Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Robin Good: I have just received an invitation to test the new content curation platform Zeen, and here I am with some early impressions on what I have seen.

 

Zeen is a content curation tool designed to create good-looking magazines on a specific topic or theme. Setup and configuration is very easy and straightforward and it allows you to connect your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.

 

Once you are in, you can immediately set up a Zeen magazine, by selecting a title, a description and a cover image. From there on you are free to use the integrated search feature to find web articles, news, images, video clips or tweets relevant to your magazine. You just start a search after having selected what kind of content you are looking for and Zeen presents you with a set of relevant results. One-click on any of them and they are inserted instantly in your magazine.

 

You can also create as many "tags" (Zeen calls them "labels") as you like and assign each content item to a specific label.

 

The final magazine issue offers an automatic visual table of contents, in which you can organize by dragging and dropping the order of your selected contents.

 

A Zeen magazine can be made of multiple issues, instead of being like Scoop.it, a continuously growing content holder. You select the content items and you produce an issue (which can be still edited after publication).

 

N.B.: There is no way to edit or modify the content picked and added to your magazine, including the use of images.

 

You can't create new content but only pick and organize existing resources.

 

Here is an example of a Zeen magazine: http://zeen.com/read/ODgO94/toc

and here is another one on barbeques: http://zeen.com/read/KuJoAW

 

 

More info: http://zeen.com/

 

Via Robin Good, Paksorn Runlert

I curated and posted this a few months ago but feel it's relevant and timely today. (What brought this to mind was another important article written by Axel Schultze, which I have commented on below.

 

Here's what I said about Gideon Rosenblatt's post.

 

This is one of those gems that I love to share. It was written by Gideon Rosenblatt in response to an earlier article written by Eli Pariser, "The Filter Bubble", which is about the way algorithms (based on our personal searches) affect the results that are returned to us, as a result, we're not seeing the whole picture.

 

"Computer algorithms aren't the only thing contributing to the 'Internet Filter Bubble."

 

**In the world of the information networker, curating content is only half the game. The other half is curating the curators.

 

**In that power to choose our connections, rests our ultimate power to reshape our information filter bubbles and radically improve our perception of reality.

 

**Who we choose to connect with in our social networks deeply affects our ability to see a diversity of information.  

 

My takeaway from this is that whereas technology may restrict the results returned to us by search engines, the other, and perhaps more important half of the equation is controlled by us!  It is well documented that we are more likely to influenced by our circle of friends and associates than by anything else that we may find (or that may find us!). 

 

By effectively curating our circles of influence, we increase the value of this ever important means of discovery and therefore of our entire online experience. 

 

**This in turn can make us far more effective and informative consumers as well as curators, when we widen our own circles.

 

Great article by Axel Schultze CEO of xee.me

 

"Why SEO will Be Gone in 5 to 10 Years" as he talks about "Relationships and Recommendations Soon More Valuable Than SEO" (Robin Good)

 

Jan Gordon: "Here's what caught my attention:

 

Axel: As long as people search for a product not knowing their name or a technology, not knowing its source or a solution not knowing who is a potential supplier SEO is an important part of the marketing mix...

 

However, this is slowly and steadily changing.

 

**Today 60 – 80% of the so called educated purchase decision is based on recommendations by trusted individuals or groups that have no or no significant interest in the sale but helpful and experienced people using or knowing the product or service in need.

 

And the number of recommendation based purchases is steadily growing. I'm sure it will hit the 80 – 90% range in the next 5 to 10 years.

 

Now – what does that mean to SEO?

 

Why should a business invest in search engine optimization if most of the purchase decisions are based on recommendations?

 

Wouldn't it be smarter to invest into the "recommendation chain" instead in SEO?

 

Wouldn't it be more effective and successful to make sure people recommend a product than hoping to come up higher in the list of search results?"

 

Curated by Jan Gordon covering "Content Curation, Social Business and Beyond"

 

Read the full article: http://bit.ly/AxRrEr

 

Via janlgordon

 

Curated by Jan Gordon covering "Content Curation, Social Business and Beyond"

 

Image by Istockphoto  from an article by Social Media Examiner

 

Read the full article: [http://bit.ly/AxRrEr]

Via janlgordon, k3hamilton, juandoming

From Journalism.co.uk: "The content curation website Bundlr has just announced a new version of its service which allows for embedding of content from a wide range of sources.

By partnering with Embedly the site now supports over 200 sources of content, including Storify, Pinterest and Amazon, for users to add to their bundles.

 

Embedly is the service that the new version of Twitter uses to embed photographs and articles in your Twitter stream and is used by a host of other sites such as Reddit and Bitly and comes as a WordPress plugin.

While Bundlr was originally seen as an alternative to sites like Storify, which can be used to create stories from curated links and content, Bundlr's focus is now on creating a top-level resource for curated content around a story or topic."

 

(Source: Journalism.co.uk)

 

Try it out: http://bundlr.com/ ;

Via Robin Good, Ken Dickens

Robin Good: Here is a good guide providing the basic principles that should be followed when using, reposting, citing or quoting other people's content (both text and images).

 

The article outlines "proper methods of source attribution on the internet to guarantee the right people get credit for their hard work and ideas."

 

Specific sections of the article cover:

How To Cite Content in Blog Posts How To Cite Content in Social Media How to Give Credit to Guest Bloggers and Ghost Writers How to Cite Images and Visual Content

Well done. 8/10

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33098/How-Not-to-Steal-People-s-Content-on-the-Web.aspx

Via Robin Good, janlgordon