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What I’d like to share with you today is something called web curation. But what does it mean? Who’s talking about it? And how can you apply it to your business?

In the last 12 months, new (and mostly free) online tools have appeared that now make Internet marketing and info publishing so much easier.

But most people haven’t clicked... yet.

There’s WordPress for blogs, MailChimp for email broadcasts and, of course, social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. But the one area that gets me most excited is the rise of web curation services like Storify, Bundlr and Scoop.it – and it’s these that you need to know about right now if you have any interest whatsoever in an online marketing business...

Who could benefit from web curation?

Web curation is perfect if you have an offline business and want to engage and share valuable news and opinions with your customers and prospects.

And you know what, it’s also a lot of fun to play around with!

This isn’t just some IM industry hype. Curation is making big waves with “serious” publishers and online players. I was at the Paywall Strategies 2011 Convention in London in February. Big names like the Financial Times, The Spectator and The Guardian were there – and the place was buzzing with talk of curation. And it wasn’t a question of if publishers were going to curate – but how.

But what’s got me really excited was the number of free online services that can be used by anyone to zero in on a niche subject area and pull together quality content from other websites (including video, audio, graphics and text).

And ultimately, this isn’t just something the big boys are using – it’s set to truly change the way you can edge into the online publishing game.

Whether you’re using blogs, ezines, social media or a mix of them all – you can tie that with a bit of affiliate marketing and it’s a more efficient, less time-consuming approach to generating big money online.

Before I explain, I need to tell you a bit about curation.

What “curation” means, and why it’s the new “big thing.”

The term originally applied to museums and galleries. To curate is to organise and present artefacts or artworks. But now a lot of people are talking about web curation. They use slightly different definitions. Some describe it as “sorting” or “filtering” vast amounts of digital information. Others use it to describe content “aggregation” or “bundling”. Others say that curation is not just about selecting information, but making connections between the different elements, thereby creating a story.

In an age of digital information overload, curation is the act of sifting through information, prioritising the most valuable elements, and sharing it with others in your own voice as part of your own narrative.

Let me give you a few examples:

• Wikipedia is a famous example of curation by the mass public.

• Twitter is a curation tool, whereby an individual sifts through the web for stories that matter to them and their followers.

• Mark Evans http://www.markevanstech.com, a digital marketing and social media strategist, says: “Twitter has become a way to build an effective and interesting team of personal content curators, who comb the web for interesting, insightful, valuable and entertaining content.”

• The free music website Spotify http://www.spotify.com has a curation facility whereby users can compile and share playlists.

• A new service called Bundlr http://gobundlr.com allows people to collect news, images, tweets and blogs and then share them for free. The founders, Filipe Batista and Sergio Santos say: “We believe that skimming through all this noise, and getting to the meaningful information is one of the main challenges Internet users face today.

• A rival to Bundlr, called Storify http://storify.com allows you to lay out your story on a timeline.

• Stumble Upon (www.stumbleupon.com) is an automated ideas factory that delivers website after website, based on a theme of your choice. You “like” the webites that suit you and you reject the ones that are off-topic or irrelevant. Over time the website learns what you’re looking for and you start getting a large number of “hits”. It’s really super simple, fun, and will mean your inspiration never dries up.

Let me back up a little bit before we get started. You may know that apart from being publisher and editor in chief of Internet Income Detective I have recently launched a new project www.wearethefreeradicals.com. Along with fellow publisher and copywriter Gareth Rees we have created a website where we are championing the content marketing and freemium business models. Our plan is to write a book and publish it for free online.

We’re also working on a training programme and have created a module devoted to curation. And in the spirit of sharing I thought I’d give you an exclusive peek.

Radical curation: the key benefits

Let’s face it – one of the most difficult aspects of online publishing for most people is the gathering of quality content. The best blogs, Tweets and email services publish regular useful information. For this you need a constant supply of ideas, facts, figures and news.

OK, so this comes fairly easily to expert writers engrossed in their subject, companies with teams of staff, and those with enough time and dedication to work long hours.

But for everyone else, it’s hard work. However, using curation tools like Scoop.it you can:

• Automate your research – actively finding the most relevant and topical articles on any niche subject area you can think of and DELIVERING them to you.

