing is only for people with deep pockets, and that short of creating Star Wars, you’ll struggle to make an impact. We happen to disagree.

Over the past three years, we’ve been diligently working with SMBs to find success with content marketing via our products, our blog, a Meetup series, and endless conversations with clients as well as subject matter experts. The results of this work have added up the lean content marketing ideology, which is the practice of optimizing content strategies in order to create the highest impact with the least amount of time and resources.

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Introducing Scoop.it Content Director

Posted on
February 4, 2015
by

Scoop.it Content Director

The absolute need to deploy a serious content marketing strategy has been obvious for quite some time now – at least amongst businesses with a reasonable online ambition. Content is the lifeblood of SEO, engagement, brand awareness, thought leadership and ultimately lead generation. So, while “Content is King” might not be the latest scoop; it doesn’t necessarily mean that every SMB has deployed an effective content strategy.

And by effective, I mean a strategy that delivers a positive, measurable ROI.

Since 2011, we’ve been providing SMBs with an effective way to curate content as part of their overall content strategy.  As our user-base has grown, we have fielded several surveys to assess the value of curation, and to understand what the next, major need would be as far as content marketing is concerned.

As we suspected, SMBs who include curation in their content marketing report a positive ROI. We also understand that concrete return on investment is the overarching objective for SMBs. While content is still king, it also needs to fill the treasury! It’s ROI or RIP.

In order to deliver ROI, content marketing for SMBs needs to be lean.

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Posted in
Product News

8 Ways to Integrate Social Media and Blogging according to Guy Kawasaki

Posted on
February 2, 2015
by

“A few years ago, blogging and social media were separate. Blogging was long-form, serious, and crafted. Social media was short-form, personal, and spontaneous. Some people predicted that social media would replace blogging because of declining attention spans. Now blogging and social media not only amicably coexist; they complement each other. The trick is to use a blog to enrich your social media with long-form posts and to use social media to promote your blog.”

Source: blog.marketo.com

Last year, one of our most successful blog post was titled: “Social Media Publishing Is Dead (as we know it)“. Its premise was that because of declining organic reach for brands and pages on Facebook (that the company was open about and that in fact is impacting all other social networks), social media could no longer be considered as a standalone publishing activity.

What do we mean by that?

Historically, many brands and companies have considered their Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+ pages as some form of web pages they could maintain by publishing content to it and generate engagement, independently of their main website. Community Managers who were independent from Content Strategists were managing these pages with different objectives than the ones being defined for the company’s Content Strategy.

This doesn’t work any more as many now agree, including Guy Kawasaki, the well-known evangelist and author of the Art of Social Media.

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The one decision we all make constantly. Or why we must curate or die in 2015.

Posted on
January 28, 2015
by

The key to success in a myriad of web content that may drown us in 2015 is to curate content. The whys and hows are explained in-depth inside this article.

Source: www.searchenginejournal.com

It’s interesting to see that content curation is evolving from an opportunity to a necessity as Julia McCoy from ExpressWriters recently noted in the Search Engine Journal explaining how we must curate content in 2015.

Why is that happening? Why is this accelerating?

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Thank You, Community Managers!

Posted on
January 26, 2015
by

Dear Community Managers,

A few short years ago, the term ‘community manager’ snuck into business world. Companies were rushing to find themselves one, even though they might not have even been sure what exactly he or she would do once she came along. Some of us have been doing it forever (since before the title was even created!), and some of us have just begun. Regardless of which of these categories you fall into, we at Scoop.it have one thing to say: thank you!

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Posted in
Community

Measuring content curation: Introducing new Scoop.it Analytics

Posted on
January 22, 2015
by

In a survey last year of more than 1,500 professionals using content curation, 76% of them said content curation helped them reach their business goals. As content becomes more and more important to achieve success, it also becomes critical to measure how it effectively helps. In fact, as renowned businessman & author Peter Drucker put it, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
Having data is is one thing, but being able to analyze it is a completely different ballgame. Data needs to be visual in order to have an impact and guide future actions, and that is why we have created a beautiful new interactive Analytics center within Scoop.it. We’ve taken into consideration some of the most important data points that guide content marketing strategies, including whether or not content resonates with an audience, times of day the audience is online, and work division between team members, and based our redesign off of them.
The bottom line is that today, we’re excited to announce a complete revamp of our analytics dashboard bringing not only better looking, easier to use analytics but also new metrics and KPI’s to better understand the impact of your content curation.

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Where to start for good SEO: great content or link building?

Posted on
January 16, 2015
by

Is it possible to perform well in search rankings by simply producing good content? 

Source: moz.com

Just how far SEO evolved? “Good content is the new SEO” has been the new motto for a few years. But is it true to the point where you can ignore link building? 

Moz’s Rand Fishkin gives his view on the question in this video.

The short version of his answer is that “yes it’s possible but it’s very tough“. Up to the point where he admits to admiring these sites:

“I find looking at websites that accomplish SEO without active link building fascinating, because they have editorially earned those links through very little intentional effort on their own. I think there’s a tremendous amount that we can take away from that process and optimize around this.“

While I feel it’s a little disappointing that he doesn’t give any numbers or more conclusive arguments, I also think the interesting question is:

What should you focus on first? Good Content or link building?

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Uncategorized

How to add influencer marketing to your content strategy

Posted on
January 14, 2015
by

Content-Influence-Framework.jpg

Content Marketing and Influencer Strategy must work together for either to be successful. 90% of the world’s data has been generated in the past 2 years; and while content marketing is approaching mass adoption, getting a message in front of the right people at the right time is as formidable as it is essential. To rise above the noise, convey a message and mobilize buyers, content marketers are turning to influencers.

