The Scoop.it Content Curation Blog

How content curation can help you to engage your audiences

6 things you didn’t know you could do with Scoop.it: Part I

The Scoop.it platform has been a perpetual work in progress for the better part of two years. During that period, we’ve had lots of exciting accomplishments and releases, and it’s no secret that some features have remained hidden in the shadows.

As a part of the team working on building Scoop.it as the ultimate knowledge sharing hub, I like to think I know a thing or two about the product – and what fun is knowing things if you don’t get to share them?

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Learning to learn: fighting cognitive biases

In a world with more information than ever, figuring out how to use the brain to its fullest potential, as well as filling it with as much knowledge as possible, is the main focus of a vast amount of people in this world.

I’ve made it clear on many occasions that I believe in the importance of being a perpetual learner. One of the key activities associated with learning is exploring and understanding the way the human brain functions, and using the results of this to properly hack the critical thinking process. For example, did you know that something called a cognitive bias exists? This term refers to the tendency to think in certain ways.

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Measuring your ROI: learning to save money and time

The three little words “return on investment” may be the stuff of every marketers’ dreams or nightmares, depending on how their campaigns and initiatives are performing. Every company has limited resources and in order to justify continued expenses and expenditures, marketers are increasingly pressured to provide a reason, through excellent ROI, to keep or increase their budgets. In fact, nearly two-thirds of CMOs believe that ROI will be the principal measure of performance by 2015.

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Sticking to our values and news for Scoop.it customer and community support

Here at Scoop.it, we have a set of values that we measure all of wins and defeats against. We ask ourselves — “does the spec for this release support our values and mission or are we just trying to be fancy,” or “was this decision made to further what we think is best for the community based on our own DNA?” And sometimes, that means making tough decisions.

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Starting

Sometimes you just have to get started to get done.

A simple Google search will probably net you millions of self-help articles about productivity. They’ll offer tips and techniques, life hacks, and specialized strategies designed to get you moving in the direction you need to go.

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Driving revenue with social, content, marketing automation

Slodes of the talk Jason Miller gave at the Scoop.it #leancontent meetup on Sept. 25, 2013.

theclairbyrd‘s insight:

We recently hosted our event series, #leancontent, with a guest from LinkedIn. His presentation focuses on driving revenue using smart content and optimized distribution steams. Check it out!

See on www.slideshare.net

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Trending: top 6 graphic web design trends

Editor’s Note: At Scoop.it, we believe that the form (the way something is presented) affects the function (the physical use of something) of content engagement online. It is becoming increasingly important to look pretty if you want to drive traffic — the endless streams of pretty pictures on Pinterest is testament to this, and we all know that if a webpage has 6 pt font, we probably won’t read it.

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The Newest Version of Scoop.it: Welcome to the Meritoc[u]racy

1.  Why sharing ideas that matter, matters

We built Scoop.it to make it easy and rewarding to share ideas that matter.

Ideas matter: they make all of us, individuals, businesses and societies, progress. Sharing ideas is equally important as creating them: it honors the creators; it enriches the recipients; and it also benefits the “passers”, who enhance their reputation through propagation of wisdom.

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9 amazing ways to learn online

There is no need to buy a massive set of encyclopedias anymore, as you can learn most things online these days. The trouble is that the internet is filled with terrible amounts of misinformation. So, if you are learning online, you are going to have to find a way of avoiding the 99% of lies and find the 1% of truth.

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Content curation for SEO — from professional purposes to personal passions

Editor’s Note: We’ve always held that content curation (with added insight and value) is great for SEO. The below infographic (courtesy of TechMagnate and Beth Kanter) lays out some of the benefits of content curation.

What exactly is content curation? To Scoop.it, its the “meaningful selection and sharing of online content for professional purposes or personal passions.” Professional purposes run the gamut from thought leadership to product marketing, and personal passions can be gathering and sharing knowledge about anything that gets your engine going. Many people curate every day without knowing it — whether it is sharing an insightful article they discovered on their favorite blog or retweeting a thought leader of their choosing. Curation is everywhere!

