Stop Aggregating and Start Curating

2010 January 26
tags: , , , ,
by Michael Leis

Lately I’ve seen a big push for brands to use their main site and social presences as an aggregator of content. In a way, it’s still a holdover from the corporate era of computing that we as a society are now leaving. An executive will see the way federated media aggregates Tweets on behalf of Microsoft, or some other example, and decide that it’s time to automate content from across the Web to make that brand site an automated destination for users. While this tactic may have its merits on paper, it will ultimately fail because no one wants aggregation. What they want is curation.

Why are you providing this information?

At the very least, curating content provides audiences with the “why.” Why did you choose this article? Why is it of value to me as a visitor? If your site can’t answer these questions in the first three seconds of a visit, it’s over.

Balancing people and computing with perspective

There’s too much information out there, that we can all agree on. What people want more and more is to know that a person is behind the decisions, and how they think about the content. We see this all the time on Twitter. If a corporate account is conversational, people generally don’t care who’s doing the Tweeting, as long as it’s evident that there is a person doing the writing.

Where blogs run by individuals continue to have an edge on many corporate presences is perspective. Furnishing content isn’t enough without even a few words that provide a distinct personal perspective on the content. It’s these few minutes of time to put a perspective on the content that make all the difference in the world.

So let your friendly neighborhood executive know: yes, curating content and recontextualizing within a brand interface will be more expensive. No, it won’t be easy. But if you want to provide a real service to the audience and keep them in the context of the brand, curation is the only way to go.

What do you think? Leave a comment below or continue the conversation on Twitter @mleis.

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from → Interactive Business, Interactive Marketing, Social Media

  • I hear "aggregator of content" and think "splog with a side of scraped feeds." I hear "curated" and am prepared to judge the content based on the reliability and taste of the curator.

    With the pressures of blogging big stuff every day, I think it's hard for successful non-traditional media to stay fresh, especially as the problogger field fills out. Ever notice how the same story ripples across the blogosphere? Do you think probloggers are going to start looking more like traditional media?

    I expect competing big traditional media sites to contain a lot of duplicate information - top news, repeated, sometimes even from identical sources. Lately I also hope to see some interesting personal touches - that curated aspect of which you speak.
  • Thanks Elizabeth, you're making a couple of great points there. Where I see traditional reprints of info, I think of it in terms of brands just getting their feet wet, and hope that they're learning about the difference between being a publisher as opposed to whatever aggregation ends up meaning for the audience (which is usually visual noise, or worse).

    And I agree with you about problogging, which can also be slightly different than being an influencer, is that the number of good blog writers is only growing. Brands need to start developing direct relationships with those people to create original content on their own site, developing, in essence, their own freelance editorial staff. Hopefully this too will continue to mature and become a win-win for brands and bloggers -- integrating both outreach and editorial efforts that now happen disparately for the most part.
  • Agree totally. To quote Edna Mode, "Gobble-gobble-gobble-gobble -- too much, dahling!" There's already too much content out there (most of it garbage). What I want is an information sherpa: someone whose opinion I trust who'll steer me toward useful, relevant, and interesting content so I don't waste my timing wading through dreck.
  • Thanks for the comment Kim! Hopefully your dreck-wading will soon come to an end.
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