One of the best social media lessons I ever learned came from my good friend Laura Petrolino. Laura taught me that by becoming a content curator (i.e. regularly gathering and sharing links to useful articles and posts) for my social media followers and fans, I would be able to steadily grow my social media presence.

Curation in today’s multi-channel world is also a matter of being a ‘transmedia’ storyteller and being equally comfortable in each channel or outlet.

Content curation is more than just a Google search of your company name, though. Curating good content takes time and good editorial judgment. Here are 4 things to think about when curating content.

Whether you are competing in a business-to-consumer or business-to-business segment, one of the most important assets that you possess is your brand image. Years and millions of dollars are spent by organizations to promote and enhance their image with the hope of forming a bond with consumers/clients to prompt them to buy on a consistent basis.

There are several ways to use social tools to advance your business. You can show your thought leadership though blogs, podcasts, videos and other content marketing methods. You can find potential customers that have questions or problems and offer assistance. You can build communities around your subject matter with LinkedIn groups. You can curate content from multiple sources and become a trusted source for information in your field. And that’s just the beginning.

Particularly a fan of content curation:

You don’t have to always create your own content. Another way to become a trusted source for information in your field is to curate existing content. There is just so much stuff out there on the web to choose from. Helping others find the best of what’s there is another way to be helpful.

LiveWorld Curator enables brands to aggregate the social web, then select or “curate” content relevant to their customers. This provides their customers a one-stop location to see user generated content about the brand and themes of interest to those customers. Powerful curation, moderation, and insight tools, combined with LiveWorld human moderation services, ensure the content is curated for customer relevance, moderated to be spam free, and tagged for actionable insight.

An interesting aspect of the culture of sharing on social networks is that of content curation. This is the act of pointing your followers to content from other people. Anyone who sometimes uses Twitter to send people to an interesting...

In regard to choosing topic ownership areas wisely, identifying premium content areas is crucial for getting more eyes on your site. By allocating the majority of your resourcing efforts on the content you can "own" in the marketplace, you'll create more authoritative and focused content that will result in higher traffic and will ultimately be more sellable—which is a return on investment any way you look at it.

A discussion on curation. What is it, and why is it important?

This is the best part below... many news agencies will adopt more and more curation systems that can help them stay ahead of the curve.

“If I was starting The Village Voice today, I would not print anything. I would not hire a ton of writers. I would build a website and a mobile app (or two or three). I would hire a Publisher and a few salespeople. I would hire an editor and a few journalists. And then I’d go out and find every blog, twitter, facebook, flickr, youtube, and other social media feed out there that is related to downtown NYC and I would pull it all into an aggregation system where my editor and journalists could cull through the posts coming in, curate them, and then publish them.”

“What we’re trying to do with XYDO is build a social network around news,” explains co-founder Cameron Brain. “We want to take what Digg and Reddit started and bring the idea into the modern generation.”

"XYDO gathers news from tens of thousands of online sources, matches articles against what users are sharing and talking about on Facebook and Twitter, and then sorts pages by vote counts. Total vote count includes onsite upvotes as well as Facebook or Twitter shares. The user can view news made by popular by the entire XYDO network, see stories popular in their social graph or view trending news items by topic."

Dedicated to helping good journalism and good journalists thrive in the Digital Now. A partnership between USC Annenberg and UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism funded by the Knight Foundation.

A good point here:

The key is to start experimenting NOW with digital curation, using whichever tools are available to you. Newsrooms should foster this skill with a eye not just toward storytelling, but engagement.

Content curation tools to get great content without spending tons of time and build strong online communities.

Trunk.ly automagically collects the links you share online ... and makes them searchable.

A tool that makes it easy to manage all of your social media from a single interface

This tool was recommended by Michael Brito, VP for Edelman Digital and has worked for HP, Yahoo! and Intel. “My favorite tool is Storify which is fantastic to aggregate and curate content from around the web. It’s great for events, product launches, etc.”

Yahoo has finally found a buyer for long suffering Delicious. YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen have acquired the company, says Yahoo, via a “new Internet company, AVOS.”

Curation platform BumpZee is built on.

How to use RSS Readers to organize content curation. Using Google Reader is one way to start building a library of articles that are related to your niche. Here are some basic steps to content curation.

If you are responsible for adding high-value content to your website, you are constantly being challenged to find page or post topics which are new, shareable, helpful and original.

Content curations tools can help you stay on top of the latest in your niche, making it easier to share relevant content with your audience and making you an authority on a specific topic.

Micro sites... yes!

So don’t rewrite or re-purpose the report from one of your marketing gurus, policy wonks, or another peer. Instead, provide the link or document and then add a short summary, some color commentary, and maybe some graphics that will appeal to the stakeholders who will find the information of value.

Perfect summary.

The time it takes to follow and go through multiple web sites and blogs takes tangible time, and since most sources publish or give coverage to more than one topic, one gets to browse and scan through lots of useless content just

You can't get a better article about curation today i think. This covers it all. A complete guide.