Curating Content for a WordPress Blog (How I Do It)
If you’re a regular reader of the ManageWP blog then you know that my last duo of posts have either been about creating or curating content for a WordPress blog.
In one post I discussed a plain method I’ve developed for concepting months worth of excellent blog posts. In my most latest post I attempted to response a question that has been bothering me for a while: what is the most efficient way to sort through and curate a large number of online sources for a WordPress blog? I attempted using an autoblogging plugin but as you might expect it performed wonderfully as an aggregator but poorly in terms of curation.
So for today’s post (as a go after up to both of those articles) I’d like to explain a method I’ve come up with that permits me to sort through and curate up to seven hundred sources a day for my visual arts curation blog. A feat I am fairly proud of regardless of the fact that for me, it needs to be executable in just a few hours in order for it to be ideal. But it is a promising begin and I think many of you will find it helpful.
Here’s what you’ll need to go after along:
But Very first: Let’s Clarify Some Commonly Confused Terms
Before I dive into this method, I want to take a minute or two to clarify some commonly used terms that I think get confused on a regular basis. Partially because they’re over-used, partially because they’re popular buzzwords and then partially because most people online do a combination of them all at the same time – but only attribute one term to what they do.
If that sounds confusing I’ll be able to clarify better after we cover the terms and their definitions. So here we go:
Content Creation: The act of writing original words, taking an original picture, shooting an original movie, etc.
Content Sharing: Taking a lump of content created by yourself or others and distributing it to a following or audience. This can be done in many ways and through many channels; blogs and social media outlets being just a few of the more popular examples.
Content Aggregation: This is like content sharing on steroids. An aggregator typically uses software that automatically pulls in content from numerous sources (such as RSS feeds) and reposts it all at one central location, usually a blog.
Content Curation: Similar to content aggregation, content curation also pulls from many sources. However, instead of automatically posting every chunk of content pulled in there is a manual filtering and sorting process that takes place in order to select only the most valuable chunks of content for a given audience. Curation also involves adding helpful annotation that frames the information already provided from the original source in such a way as to add extra value and/or understanding.
Examples in Activity
So with those definitions let’s look at some online examples and decently label them:
Link Sharing on Twitter: Many people are quick to call link sharing on twitter content curation. And in a way it is since it involves by hand choosing something and distributing it. But with the one hundred forty character limitation of Twitter it’s difficult to add meaning and value. I’d say this is (at best) 20% curation and 80% sharing.
Clicking Share on Facebook: Without adding a comment that brings extra value or understanding this is very likely 90% sharing and 10% curation (since you had to friend or like something for it to showcase up on your Facebook feed in the very first place).
Clicking Re-Blog on Tumblr: Similarly to the Facebook share feature this method of sharing something requires very little thought or effort (translating into little to no added value) and therefore comes out about the same at 90% sharing and 10% curation.
Using an Autoblogging Contraption on WordPress: Supposing you are simply pulling in content from various sources and reposting them automatically, this is about 90% aggregation and 10% curation. Of course you had to choose the sources in the very first place, but almost everything else about the process is automatic and in many ways offers less value than the original because you’re simply pointing your visitors back to the source.
Writing an Original Essay or Article: Obviously, this is your unspoiled version of content creation. It can be expected that you’ll very likely use some creative commons pictures or movies to accompany your thoughts but for the most part you’re a content creator in this example.
As you’re very likely beginning to realize, the most elusive of these terms is the one that gets thrown around the most: content curation. Obviously we know what it is now, but what are some good examples of content curation for us to look at and explore?
Well, there are three that I look to on a regular basis. Each of these websites takes content created by others and repackages/reframes it in such a way as to add value.
1. TED
TED finds individuals who have done or said something significant already. Their message is already out there in its original form. However, TED repackages that idea into a live talk. They also reframe that idea by making that talk a part of an event with a larger theme or context.
Two. Open Culture
At Open Culture, the curators take existing free educational content from around the web and re-organize it into courses. They also introduce one-off chunks of content (movies, pics, etc.) via blog posts where they add a lot of original annotations and helpful information; often linking to other resources they’ve gathered on their site.
Trio. Brain Pickings
At Brain Pickings the purpose is to foster combinatorial creativity – the cross-pollination of ideas. To accomplish this they take existing content (from the web and elsewhere) and write blog post introductions/reviews. They also provide features that make excellent ideas lighter to consume such as their bookshelf page and literary jukebox feed.
In each example the process of curation requires that the curator also create something of their own in addition to sharing content created by others. And that is the thickest difference inbetween content curation and content aggregation or sharing.
So that’s where I’m coming from in this post. From a place that says true curation takes some serious time, effort and creativity. It can be aided by instruments, but not put on autopilot or dumbed down to merely clicking share or re-blog.
The Origins of My Curation Method
In the fall of two thousand ten I began a tumblr called The Astonishing Post (or TAP for brief). In its infancy it was basically just a bookmarking instrument. A place where I could post cool art that I found around the web and refer back to if I wished to dive deeper with a post for one of the popular art and design blogs I wrote for at the time.
However over the course of a year or so I began to attract a following of my own and determined to take things a bit more earnestly. I developed this method of sorting through my RSS sources in an attempt to figure out a way for my one person tumblr to keep up with the post volume produced by some of the large multi-person blogs I was writing for (and ultimately rivaling with).
Here’s how it worked:
1. Open up Feedly and go through my art sources feed by feed; “tabbing out” anything that looked interesting.
Two. Beginning with the tabs on the far right I would then use the tumblr bookmarklet to sort through and create one or numerous posts from the content on each tab.
