It looks like Flipboard; aggregates and posts content like Reddit; and presents news visually, like Newsmap. And it's from Intel. Launching today, Intel iQ is a social-publishing platform and the tech giant's latest content-marketing experiment.

IQ resembles a digital magazine but is curated by Intel employees. A story gets to the iQ front page when a certain number of people recommend it. The goal is to "connect with a younger audience and tell them the bigger story of who we are as a brand," said Editor-in-Chief Bryan Rhoads.
Mr. Rhoads will sometimes place staff-written or important stories on the page, but most articles will appear democratically and make it on their own merits. On page, each story box appears with a photo and a tag: "IQ Original" for staff-written and freelance-commissioned articles, "iQ Network" for content written by partner companies such as Discovery or Vice, or "Via" for pieces from an outside source. The last tag is followed by the name of the publication, for instance, "via Mashable."

Given the increased attention that content curation -- the process of finding, organizing and sharing content -- has received in the media over the past year with the success of companies like Pinterest, it should come as no surprise that content curation has become a mainstream tactic for the majority of marketers. In fact, the 2012 survey found that 95 percent of marketers had curated content in the past six months. Of those respondents that indicated they had not knowingly curated in the past six months, 100 percent of them had, by sharing an article, blog post or other content with a prospect or customer.
Survey respondents, who include marketers from a variety of industries including technology, financial services and healthcare, indicated that content curation continues to be an important part of their overall marketing strategies, and many are beginning to refine the tactic by implementing best practices such as sharing and curating content on a daily basis.

The survey found that more marketers cited finding high quality content as their greatest content marketing challenge compared to 2011 (30 percent increase), and three-quarters (75 percent) of marketers indicated that having the time to do it was the biggest challenge.

Other key findings include:

• Establishing or improving thought leadership continues to be a primary objective of content curation: 8 percent more marketers cited it as their primary objective than a year ago.
• Social media is a preferred channel for both finding and sharing online content: 79 percent of marketers cited social media as their favored method for finding third-party content, and 76 percent responded that social media was their top choice for sharing content.
• Resources are being dedicated to content curation: 50 percent of marketers indicated that there were one or more people at their organization dedicated to curating shared content.
• Three quarters of marketers who identify themselves as content curators dedicate up to 25 percent of their marketing budgets to content curation.

So from the 1st of May, 2012, if you click on the Stories section in the #Discover menu, you would find a series of stories shared with you. These stories or tweets are shown to you because they are popular among people you follow and the folks they follow.

Apart from providing a snapshot of the article, you get to see the list of people who have retweeted the story and you can see their tweets by clicking on the option “View Tweets” and if you are impressed by the story you can retweet it again and share it with your community by clicking on “Tweet this story”.

How content curation platforms work

There are a lot of websites out there offering curation-type services. They crop up and disappear with the latest craze. To get a clear sense of how a brand might leverage curation, we can break them down into categories.

Social bookmarking and news

Bookmarking services are the old-school tools of curation, having their start in browsers like Netscape. They've evolved dramatically since, with smarter features to match your interests to quality content. The best over the years have gone beyond saving and organizing articles by using social data to sort through noise and make better recommendations about content relevant to you.

Sharing

The top ways people share online by far are the Facebook "like" button, Facebook wall posts, and tweets. While sharing is super important to anyone's content marketing strategy, posting a link to friends is not exactly curation. A "like," for example, does not give you the ability to categorize and save an article. It simply means you deemed it worthy of showing up in your newsfeed for your friends to see.
Aggregation and syndication networks

Platforms that are built for posting and reposting -- and reposting and reposting -- stuff from anywhere are excellent for viral sharing. A good example of this is Tumblr, where you can post original content or in one click "reblog" other people's content.

On the following pages, we'll take a look at eight ways your brand can get in on the action.

1. Become a curator creator

This tactic is strictly for warriors because it takes time, diligence, and a step outside the marketing box to become one with a community. Becoming a curator will mean rolling up your sleeves to create your own Pinterest board or other social network profile. There's more to it than slapping your pretty little logo up there and waiting for all the people who should be so blessed as to be graced by your brand to come falling at your footsteps. You will actually need to become a worker bee in the community, contributing, making friends, and consistently showing up.

2. Create an interest-based content strategy

As marketers, we tend to base our communications around products and target markets. To be an awesome content curator or creator, you'll want to push that into the back of your mind and focus on interests. This can be accomplished with some listening, observation, and information collection on what your customers care about when they aren't out buying your product. Then, align their real-life interests with your brand position.

3. Optimize for popular sharing topics

You might be shocked to uncover your audience's real interests. Unicorns, rainbows, lawyer dog, heart-shaped toast. Seriously?! Yeah, seriously.

As a brand, all this might not make sense at first. If you put on your creative cap (in fact, get out of the office and have a brainstorm), you can easily develop content to meet the mainstream. Pay attention to memes and make Photoshop your best friend. How about a rainbow treatment on your product? A "What a unicorn would do if he worked in our office for a day" blog post or...well, you get the picture.

4. Treat photography as being as important as copy

With the popularity of blogging, the written word has reigned king. The term "content is king" was not reserved for articles. Video and photography is as valuable as an article. Consider image blogging using WordPress or, even better, platforms like Tumblr so it can easily spread across the web.

5. Make something worth sharing

While you're thinking about how photography fits into your content plan, consider that it must be stripped of buttons and call to actions. A "banner" ad image just won't do. Content worth sharing -- whether an article, video, or image -- must connect with the sharer on an emotional level or provide a ton of value in their eyes and be something they'd be proud to pass off to their friends.

6. Make it sharable

Making share-worthy content is the first step. The second is making it easy to actually do. This is simple. Add sharing buttons to your content on your blog, website, shopping cart, and email campaigns. People will do things that require one-click.

