How to write a ‘Curated Blog Post’
Many of my clients ask me to write their blogs for them. And that’s fine – it’s work, right?? And I enjoy doing it. Getting into the head of my client, deeply understanding their target market and what they desire and writing appropriate content to inform, enlighten and invigorate them – and hopefully lead them down the sales path eventually. But writing regular posts can be hard yakka for business owners or marketers who have lots of other things in their business to be doing. It’s not always easy to think of topical and new things to say that will engage your audience. BUT there is a way to make it less stressful. You need to be resourceful but not necessarily inventive.
It’s called Content Curation.
You see, not all of your blogging content has to be 100% original. As long you are careful to quote sources, check facts and do some due diligence, you can gather and share selected content from around the web with your readers. Learn who the thought leaders in your industry are, identify the quality resources, then choose only the most relevant and comprehensive insights and pull them together in a meaningful way. And by ‘meaningful’ I mean you really have to add your own thoughtful commentary, or ‘annotation’, to the content to make it individual and set yourself apart as an expert in your field. Content Curation is just as valid as Content Creation if you do it well. It will serve your audience in the same way by educating and informing and should also attract new readers. As long as what you are quoting is credible and relevant, there is no problem. The bonus for you is that you don’t have to create all the content from scratch, thereby saving yourself a whole lot of time. The bonus for your audience is that you are introducing them to different perspectives on a particular topic, and collating useful information all in one spot (saving them time and effort also). They will start to view you as the expert who sifts through all the information and presents it in a useful and (hopefully!) succinct way.
So let’s take a look at how you might pull together a Curated Blog post.
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As with any type of blog, you need to PLAN IT
- Identify your audience
- Have a key take-away in mind
- Identify the types of content you want to curate (e.g.: infographics, stats, data, graphs, videos, expert tips, eBooks, case studies, quotes, webinars)
- Brainstorm some titles
- Create an Outline – intro, body, conclusion
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START WRITING!
- Your intro should empathise with your audience around a particular problem/issue
- Step through how you’re going to solve that problem with the content you’re providing
- Then move into the body where you should provide more detail about the content you have curated
- Start your list of curated items
- As this is not a How-To list you don’t need to provide transitional statements between the items
- Move into the conclusion where you wrap up how your curated content list answered the problem for the reader as stated in the intro
- Finally, finish with a question that encourages feedback or commentary
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ADD THE FINISHING TOUCHES
- Include a Call to Action (CTA). Do you want them to download your eBook, sign up to your newsletter, or Tweet about your great post?
- Revisit your title – you may want to tighten it up now that the body is written
- Link out to any additional resources you may want to include
- Choose an appropriate image to accompany your post
- Ensure all links are working and correctly named
- EDIT and EDIT again!
- Publish
I’d love to hear about any of your recent Curated Blogs. Post them below so we can all share in the joy.
Renovator’s dream
Having worked in real estate advertising for many years, I know that sometimes the truth is stretched a little…ok a lot…to get people through the door. [caveat: only a very small percentage of agents I have worked with – and there have been hundreds – are guilty of this]. There are rules and regs in place to curb over or under quoting on prices, but there are no legalities surrounding ad copy or photography that can sometimes be ‘misleading’.
What I find interesting however, is how anyone can think it’s ok to stretch the truth and then have to back-track once they have potential buyers/renters in front of them. Awkward, much? It’s an interesting phenomena that unfortunately won’t be rectified anytime soon.
Anyway, the reason I’m pontificating this is that I’m living through my own “Renovator’s Dream” at the moment.
Six and a half years ago my husband and I bought a great place on the Mornington Peninsula – a growing area with great schools, shops, wineries and beaches nearby. Idyllic in so many ways. The house had good ‘bones’ and was on a great block. The painting and light fittings were hideous however,(which we sorted out before moving in!) but everything else was acceptable – oh, except for the kitchen…. I swore black and blue that we would be ok with it, for a little while, and that we would then make it a priority to overhaul. Well, 6.5 years on, two children later, a move to Sydney for 2 years and starting a new business, and we are finally getting the kitchen renovated.
