Jun 3, 2021
Why is curation vital for the Social Age? A blog on content curation and how it differs from other forms of content creation.
Content curation is vital for the Social Age. Why? Well, social networks exist on trust and reputation. If a creator has low trust and reputation, they’ll have a hard time building their brand, gaining traction, or finding their fans. Each piece of content requires different tactics and strategies to get it to “good enough” for social. At the pre-deconstructed level, these are the definitions-
Content creation is making original articles, videos, podcasts, and other kinds of media. Original content doesn’t contain elements borrowed directly from other sources.
Content curation Curation is a process of careful selection and organization of existing online articles, blog posts, tweets, images, blogs, and videos to create something new through your tastes and perspectives.
So, now that we’ve gotten the administrative task done let’s go ahead and deconstruct why curation is vital to social media. My thesis is that curation will allow people to express their tastes through content and use this curated content to find an authentic community of people who trust their creative flavors. TLDR to the vitality: new platforms must make it easy for consumers to find valuable information without the extra noise of content.
We’re constantly curating. This comes in the form of curating our life, experiences, interests, and knowledge. Understanding our answers to these forms opens the possibilities of creation and refinement. Curators and the people we follow create interest graphs and social graphs representing a network of individuals bound by a common niche. As we participate within social media, we share more and more about ourselves, which reveals our digital identity. These interest graphs become social capital for curators.
On the side of creation, it’s up to an algorithm to determine the placement and reach of content. As I’ve explained before in the previous blog (see link here) — creativity and creators play the system to inflate their space artificially. Though the goal is done — much of it is done through
The perils of social media content creation
Social Media Identities
Social media has allowed for the presentation of a persons’ identity. With applications such as Instagram, Facebook, and Tik-Tok paving the way, individuals have gained the opportunity to share their lives with the public. Creating a rise of ‘social media influencers’ and begs the question,” what knowledge are they handing or creating?” Digital identities could potentially be harmful to impressionable users. Mainly, many social media influencers don’t aim to inspire through quality content but rather inspire through dances and trendy videos. These videos become their Social Media identified that they could not deviate from, or they’ll suffer something worse than death — losing followers or losing engagement.
Curation will save social media — dip your toes in first by curating content from others.
Once you have created something, found a piece of content, added your thoughts, you refine it. Creativity is all part of a process but curating is the second to last step before sharing.
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What content you curate impacts your whole life. You are what you curate. The internet is going dying from content pollution and can suffocate you if you aren’t careful. But by refining your curations — you bridge the gap between your product and tastes. Something that you can be proud of
1. Leverage the interest graph on platforms where you can be discovered by people who share your curated or created content and niche: there it is, the answer. Examples of this include — Quora, Reddit, and Substack also add value there.
2. Don’t expect readers or algorithms to do all the work: adding context and value to connect the dots as content curators should make the highest impact. Turn your content into stories so that they memorize you. The essential resource that brought them that new knowledge and viewpoint was not the computer or the algorithms.
3. Be clear on your niche: you can have several within your community and fans. You must understand their needs and publish your content or curated content that will help you rise above the noise. Social networks and the search engine must be better at surfacing content specifically on readers’ interests.
4. Be your content platform: if you’re sharing content on other social networks, you’re missing out, bringing readers to your content hub (diffusion), where you can help readers identify your expertise on a specific topic and remember your brand.
Think about the things you curate in your life. Do they match your taste? It is essential to know because the future will rely on social niche-working, and curators will be the top players. Check out what we’re building at diffusion.me.
