Scoop it for you, Delicious for later, Reader for me.

So it seems that content curation is all the rage, but hasnt it been around since the beginning? You find a good newspaper or magazine article, you cut it out and share with a friend. Right?

Well anyway, it seems that I have jumped on the bandwagon on this one.  I have been having a blast with my sccop.it topic on digital content and nonprofit tech. But I have learned a few things from it already.

TOPIC: Pick a topic that really excites you, not something that will be like work for you to find content on. But even more important, be specific! When you dig for gold, you dont create piles of metal, dirt and other, you create piles of each specific type of precious metals.

FOCUS: When you decide to start curating, you should focus on themes and pay attention to what others like.

PATTERN: Create a pattern of when and how you curate your topic.  You can see mine below.

SHARE: Go ahead and share your curated content on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. HOWEVER! Do not SPAM. Your followers on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook may overlap, but more importantly they are people, not mindless drones. Think through which audience to share with and share selectively, dont just send it to all social networks just cuz its easy.

Well anyway, here is how I curate my content:

1. Subscribe to a ridiculus number of RSS feeds on good Nonprofit, content marketing, social media and other Blogs (most of which someone else curated and told me it was a good blog)
2. As time allows I use Google Reader to scan theses posts. As I find a post that I want to read closer, tag for reference or share with others, I star that entry in Reader.
• NOTE: I almost always scan my Google reader on my phone (on the train or wherever I am just sitting around). The reader app on my android phone rocks. I am able to scan through hundreds of posts quickly, granted I may miss some gems because I base so much of my decision on title, but ehhh.
3. Each Day (yeah, I do try to do this every day):
1. Open Google Reader and pick a random spot amongst all of my starred items
2. Open each starred item and decide what to do with it
• Read again and unstar 
• Take an action like register for webinar or download a file (which is easier on my laptop) and unstar
• Add the blog entry to my Delicious.com account for future reference
• NOTE: i have a new tag of DCSToDo, which is my list of links that I need to get back to soon to take an action
• Scoop.it! If the content fits my topic and I think others would find it valuable.
• NOTE: I dont share everytime I Scoop.it. I only share about 2/3 to my Twitter account and only 1/15 to my Facebook or LinkedIn.

Anyway those are my thoughts on content curation.  The last question that I get all the time is, "How do you like Scoop.it"?  I try not to answer that question too much. The tool is not as important as why and how you use it. Scoop.it fits great into the flow that I have created above, it is easy to use, fast to post to, it is trendy so gets some extra attention, etc. But my favorite part is how the pages are created visually but it isnt overdone. Some of these new visual toys bury the information and make it pretty but useless.

Enabling Program Staff to Become Digital Content Editors

So I have been busy writing a long blog post for NTEN and have neglected my own blog. So rather than write another post, I will just share a link to the blog post on NTEN.

A BIG THANKS to Debra Askanase (http://www.communityorganizer20.com), Jason Dobrolecki and John Oliver people for their help with this article! They read it for me and made it so much better. Thanks!

Here is what it covers:

Elements to enable digital editors:

• Publish metrics (recognition, competition, feedback)
• Establish structure and accountability
• Remove barriers
• Regular training and resources
• Enable individuals while managing the brand

It’s important to note that the type of content an organization wants to publish should be identified by its communications department, and the process for gathering that content (which is what I write about below) should be developed in collaboration between the communications and technology departments.

http://www.nten.org/blog/2011/10/14/enabling-program-staff-become-digital-content-editors