Free Consultation
Home > Blog > 2012 is the Year of Content Curation

2012 is the Year of Content Curation

Every two days we create as much information as we did from the beginning of civilization until 20031, and the source of much of this new data is user generated content like Facebook status updates, and uploaded images and blog posts. It was calculated that in 2011 alone, we would collectively create 1.8 zettabytes2 of data3 and that amount is doubling every two years. The majority of that data has been created by people who have put a lot of time and money into creating content for their websites, often with only transitory value. Changes to the search engines and social media platforms have made us look at our old content again in 2012 to see if we can find any new value in it.

In many ways, Google sets the conversation in online marketing circles, and the topic of the last couple of years has been quality content. Changes to search algorithms aimed at eliminating web spam from the SERPs has moved the focus of Internet marketing from traditional CPC ads to a subtler means of communicating your promotional messages, which is known as content marketing4. While the concept of using content to sell your products isn’t new5, it has come into its own on the web in the past year as SEO practices have been forced to adapt to Google’s constant algorithm changes. The need to overhaul the use of keywords and links in old material, and the benefits to SEO of using fresh content, has seen a lot of search marketers curating their old content in order to get new life out of it.

Another big change to the Internet this year, at least for its 900 million users, was the change that Facebook made to its pages when it made Timeline the standard format. While this did confuse many users initially, they soon realized that it was possible to revisit their old posts and highlight the ones that are significant. Facebook has made it very easy for users to curate the content in their Timelines and there are options for hiding posts, deleting posts and emphasizing posts. Photos can be moved around and items can be added to the Timeline, allowing users to rewrite their own histories. All of this is designed to make users’ Timelines into the story that they want to tell about who they are and what they like to do. It also helps to make hiding those embarrassing pictures from prospective employers much easier.

The other curatorial activity that has jumped in popularity is bookmarking. People are natural collectors and, with the huge amounts of new data that goes online daily, it has become necessary to be able to put all of the things that we find in one place so that we can find them again. On no other site has this been more enthusiastically embraced than on Pinterest, where users are able to collect images from anywhere that they find them online and add them to their personally curated collections. Of course, our pins are shared on Facebook and become a part of the Timeline that we may curate at a later point in time.

After many years of creating content most of us would have plenty of valuable blog posts and Facebook status updates that still have relevance and which we could repurpose or renovate. Now we have the ability and the opportunity to revisit our past to tell our stories online in the way that we want to, and that shows off the things that we have accomplished. To get started reviewing your old content, contact Infintech Designs and find new value in your archive of online content.

References:
1. http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/04/schmidt-data/

2. a zettabyte = 1021 byteshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettabyte

3. http://mashable.com/2011/06/28/data-infographic/

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_marketing

Review Widget