Definition of Content Scraping, Content Curating and related terms

Some of  these definitions are adapted and expanded from an article by a good content curator as he described his own curation process. Thank you Nathan Weller for your great article on curation!

Content Creation: The act of writing original words, taking an original picture, shooting an original video, etc. Inspiration, information and ideas are found through interacting with other people’s content. But if it’s “content creation” we’re talking about, then the author will be composing something new, something different, something that goes beyond the other pieces that he’s looking at.

Content Sharing: Taking a piece of content created by yourself or others and distributing it to a following or audience. This can be done in many ways and through many channels; blogs and social media outlets being just a few of the more popular examples. We can share our own creations, or we can share the work of others. When it’s “content sharing”, it’s clear that what we’re doing is simply telling our friends where to find a piece that’s of interest (the share is not the creation or curation).

Content Scraping: I’m highlighting ‘scraping’ because it represents the opposite of white hat, best practices in content marketing. Content scraping is the label we assign to basic plagiarism, where a person takes an entire post or article from someone else’s site, and then republishes it on their own site, giving no attribution, and making almost no change to the original piece. Scraping is NOT a white hat practice for it leaves the reader with the impression that the piece of content (video, image, text) being displayed has originated there on that website (when in fact, it was scraped from someone else). Scraping is often automated.

Content Aggregation: This is like content sharing on steroids. An aggregator typically uses software that automatically pulls in content from multiple sources (such as RSS feeds) and reposts it all at one central location, usually a blog. Attribution to the original is provided, which distinguishes this from scraping. But no additional commentary or insight is added, which makes this LESS than curation. Examples of content aggregation would be the Drudge Report or the Huffington Post, who simply bring content pieces (news) together for readers, without making their own additional comments. Even RSS Feed readers and simple “search alerts” are forms of content aggregation.

Content Curation: Similar to content aggregation, content curation also pulls from many sources. However, instead of automatically posting every piece of content pulled in, there is a manual filtering and sorting process that takes place in order to select only the most valuable pieces of content for a given audience. Curation also involves adding helpful annotation that frames the information already provided from the original source in such a way as to add additional value and/or understanding. True, best-practice, white hat content curation adds value through summarizing, debating, highlighting a key point, adding a new insight or fresh angle, or just saving the reader some time by bringing the main points to the right place.

BONUS DEFINITION: Industry News Curation. This is a sub-set of the Content Curation discipline, and an important piece of a business content marketing plan. This type of curation is the locating of relevant news for the people in your industry, the timely display of a summary of that news story at an easy-to-reach location (a page on your website), and the addition of some analysis or commentary. The point in building an Industry News Page, is to provide your followers/visitors with a short-cut to staying up to speed, and a quickly digestible bit of expert commentary. A couple good examples of industry news curation are Proof Point and the Oregon Wine Board.

Your Turn to Comment

So what do you think? Can you add something to these definitions to make them better? Jump in!

This article was originally posted on Ron VanPeursem’s Content Marketing & SEO blog.

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Now if you’re still with me, and you’re going to work on your brand identity first, then let me tell you where THAT work begins. The right place to start your branding journey, way before you try to select a logo, a web design and your keyword strategy, is to ask yourself, “What makes your company unique?” What’s special about your company? What’s different about your company? What is the important feature that sets you apart from the rest? If you can get in touch with THAT, and bring some clear definition to THAT, then you’ll be able to start working out a marketing plan that effectively revolves around your brand.

What makes your company unique?

Rather than trying to be like your competitor, instead think about what’s different about your company when compared to that competitor. What is the unique value that you are going to bring to the field? Who are the people that you will particularly be suited to connect with? The Harvard Business Review suggests these three questions to help you nail down your company’s unique character:

1. Why — really — do customers choose your offerings?
2. Which of your capabilities are distinctly better than those of competitors?
3. How difficult would it be for a garage-based startup to replicate what you have done?

When it comes to branding and to building your online presence, THESE are the questions you want to start with! Later you can design a logo, you can create the right feel and flavor on your website, you can plan your content marketing strategy and you can shape your team. But you must BEGIN with a clear picture of your unique contribution!

