We are starting to see curation more and more in the social space, but what exactly does it mean? To better understand, let’s look at what most of us think of when we hear the word Curator. For most of us, this means a person at a museum who is responsible for what gets displayed.
A Social Curator isn’t much different. Each of us share information. We want to be seen as sharing high quality information that others in their networks will find valuable. (after all, if it’s not valuable to others, why share it?). If the quality degrades or the quantity increases significantly, chances are that members in your network will leave or find alternate sources for the information. To be a good curator improves your personal brand. It also shows people that you processing this information and not just sharing blindly.
One way to increase the value of the information is to share why you think something you share is interesting. At my former employer, there was a guy that shared tons of articles, but basically just forwarded them in e-mail. I would constantly write back to him asking him why these things were something that deserved my attention. In the end, I asked him to stop sending things to me if he was not going to summarize the value.
To be a good social curator, you need to be focused on what others find interesting. Try to put yourself in the position of the person receiving the Tweet, Status update, email, etc before clicking send. While the article, post, etc may be interesting, it’s your analysis that makes it valuable.
By better understanding what social curation is all about, it can help you focus on sharing quality content.
What strategies do you use to curate content for your network?
Image courtesy of: Randy Son Of Robert