Last month Idevoted this column to the idea of content curation, why it is important, andwhat the consequences of ignoring it might be. This month, let’s focus on someapproaches to getting content curation done. Here are seven approaches toconsider.
1.Content culling
Once or twice ayear, some organizations put a team of users and managers together to cull, orweed content out of the system, usually out of a sense that the knowledge baseis too unwieldy and chaotic. Their goal is to examine each and every knowledgeasset and make a determination of what to do with it: eliminate it, keep it, orrevise it. If you are going to do some spring cleaning of your content, itwould be prudent to develop a set of criteria for judging each asset, similarto the 10 problem areas I presented last month.
The risks ofthis approach are that examining every asset could take a long time and it isnot certain that reviewers will take the appropriate level of care in examiningevery piece of content in the repository. Since a small team is looking at the content,some unintended bias may encroach into the process. But the biggest risk of allis the tendency to keep an asset in the system if there is any likelihood—howeversmall—that “someone, someday” might use it. If the team cannot stick to somevery tough criteria, this approach may not work. Bottom line: Culling,especially if it’s the sole approach, is likely not the best way to curate yourcontent.
2.Experts
Someorganizations have a dedicated staff of content curators who “own” specificsegments of the knowledge base and manage it, regularly cutting, revising, andadding new content. These content owners are—hopefully—subject matter expertswho have total responsibility for the accuracy and usefulness of the content. Theyare well known to the organization and have significant authority as to whatcontent should, and should not, be included in the knowledge base.
Expert curatorspush high-value content to users. Using email blasts, newsletters, blogs, wikis,and social media approaches, they try to point out new and interesting contentto different segments of the organization. In other words, they are advocatesfor their content.
Theorganization puts a great deal of trust into its expert curators. This is agood thing because they presumably have the knowledge and capability tomaintain the content at the highest level of quality. The risk of this approachis that the curation process is often top-down. That is, once the curator makesa decision, there might be little pushback from users. This is why a feedbacksystem is critical here.
3.Crowdsourcing
There are manyexamples, Wikipedia being the most recognized, where groups of people withsimilar interests create and curate the content. Using wikis and other groupware,they all critique, contribute, edit, and update the content. Ideally, mostactive group members have both passion and expertise in the topic and the goodsense to maintain accuracy and distinguish valuable from trivial content (seeapproach No. 2, above).
The obviousbenefit of this approach is the so-called wisdom of crowds,where the knowledge of lots of dedicated people comes together to improve thecontent in ways that single individuals, no matter how smart, could never do. Therisk, especially in open environments, is that rogue contributors may addfalse, misleading, or unsubstantiated content. A high level of diligence among thedevoted experts in the group can mitigate this.
4.Algorithms
Google, forexample, doesn’t cull content, nor does it employ legions of curators to manageit. Instead, it uses a number of highly sophisticated and proprietaryalgorithms that structure search results based on key criteria, such as therelationship between knowledge assets (how they are linked), the popularity ofknowledge assets, the number of times a search term appears in an asset, and soon.
Search for mostanything on Google, or other search engines, and you’ll likely come up withhundreds, thousands, or even millions of hits. But how do you know which assetsare right for your query? Many of us scan the first few pages of the searchresult and usually find what we are looking for. These are the algorithms atwork, trying to move the best content to the top of the list.
The risks, ofcourse, are that no algorithm is perfect; it might miss the specific asset youare looking for, and one or more outdated or inappropriate assets will slipthrough. But when you are dealing with literally billions of knowledge assets, theserisks are acceptable, while the algorithms are continuously refined to reduce themfurther.
Of course, thequality of a search result depends on the quality of the initial query. As youget better and better at defining your specific search parameters and language,your results will also get better.
One of thesimpler algorithms used in many organizations is the link between users and theassets they need to do their jobs. Matching metadata associated with users to metadataassociated with knowledge assets results in parsing the content so that(hopefully) the search results contain only those assets relevant to the taskat hand, and to the user performing that task. If asset owners are seriousabout assigning the right metadata at the time of publication, and if they continuallyfollow the use of that content, this approach tends to help people find onlythe best, most relevant content, at the moment of need.
5.Analytics and social media
Here, insteadof professional curators, users do the job of content curation by “voting” onthe quality of the content through usage and feedback. Analytics play a keyrole, as it is important to capture the data users generate. Users (who couldnumber in the thousands) influence the fate of a knowledge asset in a number ofways:
- The system cancount the number of times people access and use an asset, although this is notthe best measure of value.
- Users canrecommend or review the value of a knowledge asset. The highest-rated assetsflow to the top.
- Users can scorea knowledge asset using a rating scale. In addition, through social media, itis possible to analyze the number of likes, retweets, shares, etc., associatedwith an asset.
- The system cancollect data on how users employ an asset, how often they share it, and howmany times they cite it.
Contentmanagers can look at a variety of user data and make determinations of contentvalue and usage. Then they can make decisions as to whether an asset should beretired, be revised, or remain as is. They can also decide to promote somecontent that appears to be valuable but is relatively unknown, especially tothose who need it. The risk in this approach is that most of the data comesfrom users, and, while that can be quite useful, there are times when users mightnot be the best judges of the content’s worth. It is often more effective tocombine this with professional curator oversight.
The analyticsapproach is very helpful in fields such as online shopping (like Amazon) andtravel (like TripAdvisor).
6.Syndicated content
A very differentway for an organization to address content curation is to pass it off to anoutside service. Online news aggregators, such as Flipboard, Apple News, Yahoo,and many others, create little if any of their own content. Instead, they useoutside news providers in many different fields to provide curated content totheir sites. They are letting external content owners curate the content forthem.
This is agrowing trend within business and other organizations, especially in areas thatare not the core focus of the business. Syndicated content providers haveemerged in many content areas, including HR, IT, management and leadership,marketing, health and safety, and legal, to name a few. In fact, many of theseservices further curate the content by industry, so you might have HR forretail establishments, or health and safety for food handlers. This leavesinternal content experts to focus on the unique intellectual property of theorganization.
The risk hereis that you are turning over content curation to a third party. This willrequire careful monitoring to assure that the content meets the needs of theusers, is available when and where they need it, is refreshed regularly, anddoes not conflict with any internal practice or policy.
7.Us
Finally, afterall is said and done, it comes down to us—content users and creators. We arethe guardians, the final quality-assurance checkpoint of what we use andcreate. Whether we do this a lot or just occasionally, it’s vitally importantthat we have the skills and awareness to discern good content from bad, andthat we know how to publish content that meets high curation standards. A rolefor training?
So,which is best?
There is no singlebest approach. As I noted, there are a number of ways to look at the contentcuration job, and each organization must create its own path based on budget,time frames, size of the content repository, the skill sets of available staff,and the relative importance the organization attaches to this type of work. Mostlikely, a combination of approaches will work best. Some are simple, others aremore complex, and many work best with solid technological support. But all ofthem require diligence and sound professional judgment as key ingredients. It’swhat we must bring to the table.
Next month, I’ll look atone of the more unique challenges of content curation: expiration.
