Do you want to be seen as the leader of knowledge and learning in your field or industry?
Do you want access to a constant stream of high quality ideas and content that help you connect with members and customers, build your audience, and generate new product ideas?
If you want any or all of the above, then curation needs to be part of your strategy.In case you aren’t familiar with the term, “curation” is the process of finding, filtering, and sharing great content that is relevant and useful to your target audience. These days, the sharing part of the process usually happens over the Internet via links and embedded content.
I’ve written about curators in numerous places over the years, and curation is one of the core tactics I advocate in Leading the Learning Revolution. Still, I get the sense that many organizations struggle with how to put curation into action. So, I was thrilled when The Lede, a podcast I listen to regularly, recently ran a 4-part series on curation.
The series is hosted by Jarod Morris, Director of Content for Copyblogger, and Demian Farnworth, Copyblogger’s Chief Copywriter. If there was ever an organization that knows about effective curation, it’s Copyblogger, and Jarod and Demian are seasoned veterans of the Copyblogger way.
Here are links to each of the four parts of the series. You will also find show notes to go along with each of these as well as link to a transcript for each:

• Part I: Why You Should Curate Content (And How to Do It Right)
• Part 2: The 5 W’s of Link Curation
• Part 3: How Successful Writers Curate Ideas
• Part 4: How to Curate Knowledge, Turn it Into Wisdom, and Build Your Audience

Just to give you a sense of the content that gets covered in this series, here are bullets Jarod and Demian discuss in the first episode listed above:

• What, exactly, is curation?
• How newspapers have been curating for more than 300 years
• The benefits of curation, including its role in getting in front of other people?s audiences
• Are people really reading as much as we think (hope) they are?
• How reading turns you into an authority (and how that turns into revenue down the line)
• Should you share a link you haven?t read?
• Is reading the ultimate cure for ?Writer?s Block??
• What are the biggest challenges to curating effectively? (And how do you overcome them?)
• How ?curating the curators? can help you master time management
• The importance of being process-oriented
• What are the three types of curation?
• What kind of content should you share? (And what should you not share?)
• Should you mix business with pleasure when curating content?

As you can see, they explore the topic of curation in detail – and you will find lots of practical tips and examples throughout.

Maximizing Your Learning

I’ve taken the liberty of characterizing the series as “course” in the title for this post. While, strictly speaking, it was not designed as a course, there is clearly plenty of learning to be had here, and Jarod and Demian do a good job of structuring and chunking the content to make it learning friendly. While you can, of course, simply tune in and listen, I recommend the following for maximum impact:

• Get at least one other person in your organization to listen to the series as well.  (If you manage a group of people, this is great content to assign as a professional development experience.)
• Be sure to read the show notes for each episode, visit the links, and make good notes of your own as you go along. (Good note-taking is essential to effective learning.)
• I recommend spacing out the listening over the course of four weeks (or at least a couple of weeks) so that you have time to reflect on what you hear, explore the links in the show notes, and review (for which the transcripts can be helpful)
• Meet weekly with the others in your organization who are listening to the series. Designate one of the participants each week to lead the discussion, including identifying key points and questions that relate to how your organization might embrace curation (or improve upon its current efforts)
• Before concluding the weekly meetings, document a simple plan of action to put your learning into action immediately. Share this by teaching what you have learned to others in your organization – e.g., through a brief presentation or Webinar. (There is good evidence that those expecting to teach learn better.)

Feel free to flesh out the activities above as you see fit – the main point it to get active about using this series (and similar types of content you come across) as valuable learning opportunities.
Finally, I’ve always been a huge fan of podcasts for learning, and I remain very bullish on them as a medium for content delivery. You may want to consider podcasts both as a form of content you curate for your audience and one that you use for publish in your own original content.
Jeff
P.S. – It may go without saying, but this whole post is, of course, an example of content curation. We do quite a bit of curating here at Tagoras for people in the business of continuing education and professional development. Two of our key channels are Twitter and the Leading Learning eNewsletter. Please join us on these channels!
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