Today is Community Manager Appreciation Day, and I find myself reflecting on all of the lucky occurrences that helped get me to where I am. From Penn State to Paris, and now, San Francisco, it’s been quite a journey. This is my story.
“If the future of search is likely to be social, the future of social is likely to involve more search.”
This is a post I wrote for Fast Company on the conflicting tension I immediately saw following the launch of Graph Search by Facebook. Facebook’s new search tool will either have to remain private, resulting in limited, biased content, or make private data accessible to search.
Here’s why.
See on www.fastcompany.com
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Social media often gets a bad rap for being a driving force behind people falling out of touch, neglecting in-person relationships, and reducing productivity for people around the world. Naysayers blame it for shorter attention spans and proliferation of bad grammar, and the most vehement of those naysayers believe that social media has led to privacy being a thing of the past. To be fair, there have been many times where I’ve been trolling my Twitter feed only to be thoroughly horrified by TMI moments and tHingz Speld lIKE THIZ.
“Students of all ages must be trained to search, select, qualify (and therefore disqualify), then enrich with their own thought, and then use and share information.” – Marc Rougier, Co-Founder, Scoop.it
From Daily Edventures:
Educators often see the Internet as a double-edged sword. While the Web provides nearly limitless information on any given topic, that information is often unfiltered, unedited and unfocused. That’s where Marc Rougier and his company, Scoop.it, come in. While their tools were originally created to help marketers and entrepreneurs increase their online visibility, the company quickly discovered that teachers and students found the curation tool invaluable.
“Since the explosion of Web 2.0,” Rougier says, “we live in a world of information overload: everyone has become a producer of information.” This abundance of information, according to Rougier, has generated a double problem: “If everyone can speak, to whom should I listen?” (a problem of qualification of information — extracting the signal from the noise), and “If everyone can speak, how can I get heard?” (a problem of acquiring visibility, reputation, and a voice).
Here, the mission is to get students aware of the importance of information management — to let them really touch, first hand, the challenge of qualification and organization of data – whatever their subject of study. We live in a world of information abundance and (almost) information democracy. Yet, if we are not prepared for it, we can be force-fed by a very small amount of data (a unique video seen a billion times…) and even by false information, and let a vast amount of valuable data be wasted. Students of all ages must be trained to search, select, qualify (and therefore disqualify), then enrich with their own thought, and then use and share information.
See on dailyedventures.com
Read More2012 was quite the year for social media blunders. From American Apparrel offering a 20% coupon to help the victims of Hurricane Sandy deal with their “boredom,” to #McDStories to the worst hijacked hashtags, some brands proved that they need more than a few tips.
It’s time to be frank. Here are 7 ways to make yourself look terrible on social media. (Pro tip: you’re not supposed to do them.)
See on www.businessinsider.com
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Here’s a little piece of SEO nerdery that affects us all: Google is using Google+ to influence search results in a big way, and brands and media organizations alike have yet to wake up to the…
Erin Griffith analyzes how the use of authorships combined with Google+ is now impacting Google search results.
This change is not new but, as she puts it, it is significant: “Google was always about the algorithm, not curation, certainly not curation through something as, well, human as a social network. The emphasis before was about what was on the page not who wrote it.”
While she focuses on the new importance of authorship given by Google, what’s happening is actually a mix of a couple of things which are in my opinion equally good:
#1 means that an identified, reputable author will prevail; #2 is part of the social signal that Google uses more and more to rank results and that builds on curators’ activity.
Bottom line is that – as I predicted a while ago – the age of low-quality content cheaply produced by random anonymous writers in content farms for pure SEO purposes is over. By combining a measure of the author’s influence as well as taking into account curators’ appetite for a piece of content, Google is bringing quality back in the game. Which is good for authors, curators and… readers.
See on pandodaily.com
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The New Year’s resolution is such an interesting, inspirational concept. The fact that we’ve institutionalized a specific time of year to be introspective and reflect on how we lived our last 12 months of life is a pretty incredible thing — definitely an institution to respect and make a priority as we ring in 2013. Identifying which things in our lives were good and which things could have been improved should be top-of-mind when the clock strikes its respective 12:00 AM across the globe on January 1st, 2013 and signifies the start of a brand new year. I’ve always felt that a “resolution” may not be the most effective use of the insights we glean from reflecting on our last year. I’ve always felt pressure to do more things, or different things, or change my life trajectory in a significant way with each list of resolutions I’ve written. In 2012, it was “learn a new language,” in 2011 was “read at least 30 books,” and 2010 was “get a job that doesn’t suck.” I’ve always felt compelled to make a firm decision to either do a new thing or break some terrible old habit.