Marketing your uniqueness

Without a clear and precise definition of your unique and special quality, much of your marketing and branding efforts could be a waste of time and resources. You start building a website based on “what looks good”, and a logo based on “what I like”. Then you begin selecting a keyword strategy based on “where there’s low competition”. All of these efforts make you just one more among many. None of these things are designed to highlight that unique quality or feature that you’re bringing to the world. Instead of wasting time getting lost in the crowd, take the definition of your uniqueness, and build a message around THAT. Start designing a website that enhances the thing that makes your company unique. Build a logo that draws out that unique feature, and begin crafting your company’s story around that same special quality. Build a brand around what makes you different, and then draw people’s attention to that!

Identify what makes your company special

Some questions to help you get started:

1. What is there about your history, the first dream, that’s different from everyone else? No one else had YOUR dream!
2. What are some unique qualities of the PEOPLE that are driving your company? There’s nobody like your people!
3. What makes your service unique? No one is trying to provide exactly what you’re trying to provide!
4. What makes your company vision unique and special? There is no one else out there with the exact same target in mind!
5. How will you differentiate yourself in terms of pricing, variety of options, simplicity of delivery, ease of service, responsiveness to customer contexts, etc.? You’re doing it differently in a particular aspect, and you need to get the word out!
6. Who are the people (individuals / segments) that you are best positioned to connect with? You will connect with a certain segment better than anyone else!
7. Bottom Line: You are not the same as anyone else out there; you’re bringing something new and fresh and compelling. You will not be the first choice of everyone, but you’re certainly designed to be the first choice of a particular demographic, and you’re going to make sure those guys know you’re here and that you’ve got what they need!

Define yourself, THEN start marketing!

Once you’ve done the work of defining your company’s unique quality or qualities, THEN you know how to launch your branding and marketing efforts. If you do this the other way around, the most likely result is that you’ll just be another “also-ran”, and your company’s unique and special qualities will never get the attention necessary.

You don’t want to be “every company”, but you also don’t want to be “no company”. What you want is to be YOUR company. Define yourself, then start building your brand around that identity. The world is waiting for what you can uniquely contribute!

Here are a few other articles that will help you think about what’s unique, or even irresistible about your company:

• How to make your brand stand out; by Heidi Cohen.
• Using your unique business qualities to stand out in a crowd; at HandMadeOlogy.
• What makes your company irresistible; by John Warrillow.

We at Shift Digital Media have helped a lot of companies define and then market their brand. Can we help you? Get in touch with us. And sign up for email alerts in the footer, so that you’ll know about other posts like this one.

Published originally on Ron VanPeursem’s personal blog here.

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Some of the “old schoolers” are professionals and agencies (which is very sad). Others are simply “do-it-yourselfers” who learned a few of those techniques and began trying to apply them to their own business in their spare time. These are the innocent ones who just haven’t had the time to notice the huge shift that has taken place in the last few years.

So what are some signs that you’re in the “old school marketer” camp? Let me point to 5 signs that you’re getting left behind, and that you’re still doing things that may possibly HURT your brand, rather than help it.

5 Signs you’re becoming an obsolete “Old School Marketer”

#1 You believe in flooding.

You distribute pieces of content to 50 or more free article distribution sites. You don’t know where it goes, nor who sees it, but you believe in “flooding the internet” with many, many copies of your stuff. The problem: nobody cares to read stuff that just shows up in an article directory.

People want to know the author; they want to know why you’re writing; they want to see the website that represents you; they want to come across your stuff because a friend of theirs has pointed them to you! Sure, a couple years ago the search engine algorithms would reward you for getting your keyword and your link out there on thousands of article directories. Old school marketers just keep churning out the ink. But have you noticed that the search engines don’t reward your high-volume efforts any more?

#2 You use automated content re-purposing apps

The reason you do this is because of #1 above: you’re still thinking that quantity is king. But if you use this kind of automation, your name is going to be attached to some pretty low-quality content. Do you think I’m being harsh? Let me show you a sample of what ends up happening when you submit to some of those article-flinging services that uses spin-automation to multiply the volume of your content:

Original: I think today’s standards for marketing require a much more artful approach, rather than a mainly mechanical procedure.

