The Google Hangouts and Curation Authority Connection

Curation!

I will admit – when curation got big in Internet marketing last yeat, that just plain made me giggle. Why? Well, curation has been a staple of quality authority sites and resource sites now since the dawn of time (okay, the dawn of blogging).

Internet Curation is simply the “gathering and maintaining digital assets” online. In other words, you gather:

• Articles
• Videos
• Pictures
• Resources

that deal with a particular topic…in once place.

A superb example of digital curation is www.archive.org . For example, do you remember the book “Cheaper by the Dozen” by Frank Gilbreth? It was a story about a family with 12 children and the parents were pioneers in the field of Motion Study at the early 1900s.

Here’s a video from that time.

archive.org/details/OriginalFilm

So cool.

Another goodie located there is the WayBack Machine, where you can see what sites looked like ‘Way Back When.

Here, take a look at these sites:

web.archive.org/web/*/http://google.com (from 1998)

web.archive.org/web/*/http://barbaraling.com (also from 1998)

web.archive.org/web/*/http://inc.com (also from 1996)

But back to curation. Nowadays on the Internet, curation is used to gather related content and entice visitors to share their site and return again and again.

So….how can Google Hangouts assist you here? With Google Hangouts, you can curate in several ways including:

• Conducting interviews with Industry Thought Leaders (facebook.com/IndustryThoughtLeaders ) and then publishing them on your site (Andrea Schmitz is the author of Hangout Curation Formula over at askbling.com/hangoutcf )
• Create a daily “Here’s what is new in our niche” Hangout one-person video blurb that showcases 2-3 different niche resources people would find interesting and publish them on your site
• Create a daily “tips” program about your niche and curate tips!

Let’s go over that now.

How To Maximize Your Google Hangouts Curation Benefits:

Step 1.) Figure out what types of Internet media you want to curate.

Do you want to gather up resources online (for example, a link to a niche coffee forum and a link to today’s coffee art)?

Or do you want to interview the main influencers in your niche and then publish the transcripts?

Do you want to curate weekly get-togethers where your community discusses a niche topic like the Virtual Star Party at plus.google.com/100902337165997768522/posts ?

Ask yourself, what sorts of digital media do you want to curate. Links to other sites, conversations with other people, discussions with fellow enthusiasts, classes you give in your store, etc.

Next:

Step 2.) Determine what type of Hangout you want to use.

If you want to gather up interviews with movers and shakers in your industry, you’re going to want to create Interview Hangouts.  This requires you to connect with the person in question and schedule a Google Hangout.   support.google.com/calendar/answer/2690797?hl=en walks you thru how to do this.

If you want to curate links online, you simply can open a browser window, set up each site in a tag and then talk the viewer through the resources.

If you want to curate a series of tips, every day you can create a short simple tip and then narrate them via a Hangout.

www.barbaraling.com/insights/category/authority-2/linkedin-authority-2/ is an example of Authority Marketing LinkedIn Tips curation.

Once your Hangouts are completed, you can then move to:

Step 3.) Create a section on your site that houses your curated Hangouts

One of the easiest ways to do this is via WordPress. Simply create a category on your site and then use the Embed code that YouTube provides to embed your Google Hangout directly into it.

www.htmlgoodies.com/tutorials/web_graphics/article.php/3480061/How-To-Add-a-YouTube-Video-to-Your-Web-Site.htm

walks you through how to do this (you can embed in straight HTML pages as well).

www.barbaraling.com/insights/category/authority-2/linkedin-authority-2/

houses my curated Daily Linkedin Authority Marketing tips. For 7 days, I simply created Hangouts about LinkedIn tips and just added them to my site.  You can do the same.

In closing, using Google Hangouts for curation provides a very simple way to use videos in highlighting curated finds online.  Video is becoming more and more popular these days; using Google Hangouts to take advantage of them just makes marketing sense.

Grow strong,

Barbara Ling