The exhausting compulsion to hit “refresh”
I love this “secret of adulthood” by Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project: “Happiness doesn’t always make me feel happy.”
Read MoreScoop.it Pros: Laura Brown on curation and the display of information
Being a content curator is all about displaying information. We don’t create the content, we display it. We share it – and people read it. But, first you have to display it. There are several skills involved in displaying content. Here are some thoughts for you to consider when creating and curating a Scoop.it topic.
Read MoreShould social networks curate their own content? Or should users do it?
The challenge [for social networks] is to create something of permanent value for the community, to offer more than a temporary spotlight.
gdecugis‘s insight:
Austin Powell comes back on PaidContent the recent announcement by Tumblr to shut down Sotryboard and lay off the editorial team that was highlighting and curating Tumblr’s best content.
He makes a point that it’s been extremely hard for most social networks – with the notable exception of LinkedIn with its influencer program – to add value by curating its users’ best content.
I wonder whether that’s actually such a big deal.
Read MoreLearning to learn: a series on hacking your own brain
I recently partook in a discussion among some fellow community managers on the best ways to learn about the industry and how to train its future generations. When the conversation reached the point where we all shared the “training” we went through ourselves, the answers began getting interesting.
Read MoreDoes meme count as culture?
The ubiquitous internet meme comes in many forms — from iterations on top of iterations of a viral video to a random picture of a cute animals with an ironic white Impact caption. They also seem to proliferate like one of those animals with an ironic white Impact caption, if you know what I mean.
Read MoreWhere you should focus while establishing your online presence
If you aren’t engaging your customers online, your business is missing out on a huge opportunity to generate sales and gain valuable new customers. Creating and maintaining an online presence isn’t easy. You can quickly become overwhelmed or waste money on unsuccessful outreach if you don’t approach it in an informed, strategic manner.
Read MoreLearning when to promote your message, and when not to.
One of the hardest things about becoming the “voice” of an organization is figuring out what in the world to say. Do you promote your group endlessly? Do you send out fun links you think your constituents will enjoy? Do you talk to your fans and figure out what they want? Well, the answer is yes to all the above. However, it’s very easy to fall into the trap many other organizations do and either promote the heck out of your mission or refuse to talk about yourself at all. Both tactics can result in you missing out on customers, constituents or funding and even chase your current followers away. So how do you find a good balance?
Read MoreTwitter and its impact IRL
Here in the US, the Dow recently tumbled almost 150 points in a “flash crash” caused by widespread digital panic. What was the cause of this panic? Twitter.
The bigger story is that someone hacked the official AP Twitter handle and tweeted a false report of a terrorist attack on the White House, which claimed that the President had been injured in said attack. This is significant in the grander scheme because the Dow essentially measures the health of the US economy and a hit of this magnitude means lots of people (deserving or otherwise) needlessly lost a lot of money in nanoseconds.
Read MoreEffective community building for social change
NOTE: Eric is talking about the non-profit sector, but these rules apply seamlessly to for-profit operations, personal brands, and enthusiasts.
There are currently around 1.5 million non-profits registered in the US alone, with total contributions amounting to just under $300 billion. But while many charitable organizations do spend more than 66% of a donation on their actual mission, it is a rare case. Perhaps more importantly, donors have very little control over their money and how it gets used, or to what end.
Read MoreLame to fame: 4 tips for optimizing presentations for Twitter
Presentations and slideshows have been historically one of the most boring and standard corporate media currently available to employees and management. They are meant to purely educational or purely for selling — they are very rarely anything but a pitch or a corporate update. But with the rise of Slideshare as a platform for sharing a new kind of presentation, a lean, value-adding, and stand-alone type of presentation, and its proof as a viable option for driving traffic, the “corporate presentation” can be leveraged for more than its functional purpose and optimized to spread the company or personal message via social media.
Read MoreClash of the Titans
Recently, Flipboard, the reading platform for iPad, announced a new feature allowing users to create their own personalized magazines with Flipboard content. Ironically, we also recently unveiled a new feature. We created Read.it, an interest-based reading application powered by Scoop.it content and curated by our community of users. Why is this ironic? Because the two huge platforms for curating and consuming content have simultaneously entered each other’s spaces at the exact same time.
Read MoreThe only web services that don’t change are the dead ones
Some of you have asked, “How do we decide on making changes on Scoop.it?” We felt that this is an interesting opportunity to share the answer openly.
First, let me start by saying that it’s a process that has evolved to become much more complex now that millions are using Scoop.it every week. In the beginning, we were able to let our vision and intiution guide us, but now we have a responsibility to you, the Scoop.it community, who have decided to use this service as your content curation hub on a daily basis.
Sometimes decisions are easy: when you asked for curated newsletter capability on our feedback forum, it was just a matter of planning this together with the right resources and partner. It can take some time (bear with us…) but the decisions are simple. Sometimes, it’s a question of vision: we have strong values and a vision for what we feel content curation and the interest graph should stand for, and that of course. continues to guide us just like we recently experimented by launching Read.it.