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The evolution of the GIF

walken death stare gif

Editor’s Note: While not directly correlated to knowledge sharing, GIFs do contribute to the “smart web” by creating a new way to communicate ideas, add dimensions to conversation, and provide irony and other editorial flavor. They say “a picture is worth a thousand words,” so how many words is a moving picture worth? List your favorite GIF in the comments! 

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Becoming a world champion blogger by leveraging your existing characteristics and resources

Editor’s Note: At Scoop.it, we believe content curation is just as powerful as original content generation. But, what many people miss is that when they curate, often they are creating original content on top of the existing article or other media through the addition of context, opinion, or curator’s insight. So, with that in mind, check out the following Guest Article from an expert blogger on creating strong blog content!

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Inspiration wants to be free — news for iPad users

Back in 2011, just a few months after the iPad launched, I was asked to moderate a panel on the future impact of the iPad. What new behaviors will it generate? What impact will it have on existing industries? As a way to do some research, I created a Scoop.it page (that I kept updating since then) and started to dig deeper on studies that had been published, experiments that had been made, etc… What struck me from this – and the panel discussion thereafter – was how much everyone discounted the creation capabilities of the iPad. At the January 2010 keynote, Steve Jobs himself defined the iPad as a device that would be better than a smartphone or a computer for browsing the web, doing email, watching photos or videos, listening to music, playing games and reading eBooks. In short, a device specialized in consuming content. Not creating any.

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Learning to learn: losing yourself in passion

Have you ever noticed that, when we’re younger, school and learning seem like a chore, and yet when we’re older, we wish we could just spend all of our time consuming information and advancing our knowledge?

Perhaps this is because our minds have matured with age, or simply because we always want to do things once we don’t have to. Or, maybe it’s because once we’ve been through certain experiences, we’re more capable of identifying our true passions.

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Stealing images from the web vs using images ethically [infographic] | visua.ly

Editor’s Note: Copyright and fair use of images is oftentimes a difficult set of rules to follow. It’s very easy with the tools available (namely Google Image search) to grab pictures and use them without thinking whether you are using that image fairly or not. While this infographic is a bit self-promotional on behalf of imgembed.com, they are a useful platform for making the web a better, more fair place. Take a look! 

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Learning how to write effective sentences for the web

Communication between people is 55% body language, 38% tone of voice, and only 7% the words you actually say. Quickly consider the impact of stripping away 93% of the meaning someone understands from an idea you are trying to communicate — something we do every single day when we create or interact online. The efficacy of that remaining 7% becomes incredibly important, especially if you have business or personal brand investments on the line.

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Are you a thought leader?

Ask.com says that a thought leader is an individual or firm that is recognized as an authority in a specialized field and whose expertise is sought and often rewarded. In a world where information is often it’s own currency, thought leaders are seen as a resource because in order to earn that status, they have made a career of focusing on their primary expertise. Being a thought leader has cachet and, according to Malcolm Gladwell, if you spend 10,000 hours focused on one thing, then you’ll end up being an expert at it.

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Learning to Learn: leveraging your circadian rhythm

There are a few distinct, precious moments of heightened sensory elation that we can achieve through unique actions; whether that be hitting the sweet spot on your driver from the tee box, tossing that crumpled up piece of paper that started out as a great idea and delivering it perfectly into the waste basket 10 feet away, or something as simple as arriving at the perfect adjective when telling a story to a friend.

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In defense of the niche: content marketing and the rise of the smart web

Author and entrepreneur Seth Godin once said that “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.” Even for those folks who’ve never so much as heard of lead-gen or nurture programs, the importance of relevant content and compelling narrative has never been so necessary as it is today — especially because the digital sea is brimming with the wreckage of too many voices with far too little exposure.

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