Content curation on the social intranet

If you’re looking for a low threat, low risk introduction (to social media in the enterprise) content curation is a good place to start,” says Shel Holtz, speaking at The Social Intranet Summit in Vancouver (Surviving your intranet content crisis). “Curation is a relatively new trend online, and is absolutely vital to an organization; not an option, organizations must start looking at curation as a core activity.”

Content curation is loosely defined as finding, filtering and sharing valuable content with context with others. To see content curation at work, see the new, updated Delicio.us, or Storify.

“Curated Content is Media (it’s the context that delivers genuine value),” adds Shel, Principal of Holtz Communication + Technology. In other words, curated content is content that’s been filtered or selected by a trusted source.

Consider, for example, the social media impact on news:

• Newsrooms are shrinking (30% in the past 10 years)
• Top online stories change quickly (hours not days)
• Top online stories do not equal top mainstream stories
• Broader range of coverage online

Shel sums up the problem with one fascinating stat: if you were to burn the volume of content published on the Internet in 2011 to DVDs and stacked them on top of each other, the pile would reach half way to Mars.

“It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure,” says Clay Shirky.

Inside the enterprise, on the intranet, employees are demanding and want and need work information fast, and are easily frustrated by antiquated information architecture and search engines.

“Companies have to think like publishers,” says Shel. “Using search as the most available means of finding information is becoming dicey. What we can do by curating content in the enterprise is to become that “corporate guide in helping people find good information.”

Shel’s recommended curation process:

• Identification (content worth sharing)
• Collection
• Documentation
• Context

The need and practice has started to filter to the intranet.

“At Intel, three full-time journalists produce the content. At Cisco Systems, the content comes from a host of freelance journalists, coordinating by social media staff, many of whom come from journalism backgrounds. Dell has brought outside journalists in who are pitched by brand managers, but the journalists make the ultimate decision about the topics theyв’ll address,” writes Shel on Social Media Today (Marketers, Keep Your Hands Off of Your Company’s Brand Journalism).

Free curation software worth looking at:

• Storify
• POPURLS
• Scoop.it

For additional online examples, see IBM’s “A Smarter Planet” and the portal created by Purina.

Written live from The Social Intranet Summit in Vancouver, September 28, 2011