mediations

Why bother with social media books?

Today Neville Hobson (@jangles) posted: "Curious: had another request for recommendation on what's the best book on social media. That's 4 requests just this week."

Minutes later, he RT'd a reply from @dsgold: "I don't recommend books on social media since they're outdated the day they're printed. Start with @Mashable and go from there"

If pressed sufficiently hard, I would probably say that Online Public Relations ^{2nd Ed} was the best... Well, one of the best that was published in 2009, anyway

You can see where @dsgold is coming from, but there are clear limitations this approach. Mashable has no guiding structure, no intro or conclusion, but more importantly it has opportunity for reflection - you can't understand the broader significance of an historical event just by reading newspapers.

One of the problems with conventional books (whether printed or Kindled) is it they take a long time to emerge; six to nine months from delivery of manuscript to book in store is considered a quick turnaround.

This is a real problem when your topic is as fast-moving as social media. David and I tried to avoid too many references to specific platforms or services as we knew they would be out of date way before OPR2 hit the shelves but we still have a book that is, at best, greying at the temples. A simple update is hardly enough. Ok we could update the number of Facebook users and we could include more on geolocation now we know about Foursquare, but that's simply not good enough.

Somehow we need to find a format that allows more than routine updating of the topical, we need to develop a more organic approach.

We need to curate Online PR. As I write, McAfee is updating my virus checking software. I buy the product, and a licence that gives me free updates for a year. Often the updates are pretty small, but occasionally they require a restart, which suggest the underlying structure iof the programme is being adapted. 

Now there's a publishing model that @dsgold might approve of. I certainly would and, you never know, it might win a recommendation from @jangles!   

 

Curation: A definition for PR theory

In previous posts I have pointed broadly to a range of practices that are decribed as 'curation' and suggested a creative synthesis model for those which use some degree of human intervention to aggregate content. 

Certainly PR practitioners need to be aware of such sites and have some insight into how they are created; the aggregation of information in searchable form has significance for reputation/ relationship management.

In the context of PR, curation is inherently linked to content management. Here is a first draft of a definition of curation that describes an increasingly important public relations function:

"Curation concerns the creation, display and management of content in a consistent manner to encourage a desired understanding of an organisation."

Clearly this can only be achieved by constantly monitoring and interacting with the information flows that surround an organisation to ensure reputation resonates with organisational culture and behaviour.      

Towards a definition of 'Curation'

When using relatively new terms it is useful to try and agree on a robust definition... but arriving at a workable definition of what 'curation' might mean for public relations is quite tricky.

For some, it is about gathering and presenting information for organisational gain, and this is often qualified by stipulating that the process is mediated by subjective human decisions. In part, this has been given momentum by those who wish to differentiate a service for organisational benefit - it sounds good to have a content curator, and it provides a dynamic and attractive job description.

For the next edition of Online Public Relations David Phillips and I will need to distill a sharper definition that has the potential to become integrated into the vocabulary of PR theory. Any suggestions gratefully received.

Here are a few starting points.

Hubspot suggests A Marketers Guide to Content Curation.

"Curation is the process of selecting and aggregating information into one place that creates more value for information consumers, because they don’t have to spend time researching and visiting all of the original source."

Brian Solis broadens the definition to, in effect, include anyone who aggregates themed content

The traditional definition of curator is someone who is the keeper of a museum or other collection. In social media, a curator is the keeper of their interest graphs. By discovering, organizing, and sharing relevant content from around the Web, curators invest in the integrity and vibrancy of their nicheworks and the relationships that define them. Information becomes currency and the ability to repackage something of interest as a compelling, consumable and also sharable social object is an art.  As a result, the social capital of a curators is earned through qualifying, filtering, and refining relevant content and how well objects spark engagement and learning

Social Media Examiner asks Is Content Curation the New Community Builder? and frames the argument around the creation of media content 

"Value will be in the expertise of the curator, people will not read junk, and the best of the best curators will create digital domination with vibrant communities.

There are also a host of process (software) driven definitions, describing and promoting aggregation tools, the latest fo which is Storify. Such are tools are discussed by Matthew Ingram in The Future of Media: Storify and the Curatorial Instinct.

 An example of the creative synthesis model of curation is Social Media Content Curation
“News, Trends and Content Curation about Social Media: one Universe to allow people to get access to more specialized sources, created and curated by Giuseppe Mauriello." Mauriello uses ScoopIt, explained here...