CREATION VS. CURATION:
RETHINK YOUR COMPANY BLOG
Why start from scratch if someone else already wrote that?
Tal Florentin | Founder at Summurai
Tal Florentin | June 26
It was Mr. Seth Godin who said that “Content marketing is the only marketing left”. For a while now, blogging has been one of the main communication tools between companies and their customers. But something’s not working. We spend too much time creating, we hire writers to write them for us, we go on filling the world with not-good-enough content and the results don’t show up quick enough. It’s time to rethink company blogs and content creation and I think I have a few interesting ideas that’s been working pretty good for us lately.
Curation vs. Creation
Let’s say you plan to launch a new blog. If this is the case, there are a few questions worth asking:
- What would be easier? Creating blog posts from scratch or finding the best articles on the web and creating summaries for them?
- Which type of content would have a higher quality? An item your bloggers created based on keyword research to make Google satisfied or a summary of an article defined as a masterpiece?
- What would make your brand look better? A classic textual blog post or an audio playlist?
- Which type of content would be defined by your customers as higher ROI or Value/Effort ratio (V.E.R.)?
Well, you get the point…
Someone already wrote it
Audio summaries are the new alternative for content marketing; you can use them for many different types of content; and making branded content accessible via audio is a perfect fit for the current state of the internet, which is on the verge of this new digital disruption. For content marketing, audio summaries are the new and improved alternative to classic blogs.
Getting loads of content fast with OPC (Other people’s content)
Creating a content hub with the top articles on the web and providing the easiest way to consume them and stay up to date is an approach worth considering. Doing this will provide a much shorter TTM (time to market) and help you go live with much more content, much quicker. In addition, if you are looking for brand awareness, it will be considered by your customers as a much more innovative and valuable service, letting you enjoy the fruits of that.
The process of creating audio summaries
Creating your Summy channel – an aggregated page with audio article summaries – requires 4 steps:
- Curation.
In this step, you have to find a professional with the relevant knowledge, who would be able to spend time and find the best articles on the web. It wouldn’t be enough to read the titles. This person would have to actually read them in order to make sure that they have real value for human beings, rather than just for Google. - Summarizing.
This is where the same professional or another one will have to step into your audience’s shoes and figure out what they would try to take out of this article. Creating a valuable summary that’s not shallow is not an easy thing to do. Another thing to keep in mind is making sure you rewrite the content and stay away from any plagiarism (although Summies should always include a credit and a link to the source article). Another important element is the need for the text to be written in a form that makes it easy to narrate. Text created for reading is different from a script created for narration. - Narration.
Now, your Summy gets a voice. Besides the actual recording process, you’ll have to decide who is going to narrate it – a female or male? Young or mature? Will they use a Native American accent or an international UK tone? Would it be formal or informal? Different types of interactions require different types of narration. - Packing and delivering.
Now that you have your audio ready, you’ll have to find a place to host it. Placing your branded audio in Spotify or SoundCloud will make the content theirs. If you’d like to create your own branded audio content channel, Summurai is the place for you.
Each one of these steps can be done within your content team or by your content service provider. At Summurai’s content agency, we provide the full service for some of our clients. This could be a great place for content agencies to expand their offering
