Photo credit: epSos.de / Foter.com / CC BY

Brands once had a proud attitude when it came to marketing. It had been about me, me, me: what my product can do, why my product is better than their, why it’s so expensive, etc. etc.

Due to the internet, people are now exposed to, so much information that it has become overwhelming to many. When a brand wants to stick out and get all the attention to “me, me, me”, there are about a thousand more offering a similar product vying for that person’s attention as well.

So what happens?

The consumer will look for the cheapest, most accessible, most nostalgic or most recommended product that they will find, and all the other brands are lost in the information trash bin for the time being.

Brands, nowadays, need to start looking beyond themselves in order for them to integrate their company and content to the lives of their stakeholders. They need to widen their content scope to complement their original content and become recognized more than just as a producer of product X. This can be done through online content curation.

Photo credit: gcouros / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA

Content curation is the process of sorting through information available online and translating it into a meaningful and organized way covering a specific topic or theme. In simpler terms, curation is gathering and presenting content that is important to a brand’s stakeholders.

There are many advantages for a brand to handle its online curation:

• It is cost effective: since it takes longer to create content from scratch
• It is a more “human” way for brands to organize web content about them: because nothing beats human interpretation
• Online curation is the best form of social (media) giving: because the online community appreciates content shared, without an agenda

What is needed to be an online curator?

Creativity and a keen eye would be the most necessary skills for online curators. Creativity because curators need to be able to translate certain jargon that may not be understood by the target audience and a keen eye since there is so much information available and only some of it may actually matter.

Photo credit: PHOTO/arts Magazine / Foter.com / CC BY-NC

It is also important to remember the three S’s of online curation: Seek, Sense and Share.

Seek: curators need to be able to define a topic clearly and capture relevant information in relation to the topic

Sense: products must be annotated, and should add value to the work

Share: site sources,” commentable” and distribute to the target audience
Seems pretty easy? It actually is and almost anyone can be an online curator. That is why now is the chance of your brand to manage its own content online.

Know more about online curation by contacting Viiworks or by calling us at +63 02 846 8844.