After robo-spin: I suppose today’s principles for promoting need a significantly more guileful approach, as opposed to an essentially mechanical system.

Yeah! Let’s hear it for a more guileful approach!!! The problem here is that the old schooler is still thinking VOLUME rather than quality. He’s thinking “game the search engine” rather than “earn the attention of a client”. You’ve been caught napping, as though we were still in a Pre-Panda/Pre-Penguin era! Want to improve? Then do re-purposing of content as a creative and strategic process.

#3 You choose keywords based ONLY on the ease of ranking.

This is actually a problem that has arisen as a hybrid of old school thinking and new-school shallowness. This is when you spend your time and money going after a long-tail keyword like “modern plastic chairs very nice colors and styles”, because it’s so easy to “win” that #1 rank. Just one or two pieces of content, a couple bookmarks and a quick share on Twitter and Facebook (and a picture of a very “modern, nice color and style” chair on Pinterest) and you’ll be dominating the search results for that phrase.

Cool. Oh, except for this little problem: not a single human being will EVER type that exact phrase into the search field. Nope. Nobody. Zilch. You ‘dominate’ that particular SERP, but what you’re dominating is a vacuum.

OK, I’ve illustrated this problem with an obviously weak keyword phrase, but the point is this: you are not ONLY trying to get a ‘sort of relevant’ phrase to rank well. You actually need to identify the phrases that YOUR TARGET CUSTOMERS are going to be typing. You forgot to choose keywords that actually describe your product or service, AND actually connect with the people that need you. This neglect is what keeps people in the “old school marketer” category.

#4 You think the point of Twitter is to get 1000s of followers.

OK, you score a few points for at least trying to do SOMETHING with Twitter! But what makes you an old school marketer is that you’re missing the whole point of social engagement and the creation of a community. You can have 2 thousand followers, but not make a single sale! However, if you have just 5 happy customers talking about you, and sharing their experience with THEIR network, well now you’ve got something!

Here’s a secret: the search engine algorithms are able to notice that sort of conversation (i.e social signals) and will promote your site higher in the search results when people are truly talking about you. The point of social media is that you have a chance to connect with people that are genuinely interested in the things that you’re talking about, so the right people are hearing the right things, and finding their way to the right place (your site!).

#5 You expect fast results.

Hey, it’s true: a couple years ago, we could trick the search engines into boosting our rank for chosen keywords, and we could get it to happen fast. Moving your site’s rank from 450 to 288 to 107 to 36 to 18 to number 3 was something we could do in a matter of weeks! A month could change everything.We could do it all without a single human actually reading our content. Amazing!! But I’ll admit that I’m actually glad we’ve moved beyond those days! I like the increased transparency and the injection of a more reality-based landscape.

Can things still happen fast? Sure. Sometimes. But the development of a serious brand and an engaged group of followers? Nope. That doesn’t happen so fast. That takes hard work, high quality products and services, excellent content, a very attractive and intuitive website, an ongoing and responsive conversation with followers, and enough SEO technical understanding to make sure that both humans and search crawlers can “read” your message properly.

So how are you doing?

Do you find yourself stuck in some of the out-dated techniques I’ve described here? Believe me, it’s easy to keep telling yourself that you just need to push a little harder on the volume of optimized content. But are you finding a diminishing bang for your buck? Have you noticed that Google is getting harder to game (and that it’s really not worth trying to play that game)? We would love to help you out as we’ve helped others. Just get in touch with us at Shift Digital Media.

This article appeared originally at RonVanPeursem.com.

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My trusted source, Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable, was tracking the buzz and keeping us all up to speed and on the edge of our seats. Look at these screen shots from Barry’s site:

First, from May 7th.

