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Journals by EmailGuest post by Larry Kunz.
Two years ago I hadn’t heard of content curation, and you probably hadn’t either. Now it’s everywhere. The steam of content is turning into a flood. (Brett Swanson calls it the exaflood.)
As a technical communicator, if you’re not already assimilating content from all across the organization—as well as from your customers—you soon will be. In fact, your customers won’t wait to be invited to the party.
This subject fascinates me, and I like to read everything I can about it. I’m noticing something: as the flood of content increases, the flood of content about content curation is increasing too. Blog posts. Slide decks. Webinars. All with their attendant tweets, RSS feeds, and email notifications.
I’m not alone. As I was preparing this piece, I ran across an article in which Ian Greenleigh wrote that he has trouble handling all of the “shiny” new stuff being written about content curation. Like Greenleigh, I have a column in TweetDeck labeled #curation. Unlike Greenleigh, I don’t have ADD—but I still find it devilishly hard to keep up with everything.
The flood of content has forced me to develop my own curation skills. As I curate the content I receive about curation, I’m learning principles for curating the content I deliver to my customers. Call them the 4 Fs.
Find. With so much content, I’ve become impatient. If I hear about something but can’t find it quickly, I’ll give up. My customer must be able to find my content easily, through good navigation or through search. Just as writers have learned the best practices for writing for translation, we need to learn the best practices for writing for SEO.
Filter. I’ve set up Twitter to pick out tweets that are topical and relevant. In my web browser, I’ve bookmarked the blogs I trust the most. For my customer, I have to provide similar tools for filtering content about my product. I can tag topics, for example, to deliver content for a particular product version or model number.
Focus. I can’t cast my net too broadly; I have to choose the aspects of content curation that interest me most. For my customer, it’s up to me to deliver content that focuses on the specific task and leaves out irrelevant details.
Increase frequency. I count on secondary sources—links from other blogs, retweets—to ensure that I don’t miss any of the really good stuff. In the same way, my customer needs several pathways to the content they need and want. Not more content but more pathways. Linking, cross-referencing, and content reuse come into play.
What techniques have you developed for making your content easier for customers to consume?
Larry Kunz is a project manager and information architect with Systems Documentation, Inc. (SDI) Global Solutions in Durham, NC. He teaches a Managing the Information Development Process course in the Technical Communication certification program at Duke University. He is a Fellow in the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and in 2010 received the STC President’s Award for heading up the Society’s strategic planning effort. Larry blogs on the SDI website at http://www.sdicorp.com/Resources/Blog/articleType/AuthorView/authorID/24/lkunz.aspx.
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7 Comments to 'The Content Flood and How It's Helping Me Reach My Customers'
August 11, 2010
Great post, Larry. I agree with all of your points, though I’m probably not as focused as you. I cast my net wider and do a scan of all that comes across on twitter to decide what information I want to delve into a little further.
On the other hand, I try to keep in mind that, although I may no read it myself, something that comes across may be of interest to my customers, the folks who follow me. With that in mind, I retweet more than I read and hope that it helps someone else. I probably pass on more content than I create, but I think that part of my role as a curator is to make content available to others.
August 11, 2010
I wrote here recently about the “information deluge,” a synonym for content flood. Thanks, Larry, for suggesting how we can take the way we manage that flood personally and use it to improve how we manage information for our customers.
August 11, 2010
Julio — Thanks for stopping by. We’re all learning how to be conduits for content, whether we consciously think about it or not. I look forward to a continual dialog in which all of us share what we learn.
Ben, it’s an honor to be your guest blogger here on Gryphon Mountain. I think that your “Deluge” piece helped start me thinking along these lines, and I know it was a great encouragement to read that and realize I wasn’t the only one feeling deluged.
August 11, 2010
In one of my first technical writing courses, the teacher told us that “Users need ‘handles’ to find information.” In printed manuals, that meant good section headings and informative subheads, a detailed TOC, tables of figures, illustrations, and tables (if the document was large and included many of them), a detailed index, and section or topic tags in the headers or footers. Even the few who might read a new manual cover to cover, will come back looking for a specific bit of information to do their job. The writer’s job is to give them ‘handles’ to locate that piece of info they need.
In online documentation today, the key to providing what users need is still to give them the means to find the specific bit of information they need: “Not more content but more pathways. Linking, cross-referencing, and content reuse come into play.” The key skill required for content curation is the same as the skill needed to produce useful documentation: Give the user as many ‘handles” as possible to help them find what they want. I think it is harder to do that well online.
August 13, 2010
Larry, based on your post you will enjoy my eBook entitled “Content Curation: Taming the Flood in B2B Social Media” : http://www.getcurata.com/resources/
I would be interested in hearing your thoughts.
August 15, 2010
Thanks for the mention, Larry. Something shiny just caught my eye, and I have to chase it down
August 16, 2010
Techquestioner: I like the “handles” metaphor. As you say, it’s hard to provide them online. But the potential payoff is much greater. In the end I think the key to finding, filtering, and focusing will lie in semantic tagging — and we’re just starting to understand how to do that.
Pawan: Thanks for pointing me to your eBook. I’ve downloaded it and will take a look. I can tell you already that I like the cover art.
Ian: Thanks to YOU for your article, and thanks for sticking around here long enough to post a comment before dashing off.