Many of the posts here on FrankNJohnson.net are actually curations of articles from other websites that I have found helpful and challenging. I think it might be helpful — especially for the authors of curated articles — if I describe my philosophy of content curation.
When curating articles, I try to do a few things to make sure that I am promoting the author and their article as much as I can (rather than trying to promote myself — at least on the page where my curation of their article is displayed):
- I use a different title on my post (so as to not compete with the original article in search results if someone searches for the title)
- I include two links to the article — once in the first paragraph, and once near the end of the curation (with the url of the article prefaced by “Curated from …”)
- There are no other links within the body of the article
- I include a short quote from the article to hopefully whet the reader’s appetite for the content in the full article
- I add a small amount of my own commentary (often this consists of a description of what I plan to do as a result of reading the article), but I try to not give away the whole article
- I do not allow comments or trackbacks on my curated posts (because I believe the discussion should take place on the website where the article originally appeared)
- I add additional links at the bottom of my curation — to the author’s profile, their LinkedIn profile, their Twitter profile, their company, etc.
- The social sharing icons which appear at the bottom of my curation share the original article rather than my post about the article
- I do not use nofollow links for any of the links to the article, the author’s profiles, the author’s company, etc., so that my links to the author’s content and other information will contribute to those items’ page ranks
- I share the original article in my social networks and include the author’s social profiles when I do so
If any of my readers (including authors) have questions or concerns about my approach to content curation, I hope you will not hesitate to get in touch. I would be happy to make any changes to a curated post that an author might request (including deleting my curation if an author is uncomfortable with it in its entirety).