• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, May 17, 2012

According to the Curata 2012 Content Curation Adoption Survey, curation has become mainstream, with the majority of marketers surveyed curating content.

Marketers are sharing relevant content with new prospects or customers to attract, acquire and engage a target audience to drive profitable customer action.

• 95% of marketers had curated content in the past six months
• All marketers that identified themselves as being non-content curators had, in fact, curated content by responding that they had found and shared an article, blog post or other content with a prospect in the past six months. 

Establishing or improving thought leadership is an even more significant objective of content curation today than it was a year ago, says the report.

• In 2011, 79% of content curators indicated that establishing thought leadership was their main content curation objective, while today, 85% of content curators had the same response, which represents an 8% increase

Social media is the preferred channel for finding online content, but email newsletters are also gaining popularity.

• 79%) of marketers cited social media as a preferred service for finding thirdparty content to share.
• 63% indicated that they also used email newsletters to find third-party content, which represents a 29% increase over 2011.

While time constraints continue to challenge marketers looking to implement a content marketing strategy, many are still relying on manual scanning to find third-party content to share.

• 75% of marketers cite having the time to do it as their biggest challenge.
• 53% of marketers indicated that they manually scanned online sources, among other methods, to find content. 
• In 2012, 56% of marketers cited finding high quality content as their greatest content marketing challenge, compared with 48% of marketers in 2011, a 30% increase.

As a result of the rising popularity and proven success of content marketing and, more specifically content curation, organizations are beginning to better implement best practices and also see the value in adding resources within their companies dedicated to the strategy.

• 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 dedicated to curating shared content on a daily basis. Only 28% of curators at organizations that did not have such a resource shared content on a daily basis

Not only are marketers recognizing the importance of sharing content, they are seeing the value in sharing content on a regular basis in an effort to keep customers and prospects engaged. Based on the Curation Habits Report published in 2012, curators who curate content to a website on a daily basis enjoyed 18% higher click-thru activity than those who curated content on a weekly basis.

Content curation has become a valuable tactic for both independent marketers and agency partners, and many of these marketers are successfully implementing best practices, concludes the study.

• 42% of marketers from agencies or consulting groups shared content on a daily basis, compared to only 29% of non-agency marketers.
• 73% shared content on a weekly, or more frequently, basis.
• 75% of marketers from agencies or consulting groups noted that content curation is a more important part of their marketing strategy today than it was a year ago, compared to 65% of non-agency marketers. 

Definitions from the Curata Online Glossary:

• Content Marketing: Creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience
• Content Curation: Finding, organizing, and sharing online content

400 marketers were surveyed in March 2012. 39% marketing directors, 24% owners or CEOs, and 12% consultants or agency marketers.

To access the complete report as a PDF file, please sign in with Curata here.