Key 2016 Content Curation Trends: Are You Keeping Up?

6 Content Curators Explain How To Break-Through

Key 2016 Content Curation TrendsContent marketers find it increasingly difficult to attract audience attention in 2016.

Even worse, that’s before they can start to engage prospects, develop relationships and ultimately sell product.

In part, this is attributable to the exponential growth of content available. Yet the high value, quality content your target audience actively seeks is hard to find. It’s lost in the sea of mediocre, me-too information flowing through their various information streams.

Digital Content Growth Chart Measured in Zetabytes

Exacerbating this situation is increased pressure to show measurable content ROI.

Content marketing gets 28% of marketing budget (not including headcount!) Further, 51% of marketers expect their 2016 content budget to increase. More marketing budget translates to increased need to show results.

Content Marketing Gets 28% of the Marketing Budget on Average

Content Marketing Gets 28% of the Marketing Budget on Average

B2B_Content_marketing_Spending

These environmental factors are ripe for key 2016 content curation trends.

Further, these factors signal the pivot towards contextual marketing.

Content curation offers content marketers a non-promotional way to establish thought leadership, attract targeted audience, and effectively utilize content resources. Together these activities enable marketers to achieve business objectives cost effectively.

Key 2016 content curation trends

For more perspective on how content curation is evolving, I asked some key content curation marketers for their input. Specifically, I asked:

“What do you see as the key 2016 content curation trends as a result of the maturing of content marketing?”

Key 2016 Content Curation Trends1. Content marketing curator: Heidi Cohen – Actionable Marketing Guide

Content curation grows up to support your content strategy. As a part of your content marketing, document your content curation strategy and integrate it into your overall documented editorial mission.

Content curation contributes to content creation. Content curation fills your editorial calendar with a combination of new, standalone content and enhanced existing content. 

  • Content curation provides new standalone content. Includes regular columns to meet your publishing schedule, occasional content to fill editorial gaps. Epic content to support major marketing objectives.
  • Content curation enhances new and existing content. Add content curation to new content. Use intelligent content to select relevant existing content to keep readers longer.

Content curation extends content promotion.  Therefore, select your content curation topic with care. Like other forms of content marketing, content focus and publishing consistency matter. Use owned, social media and third party platforms to maximize your content curation reach and build your base.

2. Content marketing curator: Guillaume Degucis – Scoop.It

As content marketing matures, we’re seeing more and more content getting published. This means a couple of things for content marketers.

  • It’s harder to get attention with average content. As a result, you need to publish really good content to cut through the clutter.
  • Your target audience is exposed to much more content. Therefore they tend to value filters more. This reinforces the opportunity and the necessity for marketers to include content curation in their mix.

Publishing curated content saves your team time. They can use this time to make their own original content better and more likely to rise above the noise.

Key 2016 Content Curation Trends

Content Curation Supports Content Marketing-Scoop.It

But more importantly, curating content enables them to be perceived as a trusted resource since they provide the much-needed content filters their audience needs.

3. Content marketing curator: Pawan Deshpande – Curata

Becoming a resource on a subject can be achieved through aggregation. You simply bring together content of interest and warehouse it in a single, accessible location online. Over time you’ll become the starting point for anyone interested in that topic online.

Content Aggregation Versus Aggregation 

However, as more people get into the curation game, grouping together and publishing related content becomes commoditized.

As a result, the curators who will rise to the top will not only need to bring together the best content, but also to add their own “human touch” or perspective to the content they curate through annotation.

Key 2016 Content Curation Trends

Content Curation Annotation – Curata Chart

As the need for perspective and context continues to increase, the lines between curation and creation will blur.

4. Content marketing curator: Nathan Ellering – CoSchedule

As content marketing matures, curation will serve as a fundamental element of research. But ultimately, marketers will need to be able to back up their claims with their own data, examples and insight.

Only then will your content cut through the noise because it adds something completely new to the conversation.

5. Content marketing curator: Robin Good

The key 2016 content curation trends will yield the following content marketing activity:

  1. Reduce the amount of superficial curation. Specifically, there’ll be less republishing and retweeting without paying attention to the original content.
  2. Pay more attention to verifying and vetting content curation qualifications.
  3. Use a greater variety of curated content formats. This applies to the core content types and content format (such as audio, video or presentation) Don’t just stick to megalists.
  4. Create longer curated content. Content needs more information, in a more organized manner to stand out in social and other types of content streams.
  5. Invest greater time and effort into the production of standout curated content.

(BTW: Check Good’s curation on Scoop.It)

6. Content marketing curator: Jodi Harris – Content Marketing Institute

While there’s certainly been a significant rise in the number of businesses that now consider content curation to be a viable means of creating the content they need, mostly I’ve noticed some small, yet positive changes when it comes to the techniques they are using.

  • Marketers are taking greater advantage of the content curation platforms and automation tools out in the marketplace. This is opening up the market for even more sophisticated and robust solutions to emerge. As a result, not only are we seeing more curated efforts popping up on the content landscape, those efforts are better able to serve more-niche interests.
  • There’s a greater realization that content curation isn’t just for “click-bait”. Sure, some businesses still opt to throw a bunch of links together to form a bulleted list, slap a “Must Read…” descriptor in the title, and call it curated content. But most are realizing that adding more content to the pile without adding their own unique value to that content isn’t going to help them reach their marketing goals.

( BTW-Check out Harris’s curation of content marketing checklists and templates.)

The key 2016 content curation trends include the following:

  • Need to stand out in the ever-growing amount of content. This means content marketers must provide incremental value to their audience.
  • Provide a unique, human perspective. This means going beyond aggregation to add human editorial skills and commentary.
  • Use new, targeted content curation tools and platforms. (Editor’s note: Both Curate and Scoop.It offer content curation tools.) Find the content curation tools that work best for your objectives and budget.

 

Given the pressures on your content marketing budget, take another look at extending your content offering with content curation.

But understand: content curation has evolved.

You must add the human touch in terms of selection and commentary.

How do you use content curation and what are your results?

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

Heidi CohenHeidi Cohen is the President of Riverside Marketing Strategies.
You can find Heidi on , Facebook and .

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