At the UX (user experience) level though, this can be more difficult: not so much for the inspiration and the big ideas but for the little details that can have a big impact. Should this button be at the top or the bottom? Left or right? Should we give users one main option and a bunch of secondary ones or should we highlight the three that are the used most often? Did we make that feature visible enough? Or is it too prominently displayed and annoying? A lot of these questions don’t have good or bad answers you can easily guess: you have to try out to find out.
Read MoreFrom the Desk of Scoop.it President Marc Rougier
Scoopiteers,
It takes four legs for a service to run well and fast:
– a tangible value proposition
– an efficient and pleasant user experience (UX)
– a responsive and competent customer support
– a reliable quality of service (QoS)
Scoop.it helps people and businesses shine on the web by sharing content that matters. We are working hard to constantly refine your user experience, and to do so, we regularly conduct performance measurement, and listen to your invaluable feedback. We encourage our support team to create a close relationship with you as we value your continued support and engagement with our team and the product. (for more details, please #AskAlly).
But despite relentless efforts, March has been a very bad month with our QoS – meaning that we failed you on our product’s performance and service. Please accept our sincere apologizes on behalf of Guillaume, myself and the entire Scoop.it team. I’d like to also share some information about what exactly happened; and, most importantly, I want to reassure you: the problems are now fixed. We are up and running with lots of spare power, and it’s full steam ahead!
4 ways to educate your audience and spread your message via mobile
In the 3rd quarter of 2012, 1.03 billion smartphones were reported as active worldwide, which means nearly 1 in 5 people is walking around with the internet in their pocket. Nielsen recently announced that of these 1.03 billion smartphones, 42% of mobile users browsed and 23% purchased products via mobile in the last 30 days, which means there are 432,600,000 sets of engaged mobile eyes and 236,900,000 sets of thumbs actively purchasing products and services via mobile. These numbers are only growing.
Read MoreEducate and engage your customer through social media: The Zappos Strategy
We are more than just shoes! Zappos is a service company that just happens to sell ________. These are two statements that sit at the core of everything Zappos is, and guide Zappos as a company that continues to innovate. As the Social Community Manager of Zappos, I want that answer to be clothing, fashion, snowboards, footwear, cookware, bedding, and so much more. But Zappos is typically associated with 2 things: Footwear and great customer service.
Read MoreAnnouncing our newest offering — Read.it!
For the past few months, the team here at Scoop.it has been focusing on “taking curation beyond the platform,” our own little bit of rebellion against computer-only or anti-mobile curation tools and platforms. We launched a fantastic re-design of our iPhone application, integrated Scoop.it with MailChimp to easily take your curation to the world of email, and some other great stuff too.
Read MoreAn easy recipe to share your Scoop.it newsletter with Twitter and Facebook
I’ve been listening to all the feedback from our awesome community about our newest service offering, the MailChimp Newsletter integration feature, and have been hearing that many people would like the option of sharing the newsletter with their social audiences. This would require hosting the completed newsletter somewhere online with a public link to share. Unfortunately, this functionality doesn’t exist within Scoop.it yet (not to say it won’t shortly), but I’ve concocted a little work-around for everyone who wants to share their newsletter this way. It requires an extra tool, but its all free and pretty easy to do, and the end result is great.
Read MoreLearn by embracing the pain and asking for feedback
I admit it. It can be more than a little terrifying to find out what other people think of you. Up until that point you can pretend that all is well and you’re doing absolutely nothing wrong. The moment you say “What do you think about…?” your world might totally shatter. Therefore it’s a little nerve-wracking to ask.
Read MorePower to the people.
Putting the power of message amplification into the hands of the sharer equalizes the content landscape: the person who understands the myriad behaviors by the many types of people who would be interested in sharing your specific brand of content and then actually executes on these idiosyncrasies successfully will win. Not just the person with the biggest budget.
Time for next-generation interest-based content curation? RIP Google Reader
TechCrunch: Google just revealed plans to shut down eight of its services as part of what it’s calling an ongoing spring cleaning effort. Some of them are pretty arcane, but among TechCrunch writers, anyway, we’re pretty bummed to see that Google Reader will be shut down on July 1.
Here’s my take on it.
Read MoreAnnouncing: Curated Newsletters and MailChimp Integration
This morning we released something really exciting — curated newsletter functionality! We recognize the role curation is playing in the evolution of the newsletter, and we wanted to provide an easy way for our users to expand their reach into the be-all-end-all of web communication — email.
Spreadable vs Viral: What it actually means for content
Recently at a SXSW panel, the authors of the book Spreadable Media were discussing the future of internet media and how “viral” content is actually not viral at all. The panelists argued that virality (in the traditional medical sense) is passive — a host doesn’t choose to contract a virus and doesn’t choose to spread it through his body. The virus spreads by its own means. They made the point that “viral” content and media (think Gangnam Style) are actually active choices; that virality in media doesn’t just happen. A choice is made by a user to share that specific piece of media within their own networks.