My name is Ally Greer. I’m a marketer with expertise in content marketing and curation. You’ve probably never heard of me.
With over 500 million users on Twitter, 175 million on LinkedIn, and over a billion on Facebook, you probably haven’t heard of most people on the Internet. The bad news is that this also means most of those people probably haven’t heard of you either.
That said, I’m certainly not here to tell you how flooded the Internet is and discourage you from jumping into the information pool. In fact, I’m telling you to do the exact opposite. Although it isn’t likely that all 500 million people on Twitter will be following you by the time you’re finished reading this (or ever), there are a few ways to look what we call “information overload” right in the face and use it to your advantage.
In a digital world characterized by an overwhelming amount of noise, everyone is struggling to find relevant content from people and brands with an expertise on a specific subject. Content curators are the ones who step up to the plate.
According to Michael Brenner, cofounder of Business 2 Community, content curation is the process of identifying relevant content for your audience from multiple sources, modifying or editing that content to reflect the needs of your audience and delivering the content to the appropriate channels of distribution.
The truth is, you’re probably already curating content. Do you share links on Twitter? Do you Retweet content that you find interesting? Do you write blogposts referencing content that’s been created by others? If so, you’re a curator. You know what you’re talking about, you know where the best content on your topic of expertise is, and you put it together for the world to see. But, the question still looms: if no one knows who you are, how will they find it?
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You may have noticed (or maybe not, because they are so awesome to use) that we recently rolled out some big changes to the Scoop.it platform. Firstly, don’t panic. Secondly. you’re going to love them. We had you (and your success online) in mind while designing them, and we’ve done some intense testing with the new features and the beta testers are just as excited as we are. All the changes make the platform better — allowing you to accelerate and grow your visibility on the web and truly shine.
The changes are all awesome; giving you more control over the look and feel of your topic pages, deeper access to your social networks and more seamless connections between your various social properties.
Read MoreFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE [San Francisco, CA — December 11, 2012] — Scoop.it, a leading social media and content curation platform for professionals and businesses, recently announced it’s platform redesign, elements of which focus specifically on…
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Five years ago, SEO was all the buzz. Today, it has shifted to “content marketing,” which aims to create stories humans want to read and engage with. – The above chart is a good summary of this trend.
Shane Snow makes a good summary on Mashable of the trends impacting SEO these days. We moved from a machiavellian approach to game Google to influence-based content marketing because social media changed the game as others have observed before.
The success of Social Content Curation is a good example of that trend: human sharing and curating content beat the system and become such an important trend that Google had not only to change their algorithms but also start a social network just because of that.
See on mashable.com
Read MoreThis evening, we were happy to host the co-founder of the awesome social media tool BufferApp, Leo Widrich (@LeoWid), who shared five awesome lessons that he’s learned over the last two years of developing his very own content marketing strategy.
At the time of its creation, Buffer App didn’t have any users and its two young founders tried relentlessly to get any tech blogs to cover them. When this didn’t work, the co-founders asked themselves, “if no one else will write about us, why can’t we just write about ourselves?”
Since Leo was the “marketing guy,” he was charged with putting out as much content as he could to spread the word about Buffer App. Two years and a highly successful social media app later, Leo has learned some of the most important lessons in content marketing:
1. Pick Quantity over Quality
2. The Hidden Power of Images
3. Copy and Steal
4. Help 1 other person with each piece of content.
5. Show your passion and culture
Read more on leancontentmarketing.tumblr.com
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I gave this talk at TechWeek L.A. (where else on such a topic?) last week as I felt the new social media evolutions, particularly the rise of the interest graph, are making things move quickly on that subject.
Why do we remember famous people in history? How? How about today’s celebrities? And how are the Internet and the Social Web changing that now?
A look at the fame creation process tells us it is indissociable from the media creation process, which has been deeply impacted by new information technology. The Andy Warhol prediction is probably no longer valid and we need to rethink fame in the context of a distributed Internet network which more and more becomes topic-centric and no longer people-centric.
