Curation is now a necessity. The web is full of content. More than a person could consume in several lifetimes if all they did was sleep a couple hours per day and surf the web, life after life.
Google can’t help us with our internet A.D.D. Nor can Facebook or Alltop.
The best we’ve been able to do so far to harness the massive information overload is use tools like Google Reader and RSS feed aggregators like Alltop. They’ve helped, to be sure, but no one is going through all that information and picking out the best of the best and making sense of it all for you.
Rather than start a new site with the goal of creating a bunch of new content, it’s time for people to think about being content curators. Organizing and commenting on the best content around a certain topic.
Curators still use blog software to publish their content, but the vast majority of each post is made up of carefully reviewed and organized 3rd party information.
Here are 11 Reasons Curation Is The New Killer Opportunity To Profit Online
1. The 1% of web users who create almost all the content on the web have done a fine job in the quantity department. Someone in every niche needs to filter the quality content from the junk.
2. People want desperately to follow good “filters” of information to save them time.
3. Google is more and more ranking pages based on what people think of them (think the Like button on Facebook or Tweets on Twitter), less and less on how much of the content is 100% original.
4. Curation, done properly, has a perfect mix of original commentary and outside content like videos, audios, pictures, and blog posts.
5. Curation is far simpler than original content development.
6. More people will be able to curate than become hardcore bloggers.
7. If you are the chosen curator in a niche by a large number of readers, they will reward you with list optins, ad clicks, loyal readership, recommendations (Likes and Tweets), and purchases.
8. Good curation leads to respect, notoriety, and thought leadership status for the curator.
9. Curated blog posts get ranked just as well as original content posts when done properly.
10. Good curation is a valuable, highly sought-for service.
11. And finally, it just makes sense.
After over a decade of serious content creation on the web, we have an obvious glut of information that no search engine or social network can cut through when it comes to the true quality of that information.
Software was supposed to be doing the job by now, yet it still doesn’t exist. Only human filtered, curated content gets the biggest thumbs up from readers or viewers. And the people who choose curation over traditional content publishing are filling a monster gap and profiting handsomely from their efforts.
Great Curation Resources
Utility Poster: Software I had created to help me create more blog content, faster. I still do original stuff, like this post, but when I am in a crunch and have to manage more than one blog every day, this software saves my life!
Zemanta: An awesome Firefox and Chrome plugin that watches what you write and suggests photos and blog posts related to your topic. A great way to get extra value into your curated post without any extra work.
Insights: A wordpress plugin that does much the same as Zemanta with even more sources. The two combined give you a lot of curation power!
Alltop.com: Often called the “magazine rack” of the best blogs in a huge array of categories. Find yours, follow the newsmakers, and use them to discover excellent content to curate into your posts.
See also: “Is Curation The Future of Blogging?”