You look like a curator…a key to adding customer experience value

Are you are a curator?  In today’s time-pressured, information-laden world you should think about adding “curator” to your title!

In my youth, I thought of curators as old sophisticates who went around the world securing art works for museums.  Today, I think of them as smart business leaders who add value for customers by filtering information or bundling time saving services.  One example that blends the two key aspects of “curation” comes from a fitness club client of mine who I worked with to craft time saving solutions for their members to aid them while they were in the building exercising.  Those health club leaders vetted business partners from the community who could provide such things as quality carwash services and pick-up and delivery laundry services.  You would come to work out and be offered all these helpful value added solutions – for a cost of course.  The health club leaders were responsible for defining and organizing time saving services and for culling through all available providers and selecting ones that could deliver service consistent with the health club brand.

Today, curating content is particularly important when marketing to a targeted audience. Increasingly marketers are forwarding content from other thought leaders or are creating informational pieces for their customer base.  In fact, the recently published Curata 2012 Content Curation Adoption Survey, suggest that 95% of marketers have offered curated content in the past 6 months.  In 2011, 79% of content curators indicated that establishing thought leadership was their main content curation objective, today the importance of thought leadership has increased to reflect such an objective for 85% of content curators.

In terms of methodology for securing the content, the study suggests social media (79%) is the preferred channel for finding online content, with email newsletters (63%) also gaining popularity.

Because well-curated content gains mindshare with customers, leaders are dedicating greater resources to seek out or create content that connects with targeted audiences.  According to the survey, 74% of marketers indicated that there were one or more people at their organization dedicated to developing content marketing materials. 50% of curators that have a resource within their organization, utilized those people to curate shared content on a daily basis.

The blog you are reading is an example of curated content.  I did not conduct the 2012 Content Curation Adoption study – Curata did.  I simply reviewed my weekly stack of customer experience resources and selected this information as relevant to my target market – you!

How do you sort through, and choose information to share with your clients to help them get actionable information quickly?  If you care about your customers, you must care about their growth and development.  What information can you highlight and offer to help them grow?