The Scoop.it Content Curation Blog

How content curation can help you to engage your audiences

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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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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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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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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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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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

Winning content marketing strategies for SMBs

Posted on
December 3, 2014
by

Content marketing continues to grow in importance for both B2B and B2C organizations, and as more and more businesses come to realize the importance of establishing thought leadership in their fields, those same businesses are finding that a disciplined, intelligent, and focused content marketing strategy is one of the best mechanisms by which to achieve their objectives.

But while we’ve all marveled at the publicity stunts of RedBull and other major brands with huge marketing budgets, we wanted to recap why and how content marketing applied to SMBs which, by definition, dont’ have as deep pockets.

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5 Signs you highly need a content curation diet in your marketing mix

Posted on
December 2, 2014
by

Feeling hungover after the holiday? You’ll get over it. But how about your content strategy? Just like eating healthy largely depends on mixing diverse types of food, content marketing experts such as Heidi Cohen say you won’t achieve optimal results if you’re relying 100% on your own content for your marketing efforts. Don’t believe it? Read our own survey results on the ROI of content curation in the marketing mix.

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How the right influencer strategy can amplify your content marketing

Posted on
November 24, 2014
by

 

To rise above the noise, convey a message and mobilize buyers, content marketers are turning to influencers.

Source: www.slideshare.net

Scaling Content Marketing is the key area of focus for many marketers these days. A number of strategies are being offered by experts, social networks or distribution platforms including the most natural one to them: pay for play. As Mark Schaefer wrote earlier this year, Content Marketing could be the victim of its own success if content strategists don’t put in place strategies to overcome the content abundance that results in diminishing returns. Earlier this year, Facebook for instance admitted to de-prioritize the organic reach of content from Facebook pages as users are more and more publishing content to more and more friends. The solution, they say? Buy ads to boost your post. And as LinkedIn and Twitter are also massively dependent on advertising revenue, this trend is here for good.

As mentioned in my reply to Mark, I believe there are ways to overcome content shock and scale Content Marketing through Lean Content. Interest-based content curation is an answer in the broad sense as it’s about leveraging existing content rather than adding to it but the team at Traackr puts it in a more specific context: influencer amplification.

Their point is a clear one: rather than paying for distribution, getting influencers to amplify your reach is a much more efficient approach.

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Introducing The New Scoop.it Suggestion Engine: Bringing You More Relevant Content

Posted on
November 20, 2014
by

Every business’s marketing objectives require awesome content. Whether you’re focused on building thought leadership, increasing brand awareness, boosting SEO, engaging with an audience, or generating leads, it’s no longer a question that content marketing is the answer.

You create content, you outsource content, you curate content. Content curation has indeed proven its efficiency as a potent element of your editorial line, especially in terms of inbound marketing.

Now, the question remains: how do we turn this into a simple, scalable process?

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Product News

Content curation on WordPress: how to do it right.

Posted on
November 14, 2014
by

Content Curation on Wordpress - how to do it right - compared benefits of the various solutions

One of the main ways to to leverage content curation for business is to add curated content to your website or blog. By selecting the most interesting content for your target audience and adding some context to it, you will naturally show your expertise to your visitors – a good objective in itself. But, if you do it right, you should also enjoy the following benefits:

  • Audience engagement as readers can now discover more interesting content than just your own stories or product news: loyal visitors will stay longer, hopping between related curated pieces, and have reasons for coming back or even subscribe to receive your email newsletters.

  • SEO as your Website now contains more quality content on your niche topic which can be indexed by Google. Not only will that content be well targeted and relevant but it will also be organized and contextualized which is what Google is looking for (more on seo benefits of content curation here).

  • Social Traffic as your readers can share content they like while directing traffic to your site (more on why you should use a content hub for your social media publishing here).

  • Conversions as readers of your curated content are not just clicking on links in your tweets or Facebook posts to end up on third-party websites, but are instead being directed to your own website that now acts as a content hub. You can incorporate call-to-actions in your hub to either contact you, subscribe to your newsletter or request a demo of your product (more on how to use content curation for inbound marketing and lead generation here).

So how do you integrate curated content to Wordpress in the right way, to reach these objectives?

Not all integrations are created equal, and some integrations will not deliver the above benefits in an optimal way. Here are the pros and cons of key integration options that you should be aware of:

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Report: SMBs Turn to Content Curation for Increased ROI

Posted on
November 13, 2014
by


As the beginning of the end of 2014 approaches, marketers are likely reflecting upon the last year, the trends that have caught on, and the trends that haven’t. At this time in 2013, the digital marketing world was abuzz about content marketing and content curation. Over the last year or so, marketing experts have been debating how much importance content curation should have within a content marketing strategy.

With over 1.5 million freemium users on our platform, we decided to take a closer look at what the data says for small businesses who have been using curation over the last year. The findings were quite interesting, especially when comparing the returns of content creation vs. the returns of content curation with respect to how much investment is put into them.

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3 Things To Begin With To Build A Strong Personal Brand

Posted on
November 13, 2014
by

what to focus your personal branding efforts on

Ever Googled yourself? What did you see? Did you like digital you? Are you visible in an Internet century? Here are the steps to creating a personal brand.

Source: www.jeffbullas.com

Five years ago, I didn’t think much of the concept of personal brand: it felt artificial and vain. I had a reputation of course and I felt strongly about it. But a brand? I also had opinions and felt I had some expertise. But did that make me a thought leader?

Since then, Web 2.0 has changed the way we are perceived by others. It gave us an opportunity to exist which became an obligation to maintain our online presence: whether we like it or not, we are the content we publish.

Jeff Bullas has built a strong personal brand through his blog and he articulates in this post the 10 principles he’s prescribing to develop your personal brand.

10 is a lot. And this list might sound overwhelming… So here’s my take on it:

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SEO: what it used to be vs what it is now

Posted on
November 10, 2014
by

SEO: what it used to be vs what it is now

With Panda, Penguin and all the other Google updates, SEO has changed over the years. What used to work doesn’t anymore.

Source: www.quicksprout.com

As many have observed for some time now, SEO has completely changed over the past few years. From being machine-centric, it became people-centric. But what does it mean concretely to content marketers?

This infographic by Neil Patel gives a number of interesting points, a couple of which I want to comment:

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The Desert Island: the future is the curated Web for Steve Rosenbaum in Curate This!

Posted on
November 7, 2014
by

Curate this! by Steve Rosenbaum

Three and half years ago, my friend Steve Rosenbaum came out with a book that had a huge impact: Curation Nation. He described perhaps better than anyone else how much content curation was needed and how important a trend it will be. His latest book Curate This! just got published and it’s a fantastic read: not only is it a curation jewel in itself but he also introduces a new concept that paints the future of what the Web could eventually become: the desert island.

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Be Human in Your Content Marketing

Posted on
November 6, 2014
by

Don't be a robot content marketer

Here’s one of the most significant tenets of content marketing: People like to do business with other people. They don’t like to do business with faceless, anonymous, inhuman brands or big corporations.

Source: www.business2community.com

Occasionally people ask us how they could fully automate their content publishing. They’d like to not only get content suggestions automatically but also that this content be published automatically. They’d want to set up once and then forget their content marketing while just reaping the benefits of it. I don’t blame them and I even understand them. But content simply doesn’t work that way for the precise reason Amanda Clark from Grammar Chic introduces this post we’ve curated.

Communication is fundamentally human.

It’s not just an ethical question but it’s also a matter of efficiency

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