Data Journalism Crash Course #3: Data Curation
Data Journalism Crash Course #3: Data Curation — Image by the author

Because of the mass of available information, an extreme amount of care must be taken to ensure compatibility between the material provided, the public profile, and the activities and content values.

Another point that makes curatorship even more relevant is the fact that the content cannot simply be “played” on the networks without contextualizing it.

Anyway, there is also a certain margin of creation, necessary for your audience to understand the relevance of the published material.

How to curate content?

There is a model for curating, which is divided into three stages:

The first is research , which consists of monitoring news and articles and identifying the best sources. Several online tools help the curator’s work — we will talk about it throughout the course. The use of google alerts and RSS feeds from relevant blogs can also be extremely useful to keep you constantly updated.

, which consists of monitoring news and articles and identifying the best sources. Several online tools help the curator’s work — we will talk about it throughout the course. The use of google alerts and RSS feeds from relevant blogs can also be extremely useful to keep you constantly updated. The second step is contextualization. As already mentioned, it is important to make sense of what is published, according to the interests of the company and the profile of the target audience. Through social media feedback it is possible to assess what is working.

is contextualization. As already mentioned, it is important to make sense of what is published, according to the interests of the company and the profile of the target audience. Through social media feedback it is possible to assess what is working. Finally, and not least, we go to the sharing phase, and here it is necessary to define through which channels it will be carried out.

Data Curation tools

Data curation is a powerful tool to organize and share resources with projects, or to fuel a professional learning practice.This list of the best curation platforms brings together tools that allow anyone to go through and organize everything from social feeds to course materials.

Alteryx: Specialized in self-service analytics with an intuitive user interface. These analytics can be used as Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) Tools within the Alteryx framework. Informatica: It offers an AI-powered Intelligent Data Platform and the the industry’s most comprehensive hybrid and modular tool Stitch Data: It is a cloud-first, developer-focused platform for rapidly moving data. Lasso: The Lasso service is optimized for marketing activities, but can be leveraged for all kinds of business and personal web research. Alation: It is an AI-driven platform for data search & discovery, data governance data stewardship, analytics, and digital transformation. YourVersion: A content discovery tool that automatically pulls together content from around the web-based on the interests you specify. Ataccama ONE: a platform to analyze, process, manage, monitor, and provide data with a Self-Driving Data Management & Governance tool. Quuu: Select interest categories that matter to you, then watch your posts line up in the Quuu scheduler. The suggestions for you are based on the inputs given by other similar users on the platform. Talend: A platform that unites data integration and governance to deliver trusted data Elink: This tool helps you save web links, bundle them and turn your web link collections into email newsletters, fast website/blog content, single web pages, social media bio links and more. Social Weaver: This tool makes it easy to schedule content, increase engagement, and listen to customers’ impressions — of both yours and your competitor’s. ShareIt: It helps you to engage your audience and generate new leads through automated postings even when you’re not around. Apart from organic posts, you can schedule automatic posts from your feeds. Triber: Triberr is a marketing suite that helps bloggers and small businesses amplify their content, build online communities, and promote content all in one place. Social Anima: Select interest categories that matter to you, then watch your posts line up in the Quuu scheduler. The suggestions for you are based on the inputs given by other similar users on the platform. Curata: Curata CMP (content marketing platform) enables the user to create content, curate and analyze the success of the content.

Social networks — old but gold

Yes, your company’s social media can (still) be a way of filtering good content and knowing which topics are relevant to your content marketing.

The two most relevant platforms for good curation are Twitter and Facebook — and even if you don’t use those networks, you can still benefit from the site’s filtering and search tools.

Twitter, Instagram and Facebook are social media present in most of the marketing and personal and institutional communication strategies.

So, if you’re looking for a specific topic, Twitter Search(for example) offers a good overview of how the topic is being discussed and shared by users — in photos, videos and links.

The alert is worthwhile: using social media for content filtering is a useful tactic as long as you don’t spend too much time in it. After all, they have limitations and other online tools filter links, topics and articles in a much more professional way and with data that can be more helpful.

BuzzSumo helps you analyze and filter relevant content by searching for topics.