Then, two days later on May 9th:

But on Friday, we got definitive word from Matt Cutts, Google’s Spam-meister:

The Big Question

But here’s the big question: how do you respond when you find out that the algorithms are about to get better at spotting fluff & bluff? What will you do when, instead of the normal, daily tweaks that Google makes, they actually accomplish a significant improvement in their ability to weed out duplicate copy, manipulated link-building, robotic comment spamming and the use of low-quality, keyword-stuffed content? What is your “Google Update Reaction Plan“?

Two response options when facing Google update rumors

There are basically two options when facing the rumor of an impending Google algorithm update:

1. Quickly try to pull down your most offending stuff, and get even MORE creative in developing techniques to game Google. Get better at creating the illusion of quality, and the appearance of social engagement. Tighten your belt and innovate better fluff & bluff! Feel the desperation and anxiety, and just deal with it by telling yourself that no algorithm is sharp enough to uncover ALL of your tricks!
2. Or… follow the update news with mild interest, while reminding yourself how happy you are that you chose (last year?) to begin building your marketing strategy around top notch marketing and brand building practices. Let the others scurry around placing disavow link codes, while you continue creating engaging content and deepening your conversation with your followers. Celebrate your move into modern marketing, and your move OUT of the old school approach.

If you’re a small or medium sized company (or even just one individual launching your own business), and you’ve been getting SEO and marketing “help” from a group that’s constantly dancing to the erratic tunes of the Algo-adjustment Juke, it’s time you upgrade. You can save time, money and a dinged-up reputation, if you’ll just move away from the black-and-grey-hat stuff, and move TOWARD quality marketing that genuinely draws attention to the unique personality of your brand!

We’d be happy to help you, so just get in touch with us at Shift Digital Media!

This article appeared originally in the SEO section of the Shift Digital Media blog.

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Common social media questions and concerns include: 

What kinds of social media accounts do I need? Facebook? Twitter? Instagram?

What will I post about? Who cares about what I ate for breakfast?

Do my clients really use social media? Is it a big waste of time?

The questions vary but the concern remain the same. How will social media help my business?
The answer is simple: social media will increase your bottom line. Social media marketing, done correctly, will increase brand awareness, keep you connected to your customers and community and will make you more money. That’s what’s really important right? According to Forbes, 80% of executives believe social media engagement leads to increased sales. 

Some marketers will tell you a bunch of fluff as to why you need social media, but I’m here to tell you the cold, hard facts.

You need social media because your competition is using it.

You need social media because your customers are looking for you online.

You need social media to monitor what people are saying about you. People are talking about you and your business online. It’s your choice if you decide to listen. Wouldn’t you want to respond if someone posts a negative review of your products or services? I would.

Let’s say you decide to make the jump and start a social media strategy. The most important step is defining what social media success looks like to you.

Picture yourself a year from now, what has to happen to make you believe social media marketing was a great choice for you?  Maybe it’s 50% more customers in the door, or perhaps you sell 10 times more “X” product. Brainstorm your goals and timelines before creating your first social media account. Afterwards, track your results. If you aren’t meeting your monthly social media goals, re-evaluate your strategy. Do your research. Get some professional help. Social media is a cost effective way to reach your business objectives and increase your bottom line. Stop worrying and get started!

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Top 5 SEO Mistakes (according to Matt Cutts)

You can watch the 5 minute video embedded below, but I’ll just give you a quick summary of the 5 main points here if you want to save time:

SEO Mistake #1 – Bad Site Navigation

We see this too, among many of our marketing clients: visitors simply can’t find their way to the most important information they’re looking for. The site isn’t laid out with a nice user interface, so that even first-time visitors can intuitively get around the site. If humans can’t easily navigate, then the search crawlers will also have a hard time indexing your site properly.

On a rather humorous note, Matt adds in here that many businesses don’t even HAVE a website. Yeah, Matt, I guess that would be a bit of an “seo mistake”, eh?

SEO Mistake #2 – Poor Use of Keywords

Keyword research can only go so far in your quest to identify the terms that ought to be highlighted in your content. You can get some very helpful data, and develop a decent list of phrases that you can probably compete for. But you’re still not answering a key question: what are humans actually going to type into the search query? What are the words they use, when hunting for what our company offers? It’s really pretty useless to dominate the search results for “best CPA service within walking distance of Madison Square Gardens”, even if you ARE the best! Why? Because no human being will EVER type that into the search query!

