Get on the Content Curation Bandwagon with Scoop.it

[Eric Suesz]

Our Network Creators are always so great about adding tips for others, and I figured it was about time I added my own tip. My tip for you is to consider experimenting with a new content curation web app called Scoop.it.

If you're not familiar with curation, it's kind of what people do on Pinterest. It's all about picking out choice content while you surf the Internet and collecting it in one place for others to enjoy. Some people call this "social bookmarking" but the high-minded term "curation" sure does make you sound smart — so curation it is.

What can Network Creators do with Scoop.it? Here's a few ideas to get you started....

Curate a "what we're reading online" feed

If your site is all about Tea Party politics, your members are no doubt highly tuned to the news they find around the web every day about their most beloved and hated candidates. Use Scoop.it to collect the articles you know will resonate with them. You're probably already an expert or authority on your topic, and this is a good way to be seen as a collector of good content around that topic.

Group curate inspirational stuff

Scoop.it offers a handy bookmarklet that you can use to grab content as you're surfing around in your browser. If you run a knitting or crafting site and have a team of admins or preferred members who like to go out and find inspirational content online, you could all use their bookmarklet to group curate the most inspirational photos or techniques you find in your daily or weekly browsing. 

Collect PR that's all about you

If your site is big and successful and talked about online regularly, why not collect all of the mentions of you and your successes? You can put a Scoop.it badge on your site to show the press coverage you're getting. 

Save time finding content

What's most handy about this service is that you can plug a ton of Google News searches, custom RSS feeds, and all kinds of other search results into their system, and it will present you with a bevy of results to choose from. Thumb through and click-and-pick the content you want in your feed. If you already use an RSS reader for this purpose, you can upload your OPML file. You're in business as an expert curator!

There are plenty of other uses for this novel new service, and I look forward to hearing how you might use it. I've been using Scoop.it for the past few weeks, and it's pretty handy for my weekly digest of content found on the web. You can check out the badge on the Main Page of Creators if you want to see how it displays content from your Scoop.it feed.

[M.Tariq Malik]

wowwwwwww great 

[SweetPotato]

Thanks Eric, I use the scoop.it content you have on Creators bottom left to include in my weekly digest email. Going to head on over to see how I can use on my forthcoming redesign
Cheers
SP

[Eric Suesz]

Great! I think it will fit perfectly with your network. Let me know how it goes. 

[Jen]

Hi Eric,

I haven't jumped on yet, but on my "near future" list. Great article, nice examples. Thanks!

Best,

Jen

[Ceddy J]

I used my Scoop It as a way to highlight the top affiliate radio shows on my network. This helps me draw more attention to that aspect more since I have pretty much completed the formulas for the modeling and music aspects of the site. Let me know what you guys think http://duskspot.com

[Eric Suesz]

One thing that I think you could also use this for, Ceddy, is to put up show notes. If you're doing radio shows or podcasts and end up talking about content that is visual, in the news, etc., this could be a good tool to collect the show notes in one location so listeners can get additional, visual content. 

[Ceddy J]

Basically you're saying let the episode bios show. I thought about that at first but wanted feedback. Appreciate it.

[Ron]

I did notice this last week on the homepage, this is nice Eric.

[stephen hughes]

Jumped straight in on this and it's a great visual addition to my site. Thanks!

I also use paper.li to promote content on my site and have sloted scoop.it in there - it all fits in nicely.

http://paper.li/mod_generation/1311670073

 

[Dr Husky (Emalejandro)]

Great, I need this option. Thanks

[David Deubelbeiss]

Eric, 

We use Scoopit as a newsletter and it works well.  http://www.scoop.it/t/efl-classroom-2-0

However, Ning has to fix the fact that the main video image doesn't show up in Scoopit. So it makes for a laborious process of capturing an image of a video, saving, uploading to Scoopit etc... to post a video on Scoopit.  This is also besides the other problems with video thumbnail images and uploading videos which I'm sure you are aware of. 

[Patrick Chappelle]

Thanks Eric! I'm looking into this right now.