• Store and present your research online – it will create an instant, professional, attractive-looking newsfeed website for you online. This is a permanently updated store of information you can use. Whenever you see anything interesting online you can add it to this website at a touch of a button.

• Gather new readers – the sheer presence of this website online will gather followers.

• Deepen the engagement with your readers – as well as your emails and blog, this is yet another form of free content, another point of contact with your readers, another free information service you can offer them that requires no skills, web-building or effort on your part.

And to cap it all off, it’s free! You don’t need any expertise on your part. There’s barely any legwork. If you can read a 500 word article and decide “yes that’s good” or “no it’s not relevant” then that’s it.

So here’s a step-by-step method for using Scoop it. This is a sophisticated website that finds you tailored content based on keywords, delivers them to you, and then allows you to present them on your own unique curation website.

Of course, you can also use www.gobundlr.com and www.storify.com and www.stumbleupon.com, You can use ALL the curation tools together if you like. If you do I can guarantee right now you’ll never ever be short of content. You’ll be privy to a constant stream of videos, news, websites, blogs, articles and audio.

trust me, this is going to knock your shoes AND socks off!

How to use Scoop.it

First, go to Scoop.it. Click on 'get an invite' and just fill in the simple form.

Sign up following the instructions. You’ll come to a page that offers you some options:

Next, click CREATE A TOPIC. Now fill in the white spaces. Don’t worry if you don’t get this right at first.

You can try lots of different approaches until you find what’s right for you. You can curate as many topics as you like. You’ll get better and better as you do more.

Here’s how Gareth filled his in:

Some tips:

The title should be the overall subject.

The description should sum up the benefits. In our example it’s “How anyone can master the tools of self- publishing and profit from their work.”

The keywords should be specific terms that your target reader would be looking for.

Let’s say you’re doing diabetes as a topic:

Keywords could be – diabetes, type II diabetes, symptoms of diabetes.

If you need help or ideas on what keywords to try, go to www.google.com and type “Keyword tool”. You can use this tool to generate keyword ideas. Normally it’s used for finding out what people search for on Google so you can target your advertising campaigns. But it can also work well for this.

OK, back to our example.

Can you see that after we filled in the blanks we uploaded an image (a stick figure with a pencil)?

Having an image doesn’t matter right now for your research. But remember, people will also follow this curation topic as you build it.

Once you’ve done that, click GO and you’ll see this page.

As the website tells you...

“Scoop it constantly crawls the web to search content for you, based on your keywords. You can just scoop as you like. You will never be short of inspiration.”

Fairly self-explanatory, right? Click NEXT. You’ll see this page.

Press “START CURATING”. Browse through the articles down the left and see what’s there. Anything you like, click “scoop it”. For instance in this Home Publishing topic, I can see this article about “content creation tools”:

When I press “scoop it” I see this:

If you like you can edit the copy. If you don’t want to use the image then don’t bother.

This is something you can now publish. But one article isn’t enough. So collect a few more. If you can’t see anything on the page you like, click “empty this page”. You’ll get a whole new fresh batch of websites.

If you don’t like what you see, click “manage- sources” in the navigation bar over the left-hand column. You can add different sources, add new keywords, whatever you like.

Click GO CURATE again and see what comes up.

Keep going until you’ve scooped three or more articles. The articles you’ve chosen will appear on the right as below:

Next, click “view topic”. Here’s what our example looked like:

Here’s another example about Repetitive Strain injury:

Now, so far this is just using Scoop.it to curate for you.

What you can also do is add articles to your curation page whenever you come across them. You may find something while browsing the Internet. Someone may Tweet you a link of interest. Or you may want to put blog posts from your own website on to your page.

Here’s what to do.

Go to the top right of the Scoop.it website and click “Bookmarklet”. Again, Scoop.it explain what to do: right click on the “scoop it” button and select “add to favourites”.

Now, imagine you’re doing a repetitive strain injury page. You’re browsing the web and you come across this:

You would go to your “favourites” button. Click “scoop.it” and you’ll see this:

Make sure the article is going to the right curation page (you’ll have more than one eventually). You can edit the text if you wish. Now click POST, then “see it”. You’ll find your post automatically added to your curation page. Here’s what ours now looks like (the article is now on the top left):

OK, so let’s recap on what the point of all this is...