The process leading up to this week was quite painless. God knows we had been talking about it long enough, so we mostly knew what we wanted… although my inability to make quick decisions on interior design specifics has taken its toll on my husband’s grey hair. but hey, you wait this long you want to get it right, right?
This week however, all hell has broken loose as my entire kitchen, including food, is on, under or around my dining table and my front door has been jammed open to allow the heat out and a continuous raft of strong young men in. There have been hammers and electric saws, high-pitched squealy drills and crowbars all doing what they do. The tradie-radio has been blaring out Barnesy and Farnesy on Triple MMM and the chatter has been blokey to say the least. Our elderly dog has been stressed to the max and added to the overall chaos by taking the opportunity to escape out the usually-locked front gate and have a crack at a little white fluffball after it nipped at her arthritic back legs. The two cats have also been erratic – either scarce or climbing the curtains to escape. My internet connection is down so I’ve been using my phone’s personal hotspot to get done what I can and now my data charges are through the roof. The plaster dust is EVERYWHERE and playing havoc with my sore throat. And to top it off I’ve had both kids home – one because she was sick, the other because his carer was on holiday.
Needless to say, my plans for this week have gone awry….
But what’s weird is that through the chaos is an extraordinary calm that arises when you watch kids just ‘get on with it’.
They don’t care that they’re eating microwave reheated food (I did have some sense of pre-planning and at least make some meals to freeze the week prrior) off the coffee table. Nor do they care that the dishes now get washed in the laundry tub. And they find it funny when I ask them to ‘go find the cinnamon’ for their porridge and it’s in a tub at the back of a pile that they have to crawl underneath to reach. It’s an adventure. It’s just a bit different. It’s something new and fun. And they keep reminding me that we’ll have a lovely new kitchen soon and it will all be back to normal.
Keep your eye on the prize…always….kids do this naturally, grown-ups often need to be reminded.
Mother, was that a month!
And so here endeth one of the biggest, craziest months in our household.
- four family birthdays
- umpteen friends’s birthdays
- Easter
- school holidays
- Anzac Day
- 2 massive kids parties
- transitioning a child from a cot to a bed
- dealing with our first bout of lice
- going overseas for a family trip
- and finishing with Mother’s Day.
Wow. Lots of sugar and champagne, sleepless nights and not much gym-time. IT’S TIME TO CALL IT QUITS!
So I woke this morning with a greater sense than ever that it’s time to get my temple back in order. Starting with my desk – which I have organised and cleaned within an inch of its life. I always feel better when my papers are neat. Next will be my bedside table which is alternately littered with trucks and Lego pieces, articles ripped out of magazines that I hope to one day read, a book I’m struggling to finish, and about 13 rainbow loom bands…..
I sound like a complete disaster area upon reading this back! But I have faith I will get it all organised, shed a few kilos in the process and start to sleep better.
What do you do to get your temple/body/life in order?
6 tips for email offers
Congratulations. You’ve worked hard to build a large database of interested potential customers. They have signed up through your newsletter, via Facebook, as a referral from a friend or as a past customer. You also know you have great products/services to sell. But how do you marry the two and get your database to activate an offer?
I am on countless email lists. I shop regularly online, therefore am often obliged to sign up to receive marketing material from the organisations I purchase from. I don’t mind it, because as an existing customer, I obviously like what they have to offer. And I love a SALE! However, what I do mind is how often I am contacted, and how relevant the offers are to me.
Some email marketing rules of thumb:
- NEVER EVER send a marketing communication email to someone who’s email address you received through unsolicited means. You must ALWAYS have someone’s permission to send emails to them.
- When requesting a user signs up to your list, give them some options about what they want to receive from you. It may take a little more work at your end to coordinate your marketing software, and subsequently segment your database, but believe me it will be worth it in the long run. Ask them whether they want sales notifications, regular informational newsletters, or service notices only, and whether any of your partners/subsidiaries are allowed to contact them with complementary products/offers.
- Find out how regularly your users wish to be contacted. Ask them outright: “do you want to be contacted weekly, monthly, or quarterly?”
- Make your offers highly relevant to your audience. In theory, if someone is already a customer, then what you sell should be relevant. However, this is not necessarily so. The best email offers are those that speak personally to the end-user and cry out ‘buy me’ in the most specific of ways. For past customers, try and match your offer to their previous purchases i.e.. offering complementary products. For potential customers, you need to try and find out what’s most relevant to them through asking questions on social media and on your website prior to them signing up to your database.