Trio. After I’d been through all of my rss sources and blogged the posts that I’d tabbed out, I would budge into tumblr itself and begin re-blogging the best posts from the blogs I followed there, as well as several posts per day from popular art related tags.
In this way I would sort through and blog the best works of art from almost seven hundred sources a day. And what’s truly awesome about this is that if I was hustling I could get that all done in under two hours! But of course there was a downside.
While tumblr is a excellent place for posting/consuming content quickly, it’s not so good for a lot of other stuff – such as on-site navigation, internal search, SEO, long-form articles, building an email list, launching e-courses/e-zines, creating commence pages, etc. And for me this meant that I wasn’t delivering the best curated practice that I possibly could. In fact, I was just aggregating by hand. And I desired more than that. So I shopped around for a fresh blogging platform and of course I determined upon WordPress.
Unluckily, as I discussed shortly in my last post here, blogging on WordPress is a bit more complicated and time consuming than blogging on tumblr. Because of the power and plasticity of the platform there is a lot more you can and should do for each post far above and beyond copying an photo link and attribution link (as on tumblr).
If you’re wondering what those things are then I recommend checking out these four posts as I don’t have time to get into all of that at the moment:
Anyways, what this effectively meant is that until I either made enough money to hire on a team of bloggers or someone came up with a good WordPress curation instrument or set of implements, I was stuck doing the same old thing on tumblr that I’d been doing to attract a following in the very first place. Which was fine, but not what I was hoping for.
As a result things at TAP sort of plateaued while I kept things going, mostly with re-blogs, and waited on a solution to present itself. One didn’t, but after creating the utter WordPress version of TAP for my last post here I determined to look outside of just the plugin world and come up with a solution of my own.
My Adapted Method of Curating for WordPress
After attempting out two different automated plugins, the premium Auto Blog by WPMU and the free MyCurator from the WordPress plugin directory, I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want a plugin that pulled content directly into my blog, cluttering it up with posts and media I ultimately didn’t want and wouldn’t publish (and would have to delete). What I truly needed was something to help me quickly sort through a lot of sources, mitt pick the chunks of content that interested me and then quickly convert those into posts or drafts on my blog.
Here is what I came up with:
1. This part is the same as before. Open up Feedly and sort through each feed, “tabbing out” the articles of interest.
Two. And again, same as before, I begin with the tabs on the far right and begin blogging my way back towards the Feedly tab using the WordPress “Press This” bookmarklet. But before I ever click “Press This” I’m sure to right-click save-as and re-name all of the pics I want to include in my post.
Once I’ve opened “Press This” I simply re-name the post, outline it very simply, assign my categories/subcategories/tags and click save draft.
It’s at this point that I have the option to keep blogging straight through my tabs or click the edit post button and finish the post on the spot. For this example I’ve clicked Edit Post.
As you can see in the pic below I am instantaneously brought to my utter post in the backend of my blog’s WordPress Admin.
Here I can quickly and lightly upload the pictures I’ve already saved, add my own annotations and publish or schedule.
I also do the same thing with the posts I find via tumblr, resulting in an awfully lot of open tabs! Which brings us to step three…
Trio. Inevitably I’m incapable to get through all of my tabbed out posts each time I sit down to blog. That’s where the TabCloud extension comes in. I simply save the browsing session and when I have some more time either later that day or the next, I revisit those tabbed out posts and repeat step two.
There’s a lot to like about this method. Even tho’ it’s far from automatic, it’s the fastest way I know of to by hand sort through, track and blog from that many sources.
Improvements That Could Be Made
Feedly and TabCloud work good. They’re exactly what I need them to be. Feedly provides a beautiful magazine style page where I can quickly identify the articles I want to use.
TabCloud permits me to save and keep track of my browsing sessions so that if I can’t finish my blogging right away I don’t have to leave a ton of tabs open; or worse, lose the work I’ve already put in.
“Press This” on the other arm could be a lot better. If given the chance to assign a features overhaul for the bookmarklet, here is what I would do:
- “Press This” would recognize if you’re running SEO by Yoast and Edit Flow so that you can pack in your SEO info as well as assign custom-built post statuses.
- It would permit for scheduling.
- It would give you the option of scraping all or just a few pics from whatever page you’re on and permit you to name them. Preferably there would also be an option to simply grab your post title and pack it into every pic’s title and alt text fields with the numbers one through whatever to differentiate them.
- It would permit you to set the featured photo.
- It would recognize and embed audio and movie into an iframe pre-configured for your blog.
Of course there are very likely more features I’d want that I’m not thinking of at the moment, but these are undoubtedly the big ones.
Final Thoughts
What I’ve learned is that when it comes to creating a curation blog, there’s no getting around the time-consuming manual work of actually curating. However, there are a lot of little technical details that various instruments can help out with to a good extent. I guess my problem with most of the contraptions I’ve come across so far is that they over-compensate in some areas while fully under-performing in others.
A fine example of this is how AutoBlog and MyCurator pull in a ton of content to your blog. You’re not going to use all of that content. In fact, if you’re actually sorting it decently you will most likely end up deleting most of it. But that means until you do delete it, it’s there, taking up space on your server and potentially slowing your entire website down. To me, that’s insane. Why on earth would I ever want to host a bunch of content that I’m never going to use?
I’d much rather use my method and simply keep tabs on the things I want to blog in the future, while only ever hosting the content I plan on publishing. In my opinion, we don’t need an amazing content curation plugin for WordPress. We need a better bookmarklet.
But what do you think? Tell me all about it in the comments below.