See on www.slideshare.net
Read More“If there’s a universal truth in the digital age it’s that there’s too much content and not enough time to consume it. Naturally, a challenge this large and far reaching is creating opportunities for innovators.” writes Steve Rubel of Edelman on the new LinkedIn Tought Leaders section.
He goes on to explain how Scott Beale of Laughing Squid is a great example of using curation to become a media that serves the purpose of developing a company’s brand in the age of online media.
“The lesson here is that any company can potentially benefit by thinking and acting like a media company (…) However,you don’t necessarily need to create original content.“
Great case study.
See on www.linkedin.com
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For this week’s #scoopitchat, we’ll be joined by Jeff Domansky, also known as @ThePRCoach.
As Principal of Peak Communications Inc, Jeff Domansky works with clients as a public relations and social PR consultant, C-level strategist, communications coach, content marketing expert, curator, crisis communications manager, contributor to blogs and publications, and connoisseur of other words starting with C. You can see his bio on LinkedIn.
Make sure to follow @allygreer, @scoopit, and @ThePRCoach, and we’ll “see” you all on Twitter tomorrow at 11am PST!
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Elynn Fish started her career in the corporate business world. Before the dominance of social media, she was part of a think tank building internal digital communications platforms. Fish was a pioneer in the social movement, helping companies increase their performance and ROI via content marketing and optimization of both internal and external digital communications.
Not even two years ago, Elynn realized that she had the knowledge and experience to start her own firm helping small businesses with their digital communications. With that, she started the Fish Firm, a consulting company that helps said businesses with strategic elements including content management, ROI measurement and analysis, and sales.
Elynn came across Scoop.it and content curation while following and experimenting with the latest trends in social media. Always on the brink of new digital strategies, Elynn was one of the first Beta testers of Scoop.it, using it with her very first clients.
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Over half a century ago, management guru Peter Drucker presented the concept of the knowledge worker. Compared to the manual laborer, the knowledge worker focused on quality over quantity and worked more independently as problem solvers. Drucker said the key to improving the productivity of the knowledge worker is to allow them the freedom to innovate, learn and grow.
The knowledge worker is now the professional of today who uses Social Media and the Web to enhance his productivity, reach new customers or clients, conduct research and more. So which social network do today’s knowledge workers use?
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When PR professional Jody MacPherson first started her personal Scoop.it page on politics, she had no idea that she would end up on TV.
The political world around election time is just about as fast-paced as fast-paced gets. It’s easy to get lost in the number of tweets, blogs, news sites, facts, and not-so-factual musings. Today, social media is arguably one of the biggest influencers of elections and political opinions.
During the most recent election in Alberta, Canada, Jody MacPherson discovered that this is both a great and an overwhelming fact. Jody is passionate about politics and was part of the political party who was challenging the current administration. Knowing how difficult it is for most people to follow along and find all of the right (and factual) information, and being a PR professional by day, Jody found that curation was the next logical step to help her spread her political mission.
Read MoreThough “Curation for Education” may sound like a small niche market, we found during yesterday’s #Scoopitchat that there’s always something to learn for everyone.
We were joined by AP Human Geography professor Seth Dixon who had many very inspiring and thoughtful insights into the use of curation in the classroom. Seth has been using Scoop.it in his college classes for over a hear and a half and has found it to be his favorite piece of technology for education.
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Social Media is easy. But only in theory.
When you get down to the practical things Social Media requires, you realize that a lot of them take time, require some special skills or are simply too complex to bother. While blogging and social networks have now been around for years, the truth is that for a lot of people, using Social Media in a professional way is still anything but a no-brainer; whether your job consists of running a business, pitching new customers, fundraising for a cause, educating students or coaching clients, it usually takes a good 100% of your time, so how can you “do Social Media” on top of that?
The key to solve this includes working on smarter workflows. At Scoop.it, for instance, we realized that having a suggestion engine combined with a bookmarklet for 1-click publishing greatly helped our users. And by adding features like the connections to the social networks they wanted or the ability to rescoop one another’s content, we have taken – and continue to take – steps towards making the whole Social Media Publishing workflow much simpler.
HootSuite is another company that has worked extensively on this workflow problem. By combining monitoring and cross-posting, they’ve built one of the most popular Social Media platforms to date with millions of professional users.
