The Scrappy Marketer

Wheat vs. Chaff: Content Curation Ideas

I read an interesting article on the Junta42 Content Marketing blog recently - in it, founder Joe Pulizzi discussed "content curation", or basically the act or process of gathering and compiling content (information), in order to spotlight significant or otherwise noteworthy material.

I caught Paul Gillin's column in B2B magazine yesterday on how curation is the new creation. This quote hit home:

"...humans face a problem our species has never confronted before: We have too much information. Our challenge has shifted from finding what we need to filtering out what we don't. Today, curation is nearly as important as creation."

He continues with four suggestions on ways for curate (or gather and compile) content.

1. Lists

2. Curated Microsites

3. SmartBrief-Style eNewsletter

4. Curated Twitter Feed

Read the whole article at blog.junta42.com

I like to think I've been a content curator from way back in the day - when I started my font site in 1998, I gathered and compiled all the freeware fonts featured in Hall of Fame scrapbooking idea books, and offered them for download in one place. I went on to edit an industry news blog that acted as a clearinghouse for newsbytes from all segments of the industry. I also wrote books that gathered a variety of inspirational resources in one place.

Rather than a "hunter and gatherer" in the wild, I prefer to think of myself as a "gatherer and compiler" in the social sphere, separating the wheat from the chaff of information, to bring you just the information and ideas you need to help get that marketing mojo flowing. That, it would seem, is what content curation is all about.

Posted via email from Angie Pedersen's Posterous

Example of Crisis Communication: Twitter

When websites experience technical issues, the administrators ideally send out some sort of "crisis communication" - how companies/sites communicate with their audiences during a crisis, such as a site outage or login issue.

Twitter experienced a technical issue this morning, related to a security exploit on their site. The blog post linked below is their response, describing the "short story" (simple explanation) and the "long story" (more involved technical description).

The short story: This morning at 2:54 am PDT Twitter was notified of a security exploit that surfaced about a half hour before that, and we immediately went to work on fixing it. By 7:00 am PDT, the primary issue was solved. And, by 9:15 am PDT, a more minor but related issue tied to hovercards was also fixed.

Read the whole post at blog.twitter.com

I thought I'd point this out as a sort of case study for what I see as appropriate crisis communication:

• it was timely - posted the same day as the issue occurred, and/or the day it was resolved
• it explained the problem, both simply and with a more involved history, describing how the problem was identified, through the technical troubleshooting process
• it explained the scope of what assets were affected - "This exploit affected Twitter.com and did not impact our mobile web site or our mobile applications."
• it explained the resolution and any potential lingering effects.

I particularly liked how the post concludes:

We’re not only focused on quickly resolving exploits when they surface but also on identifying possible vulnerabilities beforehand. This issue is now resolved. We apologize to those who may have encountered it.

This is reassuring to their audience - emphasizing that they are constantly monitoring security issues, and strive to predict future security scenarios. Then they apologized. Whether or not anyone at the company messed up, or was otherwise to blame, effective crisis communication "owns" the crisis and attempts to reestablish customer confidence. Apologies go a long way to this end.

Well done, Twitter.

Posted via email from Angie Pedersen's Posterous

Google Instant Means Big Changes for Marketers

5 Ways How Google Instant Changes the Game for Search Marketers

There are several critical implications that need to be considered by search marketers.

1. Brevity is the soul of wit
2. Impression counts may increase
3. Your competition list just got longer
4. Predictive search = keyword research
5. Real-time is the new fast

Read the whole article at mpdailyfix.com

In this article from MarketingProfs.com's Daily Fix blog, David Felfoldi offers an analysis of what Google's new "Instant Search" means for people who do business online. His commentary is useful not only for people who use AdWords as an advertising vehicle - it's also helpful for anyone looking to improve their search engine rankings and traffic.

I was particularly struck by his third point, about "long tail keywords" - being super-drilled-down in your niche may not be as desirable as it once was, if others are found (and selected) in search engine results before you are. Interesting observation. I also think his suggestion for "marketers to monitor their AdWords accounts closely in the next few weeks" is valid - or web traffic analytics in general, to see what search terms are bringing people in, in case any trends start to change.

Posted via email from Angie Pedersen's Posterous