7. Make friends with influencers

Social bookmarking communities can be tough to break into. And if you don't have time to become a warrior (reference to tip 1), then it's good to become friends with one.

8. Post from the inside

Behind-the-scenes photos and videos are gold when it comes to social sharing. Especially if your brand has access to celebrities. If not, no worries. People just want to get to know the people behind the brand. A behind-the-scenes of how the grocer picks fruit, your weird office culture, and the care that goes into making a product on the factory floor can all be interesting stories.

1. Be Part of the Content Ecosystem

Be part of the content ecosystem, not just a re-packager of it. Often, people think of themselves as either creators or curators as if these two things are mutually exclusive. What a curator really should do is embrace content as both a maker and an organizer.

2. Follow a Schedule

Audiences expect some regularity, and they’ll reward you for it. It doesn’t need to be a schedule that you can’t keep up with. If you want to curate three new links a day, and write one big post a week, that’s a schedule. Make sure to post at the same time each week.

3. Embrace Multiple Platforms

It used to be that your audience came to you. Not anymore. Today content consumers get their information on the platform of their choosing. That means you should consider posting short bursts on Tumblr, images on Pinterest, video on YouTube, and community conversations on Facebook. And don’t leave out established sites and publishers.

4. Engage and Participate

Having a voice as a curator means more than creating and curating your own work. Make sure you’re giving back by reading others and commenting on their posts. A re-tweet is one of the easiest ways to help build relationships with fellow bloggers and curators. And your followers will appreciate that you’ve pointed them to good content.

5. Share. Don’t Steal.

Take the time to give attribution, links back, and credit. The sharing economy works because we’re each sharing our audiences, and providing the value of our endorsements. If you pick up someone’s work and put it on your blog, or mention a fact without crediting the source, you’re not building shared credibility. You’re just abusing someone else’s effort.

While Google has put much emphasis on content recently, its focus is also on unique content. The Panda algorithm update (which continues in phases) has hurt many content-based sites. One reason these content-based sites were hit so hard was that Google was trying to reduce duplicate content algorithmically – trying to reduce the times the same content appears in multiple places. But this makes it tough for content originators, as others may steal content and then outrank the content originator!

For content creators, protecting copyrighted content online isn’t easy. For instance, one of my clients is a health association. Members readily copy content from its site verbatim, and place it on their own practice websites. I expect they have the best intentions at heart: to share important health information with their patients. But in reality, they also may cause major issues for the association if Google doesn’t understand that the association is the creator and actual owner of this content.

Here are some ways content creators/owners can avoid Panda issues:

1.  Date your content. Google appreciates recent content and rewards it. Adding a date to your content can be an indicator for Google.

2.  Update the content regularly. Don’t just write an article and let it sit for three years. Update it with new facts, comments, etc.

3.  Add and update your XML Sitemap. When you update content and the Sitemap, it signals Google that your content is being updated, which Google seems to reward.

4.  Consider adding an author and using rel=author on your content. This may help Google understand who the ORIGINAL author is.

In a pronounced effort to provide educational and responsible content for children who spend more and more time online via the iPad, Daily Interactive Networks has recently unveiled Happly for iPad, a collection of originally-curated child-friendly content, ranging from stories, images, games, and online videos. Happly was born out of the desire to help families avoid uncensored websites, violent games and inappropriate videos, and focuses on subjects that most kids browse nowadays: athletics, history, dinosaurs, and space, among many other topics.

Whether you like it or not, all brand Facebook Pages have been migrated to use the Facebook Timeline layout. Resistance is futile and you must assimilate.

Don’t worry. For brands and businesses, the new Facebook Timeline makes it easier than ever for you to tell your brand story and take control of that story as well as visitors’ experiences on your Facebook Page.

It’s easier than ever to turn a boring Facebook Timeline into a successful content marketing initiative. Here are five features of the new Facebook Timeline that you don’t want to miss:

1. Facebook Timeline Cover Photo

2. Pinning Posts

3. Highlighting Posts

4. Apps

5. Milestones

Step One – Define your Parameters

Step Two – Choose your Weapons

Step Three – Be Intentional with your Schedule

Step Five – Be Consistent

Step Six – Prepare for Battle

Step Seven – Get Rolling

Step Eight – Natural Overflow

Step Nine – Use what you Learn

he problem with most of what’s being written about Pinterest traffic is that it’s pointing out the wrong things. What passes for “reporting” is someone opening Google Analytics, seeing a spike in referrals from Pinterest, and writing an “OMG! Lots of Traffic” post.

Very few are taking the time to do any due diligence on the larger picture.

Are people clicking through, or is the “traffic” just a remote call to the pinned image? Where are your visitors going? What are they doing? Does the traffic convert?

You have to ask real questions, and look for real answers, not patterns based on what others think they’re seeing.

Data doesn’t lie (at least when you’re using it correctly).

Understanding your data — traffic, patterns, and conversions — is critical to your content marketing strategy. Especially when it comes to a new traffic source.

In short, it means:

• You need to have specific goals for using the traffic from Pinterest.
• Work with the traffic as you would from any source — driving it to landing pages and through a conversion path.

For example, we’ve optimized certain pages on Copyblogger to drive visitors to our list and product pages. We’ve found that the traffic from Pinterest can be also driven to those sources, if a clear call to action is present.

On StudioPress, optimizing showcase pages to drive traffic to the related themes has shown an increase of on-page time and conversions — especially for repeat visitors.

So, even though the traffic from Pinterest for StudioPress was much lower than for Copyblogger, the overall bounce rate was also lower, on-page time was higher, and conversions were better because the path was more predictable.