Matt Cutts is simply saying: develop great content that uses the words and phrases that your potential visitors are most likely to type into the search query.

SEO Mistake #3 – Focusing on Link Building

Yep. Link building (and most other algorithm-centered content plans) has to be pushed down to 3rd or 4th priority. The top priority needs to be the creation of a compelling website. Your site needs to offer something unique, something helpful, something enjoyable. It needs to answer somebody’s question. It needs to provide the solution to somebody’s problem. And it needs to be easy for the visitor to find those answers and solutions. Focus on THAT first, and then LATER you can make the adjustments for the search engines.

SEO Mistake #4 – Neglecting the Titles & Descriptions

You’ve got to make good use of your page titles and your page descriptions. This is a win-win investment in energy, because it helps both the human searcher (as they see the description displayed in the search result snippet) and helps the search crawlers because it gives the right signals about the content on the targeted page. Too often the page titles are not used well (even left as “untitled” at times), and the descriptions don’t really help anyone.

SEO Mistake #5 – Not Taking Advantage of Good SEO Resources

Well, actually Matt Cutts pointed to the Google Webmaster Tools as a neglected resource, but I’ll just make the generic comment here that we all need to be reading – much and often – in order to learn from each other. There is a ton of excellent help out there, and there’s no excuse to be committing these most basic SEO mistakes! Practices that should have been eliminated over the last two years (due to the Penguin and Panda updates), continue to be prevalent, and I think it’s due to a lack of reading and learning on the part of those responsible for SEO.

 Can we help you with your SEO?

If you’re struggling with any of these basic SEO issues, we’d be happy to help you! Just get in touch with us here.

This post originally shared at RonVanPeursem.com.

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Until today, Twitter used the content of tweets among other algorithms to shape their interest graph. Advertising on Twitter wasn’t high on the list of priorities for most professionals. The folks at Twitter are looking to take their advertising features to the next level with keyword targeting in timelines.

5 Things to Know About Keyword Targeting in Timelines

1) It’s available in the full Twitter ads UI and through the Ads API

2) Your ads are sent to Twitter users based on a) keywords in their recent tweets and b) tweets with which the users recently engaged

3) Twitter users won’t notice any different in the Twitter experience

4) Twitter has tested keyword targeting with clients like Walgreens and they noted that users were significantly more likely to engage with Promoted Tweets using keyword targeting in timeline than other forms of targeting in Timeline

5) Starting today, keyword targeting in timelines is available to all Twitter users across the globe

Keyword Targeting Example

Let’s say a user tweets about how hungry they are for Chinese food and it so happens that a Chinese food restaurant is nearby. That restaurant could now run a geotargeted campaign using keywords (Chinese + Food, etc.) with a link to a coupon page or other deal. This means the local user looking to purchase Chinese food would most likely see the promoted tweet when logging into Twitter.

How to Set up a Keyword Targeting Campaign

1) Create a Twitter for Business Account

2) Enter the keywords you wish to target

3) Decide if you want to use phrase match or onordered keyword match

4) Specify other targeting options such as geographic location, location, device and/or gener

Twitter is moving in the right direction with keyword targeting. It’s important to mention that Twitter is also including negative sentiment filtering, which is very important, because you don’t want to target people that are speaking negatively about your product or service (it’s important for you to respond to them in other ways, but not advertising).

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According to Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim, 70% of mobile searches led to action on websites within one hour. That is an impressive conversion rate if you ask me. Additionally, forecasters predict that by the year 2013, there will be over 1.7 billion mobile Internet users. 

As a small business owner, have you checked out what your website looks like on an iPhone, Android, iPad, Kindle Fire or a Windows phone? If it’s not mobile friendly, you can kiss 40% of your mobile website viewers good bye. There is no excuse good enough for not having a responsive website in 2013.  Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of only focusing on modern browsers when creating their website discounting the importance of mobile. Check out our previous post on business development trends for mobile devices for more information.