“Investing in a content and influencer marketing strategy can be one of the most impactful actions a business can make.” – Lee Odden, TopRank Marketing
In the last 10 years, B2B and B2C organizations alike have quickly adopted content-driven strategies to attract, nurture, enable, inspire, educate and support their customers. Even as the platforms and tactics change, content as a strategy to reach audiences remains powerful and continues to grow.

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Content & Community Management: The Perfect Pair

Posted on
January 7, 2015
by

Two of the most up-and-coming job titles floating around the tech world these days are content marketer and community manager. My professional journey happened to start with one and lead to the a combination of the two, and I’m not alone.

As community managers, our job is to make sure that the community dedicated to the brand or product that we represent feels satisfied, proud, and willing to spread the word. Having a suite of content specifically dedicated to community management efforts can be more useful in this area than you may imagine.

I talked to a few top community managers to explore how they have integrated a content strategy with their community strategy and what they had to say was quite interesting.

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Community

Using WordPress as an alternative to HubSpot?

Posted on
January 6, 2015
by

“Recently we migrated our website so this time In this article we take a look at how to migrate a website from Hubspot to Wordpress.”

Source: blog.idrsolutions.com

Hesitating to pay the full price for HubSpot when Wordpress is essentially free? This article gives an interesting perspective on how you can actually migrate to Wordpress from HubSpot.

Should you migrate from HubSpot to Wordpress?

A few things are interesting to note:

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What you read: 2014

Posted on
December 30, 2014
by

As 2014 comes to a close and we’re all getting ready to ring in 2015 with style, let’s take a look back at what you read on the Scoop.it blog over the last 12 months.

These are ten of our top performing posts from the last year – the ones you liked, shared, commented on, and maybe even learned a little from. Join me on this trip through 2014 via this blog and maybe you’ll find a hidden gem you didn’t even know existed.

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Posted in
Community

Scoop.it Secret Santa: 4 New Templates!

Posted on
December 17, 2014
by

Happy holidays, Scoopiteers!

As you probably know, a few months ago we launched Scoop.it topic page templates in an effort to encourage personalization and of curated content. You have been experimenting with our first edition templates and making your topic pages look beautiful since then, and we want more!

Today, we’re excited to announce four more templates to be used on Scoop.it topic pages. And, that’s not all. One of them was designed by Scoopiteers Bang2Joom! Without further ado, here is your winning template, Fashion:

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Posted in
Product News

6 Email Marketing Secrets from Marketo

Posted on
December 16, 2014
by

According to research performed earlier in 2014 by Gigaom and reported by eMarketer, email marketing is still the most commonly used method of digital marketing, with a whopping 86% of respondents claiming to use it. If that’s not enough, though, over half (59%) of B2B marketers surveyed by HubSpot say that email marketing is the most effective channel for generating revenue.

With this in mind, I’ve taken an extensive look at Marketo’s Email Lookbook 2014 with the goals of pulling secrets, tips, and email marketing best practices from each section of the report and sharing them in an easily digestible way. (To read the whole report, click here!)

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5 Top Trends Emerging From CMI’s 60 Content Marketing Predictions for 2015 eBook

Posted on
December 15, 2014
by

It’s time for our annual eBook of content marketing predictions. Read on to see what big trends, changes, and advances experts see on the horizon for our industry in the upcoming year.

Source: contentmarketinginstitute.com

What are the content marketing trends for next year? The Content Marketing Institute asked thought leaders around the world for their predictions and compiled that in this ebook. 

You can read mine above but there I encourage you to read the ebook for others as well. 

Jay Baer’s (slide 10) is particularly interesting:

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Scoop.it’s CEO speaks about algorithms, features, and the future

Posted on
December 10, 2014
by

Today, we hosted our first Ask Me Anything with Scoop.it’s CEO Guillaume Decugis via Google Hangout and TweetChat at #ScoopitAMA.

As we recently introduced the new Smart Suggestion Engine (see http://sco.lt/9N7CV7), we had many questions focusing on this new feature including:

– What are the two coolest features of the new Scoop.it Suggestion Engine?
– Why did you decide to focus on improving the discovery tool?
– What was the progress of the suggestion like from the beginning?
– What does the algorithm behind the gold & silver badges look like?
– What’s the future of Scoop.it?

For those of you who missed it, check out the video:


Have more questions? Tweet them to us @scoopit #ScoopitAMA so we can address them next time.

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Posted in
Events, Team

Content Marketing Hubs Will Take The Lead in 2015

Posted on
December 9, 2014
by


SEO expert Jayson DeMers nails it with his content marketing predictions for the upcoming year.

In case you were wondering whether or not to take these predictions seriously, check out the post Jayson wrote last year around this time predicting the trends for 2014. Almost all of them proved to be true, with the small exception of the importance of Google+ due to SEO things like Authorship (which was discontinued a few months ago).

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Posted in
Uncategorized

#ScoopitAMA: Ask Me Anything, Scoop.it CEO Edition

Posted on
December 5, 2014
by

Did you ever wish you could get inside the brains behind Scoop.it? Now’s your opportunity! Next Wednesday, December 10th at 10am PST, we’ll be hosting a live Google Hangout with Scoop.it’s CEO, Guillaume Decugis and myself to answer all of your questions and provide a look under the hood of Scoop.it.

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Posted in
Events