1. This is a way to automate your research. Scoop.it will find articles related to search terms you put in. You can adjust and tweak these terms to get different results.

2. It’s a lazy way to keep on top of the latest news in your specialist area. Every day, go back to Scoop-it and curate again and they’ll find the most recent articles – most are from that very day. Add a few every day to your topic.

3. This is now a permanent, personalised, regularly updated store of content fodder and you can use this material to inspire and create niche blogs and email newsletters. You can also add any online material you come across, whether by accident, or someone sends it to you.

4. This is a way of creating a fantastic-looking “news” website for yourself and for your readers, prospects or customers. It looks professional. It’s easy to read. It hosts videos as well as text.

5. This is another content website you can link to your Twitter, Facebook, blog and email. It will attract new readers and followers,l enhance the experience of your readers and give your content even more depth.

Now let me tell you how to use your curation tool to create content.

Use curation tools to create content for blogs and emails

Remember, Scoop.it is just one recommended curation tool. You can use others like Storify, Bundlr and StumbleUpon. The following advice goes for any of the curation tools you use.

Here’s what you do...

Visit your curation page and rate your stories

You’re looking for at least one bit of useful information. If it’s just a small tip or one bit of news it’s likely you’re going to need to pick more than one story. Our advice is to choose three. If you don’t use them all for that particular email or blog post it doesn’t matter. Save it for next time.

To pick a story, go through each item on your curation page and rate it out of 5 for the following:

– How interesting is it? (Put yourself in the position of your ideal reader or customer.)

– How urgent is it? (How much is at stake, how necessary is it to know this, is there a time limit involved, is this something timely?)

– How topical is it? (How recent is this information?)

– How useful is it? (Can someone take this information and use it? Does it have a specific benefit?)

– How unique is it? (Have you seen this information many times before? Is there an interesting angle here? Is it predictable, common wisdom, or is it unusual and unexpected?)

Take the top-scoring item

Well done. This is your lead story. Now you have a choice.

a) Take two other stories that closely relate to this lead story (don’t worry so much about the scores). This way you’ve got subject matter for a complete email or blog on one subject.

b) Take the two next-highest scoring stories. This way you’ve got an email made of two or three segments.

When I say “take” the story, here’s what I mean...

Process the stories

When you decide to cover a story, you should do the following:

– Open a word processing document on your computer.

– Copy the link from the web page of the original article, video or blog. Paste it on to your word processing document.

– Now left-click your mouse over the most relevant text, drag it down to highlight it then right click “copy”.

See below:

– Now paste that on to your word processor.

– Delete any unwanted copy on the page, tidy it up a bit, so it looks like this:

Now do the same with your other articles.

If the information looks a bit scant on the page, no problem. Go back and collect a couple more articles from your curation page.

What next?

This is now a fact sheet, or storyboard, for your content. You will be rewording these stories, reporting them and offering your opinion on them.

This should be enough on its own. But let me give you an advanced tip here.

You may want to gather up more facts, evidence, quotes and statistics related to the story you’ve chosen. This is worth doing because it’s a way you can find even more information for your reader. So...

1. Go to www.google.com

2. Take the keyword you’re looking for. Let’s say you’re doing the repetitive strain injury topic and you want to know more about how office work causes the problem.

3. You would type a few different keywords or key phrases from the article into Google to find more specific tips, opinions and advice on this.

For instance... you could type “office danger repetitive strain”. Go and check them out. If you think any of them will add something to your content, then repeat the process...

– Cut and paste the link

– Cut and paste the most relevant bits of copy

– Tidy it up and delete any images or unwanted extras

If you really like the article then Scoop.it or add it to any other curation websites you use. This way you’re not only researching content you’re building your curation website at the same time.

With this approach to content creation NOTHING is wasted. Everything you do has a benefit somehow.

Excited? You should be. I urge you to give Scoop.it a try. Remember, it’s free.

I could go on and on with this – how to share this with your audience, how to get search engines to find your page and how to build a list – all using curation. But I don’t want to overwhelm you. It’s best for you to get stuck in and just have a mess around.

by Nick Laight Business Opportunities Expert Nick Laight is the editor of What Really Makes Money and helps ordinary people find simple, workable home business opportunities. You can sign up for his free weekly eletter here: Name Email

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