While your aim should be to present your audience with useful material that will actually be of interest, it’s hard to know what will actually be of value and “do well” in the online sphere and which content will wander as lonely as a cloud, unread, unliked and unshared.
Passle
We were recently introduced to Passle, a content marketing platform designed to facilitate on-the-go commentary. Passle was created with busy professionals in mind, who may have expert knowledge in certain fields, but have no time to demonstrate this expertise to the wider world.
It took no time for us to get our heads around it. In fact, once you’ve signed up (yes, it costs money) and installed it as a browser addon it works very simply.
Find an article, highlight a segment of your choice and click the ‘Add to Passle’ button in your browser. A little orange (yes, orange) box will appear with space for to add your own thoughts on the topic covered. Remember to add a title, and once you’re happy, hit ‘make it live’. Your post will appear on your firm’s Passle page, then it’s up to you to share it on social media to get the best results.
Example of Passle in use. Article from Legal Futures.
This process is known as content curation: finding interesting content and reposting it as your own by providing your personal ‘take on it’ with your Passle post while still linking back to the original content item. Make sense?
The point is to become relevant to your audience, by taking content of interest to them and putting your spin on it.
Creation v. Curation
When it comes to law firms, content curation seems risky at first: is it verging on plagiarism? Why should we rely on others ability to create content to leverage our own goals? Isn’t it just news-jacking on others hard work? This may be the case if your idea of content curation involves sharing a pre-written article with little to no personal touch. Instead, you should see curation as finding the inspiration for your own creations.
Content curation isn’t about plagiarising or being a ‘thought follower’; in fact it’s quite the opposite. By using a story that is already in the public eye as the source of your own material, not only do you save time in the over-all writing process, you also expand your audience through social media by linking back to the original source. Those searching for a certain topic, e.g ‘buy to let property’ will find and read your piece and value your unique insight, therefore positioning you as a relevant source of information.
So, to answer the question of whether content curation is inferior to creation:
Without creation, curation is empty.
But true content curation is content creation.