We’re therefore thrilled to be partnering with HootSuite today and to introduce the Scoop.it App for HootSuite. From now on, HootSuite users can combine the powerful stream layout that enables them to monitor various sources of content at once with Scoop.it’s easy content curation capabilities. This means more relevant content but also more visibility for this content when it’s published to your Scoop.it pages, whose topic-centric nature drives on average 3 clicks per visitor and greater discovery from Social and Search. Scoopiteers who already leverage topic-centric content curation to develop their visibility online can now diversify their sources of content by using HootSuite to monitor various content streams, including the topics they follow on Scoop.it or some specific Scoop.it searches to closely monitor their interests.
Dennis O’Connor was an early adopter before being an early adopter was cool. As an educator in the 1980s, he was always looking for new ways to bring emerging technologies into the classroom. In 1983, Dennis set up a literary bulletin board system for student writers run on an Apple computer.
Dennis was always interested in tech innovation; he studied this in all of his years of early and undergrad education. He then went on to earn two masters degrees, one in Online Teaching and Learning, and the second in Technology Integration and Instructional Design. I’m not at all surprised that Dennis is one of the early users of curation in the classroom.
According to Dennis, curation was a natural outgrowth of his work with the 21st century Information Fluency Project. With this project, he has worked for over 10 years creating curriculums on how to search, evaluate, and ethically use digital resources. Dennis had begun using curation within this project way before Scoop.it eve existed, but when he found it he was anxious to give it a try.
Read MoreFor this week’s #Scoopitchat, we were joined by Brian Yanish, founder of Marketing Hits. Brian is a web developer and marketer specializing in exploring ways to better connect with customers. Brian had a lot of insight to share with us concerning using Scoop.it and curation to feed your social media presence, grow your audience, and connect with your readers.
We were joined by many great Scoop.it users and had an exciting chat about selecting your topics, using Scoop.it as a curation and social media hub, and spreading content around the web to your specific audiences.
Find out some key takeaways and check out the full transcript here, and don’t forget to join us next Thursday at 11amPST!
Brian Yanish posted a great case study on his blog on how to use Content Curation as a secret weapon to market your business. As a consultant helping clients market themselves online, Brian has a lot of experience with various marketing strategies and it’s great to see his angle on how content curation can help.
As he summarizes it after having been a Scoop.it user for quite some time (and testing lots of curation services), Content Curation “can drive traffic and help to show the world, yes the world that your business knows your market.“
Must-read with very interesting data for business content curators.
(And by the way, if you’re looking to hire Biran, he gave his contact details on the original post here: http://sco.lt/5BybWD)
See on marketinghits.com
Read MoreDid you miss #ScoopitChat for Non Profits Featuring J.D. Lasica yesterday? We summed it up so that no one misses out on the great insights and advice that came out during this exciting hour!
Some key takeaways from the chat include:
-The importance of curation in your quest to organize all of the information on the web and lift signal out of noise.
-The practicality of curation to build thought leadership, become an authority, and give your point of view on topics without starting from scratch.
-Curation is more than showing off; it’s about adding value to shared content and allowing non-celebs to become stars in their fields.
-There are tons of great curation tools out there: Scoop.it, Instagram, Deligious, Storify, Zeega, Google+, and Pinterest.
-Curation helps generate content, add a layer of value to that content, drive traffic to your website, establish you and/or your brand as an authority.
Our team at Scoop.it is hard at work and you may have noticed many exciting integrations that we’ve launched over the past month from SlideShare to BufferApp to LinkedIn Groups.
Yesterday, we announced our Apps & Extras to help you navigate through all of these great additions, which we hope helps make the Scoop.it experience even better for you.
Ayantek, a full-service digital marketing firm offering innovative web, mobile, search, and social media solutions to some of New England’s largest companies, has a vision that probably sounds pretty familiar to most marketing agencies. According to Marketing Programs Manager Barry Clifford, Ayantek’s main business goal is “to validate [their] belief that by providing excellent value and customer service to clients, a small business can grow into a viable, sustainable enterprise, and can supply a quality lifestyle to its employees without compromising on its core values.”
Ayantek’s global consultants are industry experts with decades of experience conceiving, designing, building, and managing interactive programs that drive measurable improvements and deliver competitive advantages for their clients. They help their customers achieve market leadership through a combination of strategic thought leadership, exceptional user experiences, and industry-leading proprietary and open-source technologies.
Seeing their success in these areas, Ayantek continuously wants to expand their client base and spread their services across multiple Fortune 500 companies in the technology, healthcare, manufacturing, and financial sectors.
