Page 8 - index

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Content Curation -

Social Media Marketing is growing up!

Content Curation is paving the way for SMEs’
brand building

There is a crucial difference between the established
brands, such as Coca Cola or RedBull and SMEs - the
marketing budget. As you can imagine, SMEs neither
have the money to let people jump from space cap-
sules for advertising purposes nor global marketing
campaigns on a regular basis. Therefore, they need to
consider other ways to build their brands, and Content
Curation represents a practical tool to build and main-
tain a certain image in the social web. This mainly
serves the purpose to strengthen the own brand and to
portray the brand by using the posted content as up to
date and innovative.
"Content is King", so much seems to be clear. Besides, In the end it is used to be seen by the customer and get
many companies that have taken on a kind of pioneer- established in the market and of course to stand out
ing role in the field of innovative marketing and sales not from the competition, besides offering advantages in
only make use of the numerous possibilities offered to corporate publishing and online PR:
them by social networks since just yesterday. Whether
for customer acquisition, employee recruiting or PR:
Whoever advertises on the social web has the guaran-  Companies provide an important service by sorting
tee to be seen! relevant information. With current, refined content
and links, it is possible to be seen and establishes
However, sharing just your own links is no longer all that as an expert in the fields that interest the appropri-
matters in Content Marketing. “Content Curation”, a new ate target audience and increase visibility.
trend in social media, is now gaining momentum.  With constantly updated news the webpage- and
search engine ranking gets improved, which is es-
If you think that having a Twitter, Facebook and pecially an advantage regarding SEO. At best, the
Google+ account is enough to present your business, sharing of content with third parties creates valua-
well - think twice! Since social media marketing is enjoy- ble backlinks that help the websites to continue
ing growing popularity, just stubbornly distributing the climbing to the top of search engines.
own links is no longer sufficient to stay at the very top.  Company exercise true sovereignty when they give
Just consider the original meaning and purpose behind their customers, partners or even critics a voice,
social media: It's all about relevant content. Thus, besides enhancing their reputation crucially.
“Content Curation” is the new net trend that has devel-
oped to achieve that. Content Curation Platforms

The idea behind Content Curation is simple and not re- How to approach prospects and deliver content to the
ally new: Not only the own content is created, pro- customers seems not to be an entirely irrelevant ques-
cessed, collected and shared, but also infographics, tion, taking into account the abundance of suitable plat-
photos, videos or user comments are referenced. forms. Facebook and Twitter are laying the foundation,
What’s done in addition is actually what internet users that is clear, as well as your own blog. In addition, there
would do anyway: Content of interest gets individually are other providers that, although they have a lower
curated. Relevant information is filtered and collected, level of awareness, are no less important. Pinterest, for
ultimately helping companies to establish their brand instance, could establish itself as an effective curation
more effectively. tool in the near future. With so-called "pins" you can for
example display graphics in different colors and effect
The new thing about Content Curation however, is the combinations in a visually-appealing way, allowing
fact that this content is not simply copied. Instead, links companies in the creative industry to refer to remarka-
are compiled on specific topics, commented or provided ble artwork of other artists and acquire the image at the
with an abstract. The aim is to improve the traffic same time, besides knowing what is currently in de-
through third party content. mand. Other common platforms are for instance Storify,

Scoop.it, Paper.li, Rebel Mouse, or Vizify.
8 Asian eMarketing March 2014 - Social Media Marketing