Pinterest is preparing to raise a third round that will value it at more than $1 billion. 

IBM social strategist Jack Mason noted that brands have to "take the steps to actually care about what users want to know" rather than hurling a disconnected, unengaging banner ad at a user and expecting results. You might say the same about content efforts as well.

Tech-centric blog network NetShelter has brands recommend other articles that might be of interest to the reader. 

A core messaging document should guide everything you do from a marketing perspective, and serve as the platform for all of your messaging.

Your "messaging guide" should drive your content marketing, whether it’s website copy, blog posts, eBooks, white papers, webinars, videos and a host of other formats. 

“We can’t go back in time, and one of the realities of today is that everyone is a publisher,” says Jane Ottenberg, president of TMG in Washington, D.C. As content marketers have taken advantage of that reality, she says, the line between journalism and content marketing isn’t so much blurring as moving. That is, while branded content talks directly to consumers or customers, it is not talking to them about hard news. It is only addressing part of the traditional journalist’s domain, she says, and it’s important to understand that distinction. “I am passionate about ...

Directed by David Fincher (The Social Network), this 1:06 spot tells the story of two newborns who grow up to be NFL superstars.  The first time you catch a glimpse of a Nike product is 44 seconds in, on a pair of gloves (you actually see a Reebok logo before you see a Nike logo).  Just seven seconds before the video ends, a Nike logo flashes onto the screen under the words “Leave Nothing.”

The heart of Lowe’s custom content program is their helpful how-to video’s. Lowe’s YouTube channel contains well over 700 videos, covering everything from “knot tying for a rope tree swing” to “how to build a coffee table.”

Twitter illustrates the blended use by a content source of content curation and content creation. And Twitter is making moves to bolster both its curation features and its "content creation" features. Twitter now will provide users who want it a weekly curated email designed to show users content they might be interested in from elsewhere in their social graph. The email is clearly an extension of the move towards curation that Twitter made when it acquired Summify earlier in 2012. Also, Twitter appears to be hiring editors and producers to curate content on an active basis.  Twitter apparently is looking ...

Amazon is poised to launch a trio of blogs, according to The Daily. One will be designed to compete in the tech news space with websites like Gizmodo and The Verge, while the others will cover geek culture and digital photography apps.

That shows how Amazon plans to use content marketing as a key part of its commerce model. In principle, that is the same reason business-to-business brands use content curation. 

Amazon wants to test a website similar to Engadget and Gizmodo, populated with unbiased reviews that would link back to Amazon’s retail site. It should be noted that ...

Granted, few, if any, business-to-business marketers can use content curation as effectively and centrally as a business-to-consumer business. Fashion-related businesses and "active lifestyle" brands arguably have even more advantages where it comes to using content curation as a major tool.

We often talk about the art of curation in terms of the process of selection, narrowing down and choosing objects fit for presentation. When we think of curators we think of gallery owners, DJs, Michelin starred chefs and boutique clothing stores. For good reason.

In a B2B setting, it matters more how well a particular set of products can be ...

Content marketers using curation can learn quite a lot from the art form known as the magazine. Unlike "newspapers," magazines frequently have used a curated approach to building "issues." Instead of creating all or most of the content in a particular issue, magazine editors (content curators) have mixed their own original content with "contributed" works. Though in most cases that contributed material also is "original," the concept of mixing internally-created and externally sourced material is at the heart of many content marketing efforts, as well as for most good content curation implementations. 

Some would argue that social media makes search engine optimization less valuable. That might be beside the point, which is to use both to improve your content’s discoverability. They’re both simply means to an end.

Only 49 percent of content marketers have developed a strategy around their content, which means they're posting content with no clear reason for doing so. But a strategy is necessary if your content is going to grow your business.  Not only does it create parameters around the kind of content you produce, but your content ultimately has a more direct impact on the future of your business. So stop posting content for content's sake and start developing your content strategy in three steps.  

It still amazes us that there are people out there who question the importance of social media in terms of audience share but also the impact it is having on content curation and distribution. If you meet some of these people we urge you to point them in the direction of the video bleow - the facts speak for themsleves. To say social media is the future of content curation and distribution is overstating it's influence and potential but surely no one can really question it's importance.