Read MoreA communication revolution and the rise of mobile user-generated content
Isn’t it time for text to enter the mobile UGC (UGC) revolution?
When Facebook bought Instagram for $1B last year, some called it genius, others called it luck. But whether we think that deal made sense or not, it marked an important change in the history of the web in general and of mobile internet in particular: the rise of mobile user-generated content.
Read MoreMedia Creation; Unchained: An Awesome Infographic
We see the tides of media and content creation turning toward mobile as a preferred creation platform. What do you think?
#SXSW 2013 Events and Adventures
The Scoop.it team will be headed to SXSW this year and we’d love to see you! We’ll be checking out the programming, haunting community get-togethers, and riding around on the Hootsuite #HootBus, so keep an eye out! We’re hoping to interview some of our awesome users at the conference about their big ideas, favorite topics, and how they are using Scoop.it, so if you’d like to be immortalized in the Scoop.it annals of history, email clair@scoop.it and I’ll get you set up.
Read MoreHow UserVoice Keeps Customers (Happy) Through Content
In this week’s edition of Scoop.it’s lean content meetup, we were honored to welcome the the Content & Community Director of UserVoice, Evan Hamilton.
Ally Greer‘s insight:
In our last #leancontent meetup, UserVoice’s Evan Hamilton shared some great advice on creating and distributing content. The main questions answered included:
1. Why Content?
2. What Type of Content Should I Create?
3. How Should I Distribute my Content?
4. How do I Reap the Benefits of Content?
5. What Tips Can You Provide for Content Creation?
Check out the writeup to find out the answers!
See on leancontent.it
Read More3 Reasons Why Communities Help Professionals Learn
The self-employed life can be a little lonely sometimes. The more work you put into your business, the less it seems you can relate to anyone else. It’s not that you’re actively pushing friends and family away; it’s just they can’t understand your specific issues.
Read MoreScoop.it Content Curation, Unchained
We’ve been thinking here at Scoop.it about the mobile and social revolutions and how we can help make the curation process a seamless part of your day. We think that the most interesting reading and content consumption happens during the “in between” moments these days — on the bus, during breakfast, etc — instead of during typical 9 to 5 hours, which has been the case historically. Instapaper recently released a study of reading data collected for over 100 million articles, which shows the majority of mobile content being consumed has actually shifted to between 6 pm and 9 pm. They also released data showing that there are very specific spikes in content consumption specifically via iPhone:
- 6am – Early morning, breakfast
- 9am – The morning commute, start of the work day
- 5pm – 6pm – End of the work day and the commute home
- 8pm – 10pm – Couch time, prime time, bed time
Based on compelling data like this and feedback from our community, we believe that the future of curation is mobile. We’ve made some awesome changes to the iPhone app to make your job as curator easier and your mobile curation more effective. It shouldn’t be a chore to feed your social channels interesting content while you’re on the move, and we are working to unchain your curation experience and make it even more effortlessly flexible and mobile.
Read MoreShould Brands Have Newsrooms?
Brand newsrooms are a hot new trend in marketing. To believe the hype, every brand should be staffing up with journalists and going 24/7. In reality, the model’s not right for the majority of brands.
gdecugis‘s insight:
Brian Solis wrote “every brand should become a media to earn relevance“. And the trend for companies to partially become media companies is strong. This interesting article looks at whether this means they should have their own newsroom because they can (as Virgin’s Mobile head of global marketing Ron Faris puts it “We created our newsroom for a fraction of what it costs to create a 30-second spot“), whether they should rely on an agency or whether they should simply pass.
While I would tend to agree with Saya Weissman’s conclusions that going all the way to a newsroom isn’t appropriate for all brands, I see a larger in-between opportunity around content curation for brands. Producing unbiased, relevant and engaging content on a regular basis is not only tough: it might be impractical. Building on external sources and 3rd-party content has always been an interesting way to enlarge any discussion.
See on www.digiday.com
Read More6 Tricks to Maximize the Impact of Your Tweets
Did you know that there’s a place where many of your customers live and actually want to talk to and hear from you in real time? It’s a magical land, it’s real, and it’s called Twitter.
Ally Greer‘s insight:
Twitter is one of the most efficient tools out there to connect with your audience, to share engaging information and content, and even to provide personal customer service. If you do it right, it’s a gold mine; if you don’t, it could result in disaster.
It may be true that “gold mine” and “disaster” are the two extremes and that it’s possible to be alright at Twitter, but who strives to be mediocre? If you want to rock it and make sure each and every tweet is the best it can possibly be, take these 6 tips into consideration the next time you sit down to write the perfect tweet.
See on leancontentmarketing.tumblr.com
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