Curation Is Not Just For Museum Directors, But For Marketers

Image Source: http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/jeffrey-deitch/

Curation and Museum Directors

When you think of the word curation, the first thought of it may be of someone like

Jeffrey Deitch. He is not only a dealer in modern and contemporary art, a Director for  MOCA's (Museum Of Contemporatary Art) in Los Angelos, but is well known for curating some of the most talked about art exhibitions in the world. 

His ability to acquire, organize and oversee collections of valuable art has garnered him worldwide acclaim.

Marketers:The New Museum Directors

Over the last year or so the idea of curation has made its way into the marketing world. The role of a curator has always been seen as the content specialist responsible for the collections in an institution. Now, marketers are being asked to do the same thing to jump start their marketing.

Curation has been an important topic. With the onslaught of  content around the web (audio, video, text), users are looking for a one stop shop of content of things that pertain to them specifically. 

Depending on what niche your business serves in, will determine the specific content expected by the demographic.

The Poster Child Of Content Curation

An example of a blog/website that has garnered a lot of attention in the tech space is Mashable. Mashable was founded by Peter Cashmore from his home as way to curate content focused on the emergence of social media. 

In under five years it grew to the point were Time Magazine recognized them as one of the 25 best blogs in 2009.

This is a testament to the power of content curation.

The Human Element

An article in Forbes magazine mentioned that, "Well-executed content curation isn’t just a regurgitation of content that was already published but rather a personalized retelling of a story. The human element of content curation is what makes curated content compelling."

The article also offered 5 tips to help marketers capitalize on this growing trend.

1. Curate Images and Video

2. Curate an Online Magazine

3. Curate for Email Marketing

4. Curate Top Quality Content Consistently

5. Curate on Your Blog

What are your thoughts?

• Have you started thinking about your content marketing strategy?

ROI 2.0

Image Source: http://blog.oktopost.com/social-video-roi-why-it-matters-for-marketing/

ROI: The  Performance Indicator 

As a business development professional in the business documentary film industry, one of the main  concerns my clients have is what is the Return On Investment (ROI) of a certain  film project; and like every other client interaction, I begin to  lay out a what type of monetary ROI they will receive based on their upfront investment in the project. 

According to Investopedia a ROI is:

A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. To calculate ROI, the benefit (return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment; the result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio. 

The New ROI

This is what I was taught in undergrad and also by managers at the companies that I have worked for in the past. However, after reading Understanding The New ROI of Marketing in the Forbes online site, it gave me a more broad perspective of a more relative version of the ROI performance indicator. 

The article points out that ROI no longer only means return on investment, but return on impression. This is more of a softer metric than a hard dollar metric and when both metric indicators are used simultaneously  it serves as a great tool for marketing executives to have a 3-D view of true campaign performance.

The Affects Of The Social Web

The metric of return on impression is the result of the dynamic nature of the web. Now that the web has a social element, the sharing of text and video content has become a norm to users. 

According to blogger, Jeff Blulas, the social web is the third phase of the Internet's evolution which has followed the portal phase around 1995 (such as Yahoo and AOL) and search phase which commenced in earnest in the late 1990's (including Google and Bing).

He also noted that Facebook  users are sharing 4 billion items on the Facebook social network everyday, which is double what it was a year ago. Ultimately, this trend will continue and predicts that it will double again in 12 months. 

This does not even include the new apps they are developing that will make sharing easier.

The Implications For Marketing Executives

This has huge implications for marketing executives who have to make decisions about creating content and marketing strategy. Especially  if they solely depend on looking for a dollar value return on investment.

There is five elements that the Forbes article lays out that make up the soft metrics of the Return on Impression:

(1) Eyeballs-the number of people that actually see your content.

(2) Perceptions-this deals with the consumers perceptions of the brand.

(3) Opportunity-this looks at the indirect opportunities your content will have in relationship of your marketing investments

(4) Engagement-this looks at the number of conversations and word of mouth situations the marketing creates.

(5) Objectives-this looks at the long term objectives that positions the company for long term success. A metric that is hard to determine in the short term.

What are your thoughts?

• How will this affect you as you put together a marketing budget?

Content Marketing: From Noise To Poise

Gary Who?

In case you were wondering whom the passionate guy on the video was; his name is Gary Vaynerchuk. He is an author, speaker, and noted social media maven. However, he did not start in the social media space he started in business by working in his dad’s liquor store and in five years time he took the small store in to a multi-million enterprise. 

A big part of his success has been by creating daily video content on the top wines his store was bringing in. After about 18 months of posting videos he caught the attention of  The Wall Street Journal, Conan O’brian and other major media outlets.

So Gary has first hand knowledge of the power of content marketing.

Is Your Content A Commodity?

One of the first things he talks about is how content is a commodity. The number one mistake a company can make in their marketing strategy is not seeing the true value of creating compelling content. Content that is engaging  conditions the end-user to take some form of action.

When your company just creates “push” style content that just talks about the company in a age of low attention span you run the risk of losing visitors.

An example of a company that is doing it wrong is one that spends 80% pushing out content that is focused on the company’s products, services, sales, etc.

The Interest Graph

Studies show that this incorrect content creation could be the cause of a ‘content bubble’, similar to the Internet bubble or the real estate bubble. The only companies that will survive this bubble that is on the horizon will have a strong understanding of their potential customers interest graph. 

What is an interest graph? An interest graph refers to the specific and varied interests that form one’s personal identity. Unlike a social graph, an interest  graph includes a network of people that may not necessarily know one another but share the same interest.

The interest graph also has broad implications for B2B marketers where the graph will be based on the macro interest of the industry.

The Human Approach

The company that gets it right not only understands the interests that connects their customers, but go the next step and show how much they care about them as human beings. 

An example of the company  that is doing it right creates 80% of content that is focused on empowering customers to make the best buying decisions no matter where they make their final purchase.


What Are Your Thoughts?

• As a marketer how can you avoid creating content that is just noise?
• What steps will you take to get an understanding of the content that is of interest to your customers?