It selects the results of each keyword searched by the number of shares and backlinks of each article and news — exactly the factors that will help you decide the social impact on the Web. It is the favorite tool of brands — like IBM and Yahoo! — and content producers around the world — like Buzzfeed, National Geographic, TED and Rolling Stone.

The logic is very simple — and has support for searches in different languages.

The free version displays only the first results, and only some data sharing for each result.

In the paid version, you can compare links, find the topics that are on the rise and identify opinion leaders on social networks for each subject.

If you choose to use only the free version of BuzzSumo, there is another tool that does a complementary job to that of filtering social networks.

Social Mention focuses on blog posts and microblogs — especially Twitter. Just play the desired keywords for your brand!

This tool mainly helps to better calibrate your search for content, offering the best keyword suggestions related to your search, and finding users who may have shared important articles and news for referential content.

Pocket operates in a very simple way: it is a bookmarker, that is, a “savior” of articles that you find on the Web.

It has a website version for desktops, an application and an extension in your browser — every time you find an interesting article on the web, just click Save to Pocket and that’s it!

So, as long as you have some time to read the articles, they will be there, saved and protected.

Feedly is one of the oldest RSS tools on the web — and one that is still incredibly relevant in researching and organizing news feeds.

If you are not familiar with the term, RSS are links and directories that take you to the latest publications from websites, news portals and blogs for programs like Feedly.

In other words, it is a way for you to read first hand what is published in the places where you consume content.

The best thing about Feedly for curating your marketing is that it has keyword research so you can find the best feeds and websites related to your business — and for free!

Golden rules for data curation

1) Don’t talk too little about many things. Say a lot about a few things.

One of the most common mistakes when curating is looking for too many themes and topics.

This makes your curation very broad and the information found will never be treated with continuity and depth.

In other words, having little information on various subjects does not help your marketing and is a disservice to your audience: they will not maintain attention or interest in so many discussions at the same time.

Therefore, it is recommended that you maintain a logic in your curation: keep two or three topics that are decisive for your brand and feed with information that together combine.

2) Keep your curatorship frequency

There is no point in starting a data curation, if there is no way to keep this curation active over time.

Check an interesting frequency — daily, weekly, biweekly — to search for content and always have new and relevant information for your communication.

3) Use only the tools and habits that help you

Search for the most adaptable forms and tools to the reality of your work.

Choosing the right content

Amid so much data, how to choose the right content to use in your communication strategy?

To start you need to think about personas. They are the north of your content strategy and it is based on your preferences that you will look for material to join your curatorship.

From your pains, doubts and problems, you will find basic topics to look for and, from there, add more content to your curation list.

How to get the most out of content

There is no point in finding quality material if you are going to keep it stored in some lost folder of your favorites. Good content needs to be shared with the world.

After curating interesting materials for your strategy, it’s time to think of ways to show that content to the world.

Remember to credit

A big part of replicating relevant content is giving credit to the original author, linking to the article and showing the reader where it was originally posted.

Also be careful with images, as they may be copyrighted. The ideal is to find images in image banks that have reproduction or shared copyrights.

Remember: Combine data curation with original material

Data Curation in navigation performance

Through Data Curation we analyze the profile and behavior of visitors to a website presenting the following information:

Classic audience analysis data: unique users, visits, page views and bounces;

Purchase intention;

Topics of interest (a.k.a. trending topics);

Technologies used;

Location;

Demographic data;

Professions;

Social networks accessed by users;

Conversion funnel;

Monitoring of programmatic media campaigns;

Monthly report delivery describing the analysis in a didactic and simple way;

Suggestions for marketing actions and Inbound Marketing according to the audience profile.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE:

Top Content Curation Tools For Marketing, Social Media, Education and Businesses —https://blog.elink.io/top-content-curation-tools/

Data Curation Foundations — https://books.google.com.br/books?id=VOlHzQEACAAJ&dq=Data+Curation&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjMnumPpbjsAhXhE7kGHYvbBCQQ6AEwAXoECAAQAQ

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['Deborah M.']
['Data Science', 'Technology', 'Data Journalism', 'Content Marketing', 'Data']