- For those happy to receive anything from you, temper your offers with great informational pieces of communication. Don’t just use your email marketing as a way to SELL SELL SELL. It should also be a tool to set yourself up as an expert in a particular field, with a font of knowledge to share.
- Alter your offers and the way you position them. Change subject lines, wording, percentages (if discounting), deadlines (for purchase), images. All of these things can make a huge difference to the cut-through you get (ie. open rates and click-throughs) and ultimately the outcome.
- Don’t flog a dead horse. i.e. don’t send out the same offer to the same people, week in week out, month in month out. If they haven’t bought it yet – they’re not going to!
Email is a great way to stay in regular contact with your past and future customers. It is personal and allows for great use of imagery and enough space to communicate your information. But beware not to overdo it. You need permission, regularity timeliness and authenticity. And the offers have to be relevant to your audience. Get any of these things wrong and it will be your undoing!
The language of travel
And so it is that the much anticipated NZ family holiday has been and gone, seemingly in a flash.
There was an 80th birthday party to attend, (which incidentally was more drunken and hilarious than many 30th parties I’ve attended!), lots of family to catchup with, Tane Mahuta to marvel at (the largest living kauri tree in the world and only 2000 years old!), some horses to join us for breakfast, a shark bus to be ridden, many kilometres to be travelled and subsequently numerous car games to be invented and sibling rivalries to attend to. There was sunshine, humidity, howling winds and rain and even a 24 hour blackout period to contend with.
All great stuff. I love sightseeing in new places and I love just hanging out with locals, chatting and observing.
What I always find most interesting when I travel is how a community expresses itself through the written and spoken word.
I love language and I love writing, and I always find it fascinating – and an incredible insight – to see how a community projects itself. Sometimes its obvious and overt, but the more interesting is the inadvertent expression.
This photo was taken on the west coast of the north island, in a one-shop-one-motel kinda town. We stopped for a quick comfort break and as I perused the shop window and local community notice board I found this:
Horeke boar competition notice
Now, please. Before I get hung for bagging the Maoris (this whole region is predominantly Maori settled), this post is not about them or their culture per se. Nor am I going to get on my high horse about hunting as a pastime (although let it be on record that I do not condone it). Rather, this is an observation about this particular small community and the values it has as expressed through this annual event.
Not only does the Horeke Pig Hunt promise great prizes for the heaviest boar and the longest tusk, but also the longest pheasant tail.
Umm….THESE ANIMALS ARE NOT CONSIDERED PESTS THEREFORE ARE NOT AVAILABLE FOR RANDOM SLAUGHTER!
But wait, there’s more. The kids can get in on the act too – the first to kill 25 magpies and bring them in gets a whole $5! Excuse me, but what weapons are in the hands of children to allow them to kill magpies? And for what reason are these birds and animals being slaughtered? As far as I know there are not too many magpies on the average Kiwi menu.
Does it prove you’re a man if you get the biggest pig? Are you on your way to being the toughest guy if you get the 25 magpies? Surely the $5 is not incentive, in a land where petrol is $2.25 a litre! And it’s not about survival – these animals are not all being eaten.
So. I’ll avoid a full-on anti-hunting crusade, and I’ll shoosh up now for fear of being considered anti-Maori, but this kind of thing does strike me as rather telling …..
Hmmm. A land of many natural wonders and some human wonderment?
I don’t have leaky taps anymore!
I can’t quite believe how long it has taken me, a digital content marketer, to get my act together and get my own website up and running. It’s been a comedy of errors, false starts, and a range of other euphemisms.
But here it is! HOORAY! And it has a platform – of course – for my ramblings.
I do hope you’ll join me on my journey of discovery, uncovery (and possible blubbery) in my quest to find the best words, the neatest phrases, the coolest placements, the strongest connections, the most awesome stories and their tellers, and the best darned engagement that you and your business has every had with its customers and potential fans.
I’m no longer the plumber with the leaky taps! OK, there’s possibly still a drip or two to mop up, but I reckon I’m almost there!
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