How To Take Advantage of Consumer Online Searches

1. Make sure your website is mobile friendly.

2. Make sure all of your contact information is correct and up to date.

3. Make sure your mobile website isn’t cluttered. Think Apple. Lots of white space and striking images.

4. Give your mobile viewers the choice of seeing the standard site as well.

5. Have clear, intuitive navigation

A great mobile website is great for business, especially because 70% of mobile searches are leading to online actions.  In addition, there are many features that mobile-optimized sites can have including click-to-call phone numbers, maps and GPS information. These sorts of features allow your customers to connect with you and your business as fast as possible.

These are some of the first things to consider when building your mobile website. There are many other options and abilities that we’ll discuss in another blog post including customization, content stacking, UI guidelines, etc.

Have you recently created a mobile website? Have you noticed an increase in traffic? Let us know in the comment section below!

Should you be interested in creating a mobile site for your business, please contact me directly at samantha@shiftdigitalmedia.com. I look forward to hearing from you!

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LinkedIn announced in a blog post and slideshow presentation, Start a Conversation by Mentioning Your Connections on LinkedIn, that LinkedIn members can now mention connections and companies in status updates. This is great news for entrepreneurs and small business owners who utilize LinkedIn for business development. Now you can easily start conversations with 1st connections by mentioning them instead of just hoping they’ll see your status update. Similar to Twitter and Facebook, you can engage with your network by mentioning them in status updates.

How to Mention Connections in LinkedIn Status Updates

1. From your LinkedIn Homepage, start typing the name of a connection or company you wish to mention in your status update box or comment field.

2. As you start typing the name, a drop-down box will appear with a list of your connections and companies you follow. Select the connection or company you wish to include in your comment or status update.

3. After finishing your comment or status update, the mentioned company or person will receive a notification alerting them that they have been mentioned on LinkedIn. It’s as easy as that!

It should be noted that you can also mention other LinkedIn members (such as 2nd connections) already engaged in the comments section of posts on your LinkedIn homepage. This means it’s easier to carry on conversations with people that you aren’t connected to (yet) in real time as they happen.

This new feature will roll out to all English-speaking LinkedIn members today. LinkedIn also mentioned that you’ll be able to mention people in places other than the Homepage (perhaps Groups, Profile pages, etc.) very soon.

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How does Facebook Offer this Type of ROI?

Facebook is connecting the dots between purchasers and their purchasing habits thanks to their own data and that of their partner, Datalogix. Just in case you don’t know what Datalogix is (I didn’t), they are one of the largest companies that offer integrated database marketing and digital media. Their goal is to leverage audience purchasing information to increase online and offline sales.

Before you delete your Facebook account due to privacy concerns, you should know that Facebook is not identifying your name to corporations.  Instead, they are connecting their data with Datalogix’s data in a “double-blind” method. Yes, Facebook can match your ID with information it sources via Datalogix, but Mark is promising to keep that information private. Are you convinced?

What Does This Mean for Facebook Advertisers?

As a small business owner, you’re probably wondering about how this information will benefit you. If this data is correct, and Facebook is able to match purchasing data, you will be able to laser focus your advertising campaigns on powerbuyers, occasional buyers and the occasional purchaser. You’ll also be able to target people who purchase products from your competitors. It’s hard to compete with that offering (think Google Ads).

It’s commonly accepted that approximately 50% of digital ads and TV commercials aren’t seen by their target audience. The new and improved, laser focused Facebook ad has the ability to re-caliber those statistics.

As a marketer, it’s important to research how and when people purchase your products. What are their purchasing habits? What else do they purchase? Who are your competitors? Pairing your findings with your Facebook advertising strategy will vastly improve your results. Your marketing budget will also be much more effective and efficient.  It’s also important to keep up to date on Facebook updates including their updated newsfeed and how to personalize your Facebook settings and applications.

How often do you use Facebook for marketing now? If you’re not a big Facebook Ad fan, will you consider using them now? Why or why not? I look forward to hearing your comments below.

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