Photo Courtesy of Daniel Dorsa.

Earlier yesterday morning, while I was waiting at the L.A. Fitness in South Plainfield, NJ, I decided to optimize my time and catch up on the July/August issue of Fast Company magazine. As I was perusing through the pages, I came across an article on page 16 entitled, “Selling Change.” This article was written by Nikita Richardson and features the CEO of DDB Worldwide North America, Wendy Clark.

For those of you who may not be familiar, Clark happens to be named one of Fast Company’s “Most Creative People.” When asked the question, “Who would be on her list of most creative people?” she replied, “Students. When you spend time with them, you’re blown away by their creativity. They have such great ideas.” said Clark.

Photo Courtesy of Adweek.

After reading this article, I was immediately intrigued by Clarks statement regarding the creativity of students. Being that I have worked with students in schools in both Miami, FL and New Brunswick, NJ for 5 years now, I know exactly what she means. We can learn so much from observing and engaging with our students in our school systems throughout the country and globally. As I’m in the process of building my tribe and establishing “A Lovers Ambition” as a movement, my background in education plays an instrumental role in regards to everything that I do day in and day out.

Whenever I identify with a piece of content that speaks to me (article, video, podcast, etc), I immediately think of the best way to share it with my audience. Recently, a strategy which I find to be quite valuable happens to be that of curation.

W h y  C u r a t i o n ?

Back in May of 2016, we ran an experimental campaign for a few content pieces we curated pertaining to Blavity’s #EmpowerHER 2016 conference in NYC. Our top tweet for the month of May just happened to be the tweet shown below.

Why was this our top tweet? We crafted this particular tweet based on an article that we read on blavity.com. This article featured Feminista Jones, one of the speakers at the conference. After a good read and some quick research, we were able to create and develop a nice piece of copy (“aka” a tweet) which incorporated the following key elements:

1. An intriguing “lead” question.
2. The name of the source in which the article originated from: @Blavity.
3. The name of the interviewee who was featured: @FeministaJones.
4. The hashtag which was relevant to their upcoming event: #EmpowerHer.
5. The bit.ly link to their article.

The combination of all of these elements is what led us to receive 9 profile clicks, 10 retweets, 18 likes, and 128 link clicks. In regards to our results, we would say that we were pretty successful. Although our numbers are fairly small, our experiment did allow us to build some brand awareness for A Lovers Ambition. In fact, we did fairly well considering that we had a lot less than 100 followers at the time.

When we are able to effectively curate content that we both identify and resonate with, we are able to gain ground in multiple ways. In our opinion, one of the best ways to curate content is to curate content that is shareable. What we mean by this is to include everyone who is involved in the original creation of the piece of content which is being curated (original source, interviewee, writer, photographer, etc).

Here is an example of how we utilized twitter as a social media platform to create a social storyline for Wendy Clark’s article in Fast Company magazine:

Each person involved in the original piece of content serves as a touch point for potential engagement and interaction (likes, replies, retweets, shares, etc). When we are able to engage and interact with others via common interests, we are then able to build relationships, create opportunities, and exchange value. Essentially, it’s a win win for everyone involved. We believe this to be the essence of effectively utilizing social media in an effort to engage and interact with others. This ladies and gentlemen, is what we LOVE the most about being social!

If you’re interested in hearing more, here’s a recorded audio version of “The Power of Curated Content.”

– Enjoy!

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(Uh • Kway • Us) Aquaus Kelley is a forward-thinking Brand Strategist, Cultural Curator, and Social Storyteller. As the Founder of A Lovers Ambition Lifestyle Group, he specializes in identifying talent and creating opportunities for brand development, exposure, and growth. Aquaus has worked with companies and organizations such as Cornerstone Agency, City Year Miami, Universal Music Group, and W Hotels. He is extremely passionate about helping companies adapt to culture and building value between brands and their consumers centered around love. His ultimate mission is to use his influence to project positivity across the globe and invest in the collective future of society through the arts, education, entertainment, and leadership.