4 Ways You Can Use Content Curation to Write Killer Blog Posts (Without Starting from Scratch)

We’ve reached the halfway point in our series on Content Creation versus Content Curation!

In this third installment, we’ll discuss some ideas you can walk away with and apply to your own business.

Before we do, let’s recap.

We started by defining content curation and content creation, and exploring the differences between them.

Then, last month, we talked about which networks worked best for content curation.

In today’s post, I’ll share some ideas for curating content; ideas you can implement right away.

Whether you’re brand new to blogging or are an experienced blogger who’s struggling to find the time to keep up with your schedule — content curation can help.

When you curate content from other sources, you’re able to bring fresh ideas to your audience and save a ton of time in the process.

In some cases, this will mean sharing content that’s already been published and offering your perspective, but this can also mean reaching out to peers and experts in your industry and working with them to curate their ideas.

Here are four examples of how you can use content curation to create blog posts your readers will love.

1. Interview or “ask an expert” posts

Send emails to experts in your field and ask them if you can interview them — either via phone or email. Then send them a list of questions, usually about 3-5 is plenty.

Once you gather a few of these, you can pull them together in one, or even a series of posts. For example, you could write a post where all the experts share their answer to the first question, and then the second post would be all the experts sharing their answers to the second question, and so on.

Alternatively, just pick your favorite bits of learning and advice, and pull them together in a blog post. This could work for any industry, as it provides tons of value, and most likely the people you quote in your article will share your content, as well.

2. Roundup posts

This is a popular form of content curation on lifestyle blogs, but it can really work for any industry. Pick a topic, then do a Google search on that topic.

Pull the top posts that you like the best — that you find most valuable — and put them together in a list on your blog post, linking back to the original sources.

Write an introduction, and bam! You have a great post! This can work seasonally (ie: Top 25 Best Christmas Cookie Recipes), or with hot topics (top news in your industry this week), as well.

3. Top 10 posts

This is a great way to drive more traffic to your blog and remind your readers of some of your older pieces of content. Similar to the roundup above, you can write a compilation post, but this time only use content from your own site.

Don’t have enough content to make a list of 10? Simply make it a smaller list. This could be something as simple as a list of the top most trafficked posts on your blog, or they could all be related to a specific topic.

4. Infographics

One method that has been really successful for me on my blog is sharing a curated infographic.

I keep a board of infographics on Pinterest, and once a week or so, I go through it, and find one that I think is good. I then write a short post about the content of the infographic, and offer some tips, paste in the infographic, credit the original source, and voila! blog post done.

As you can see, using curated content to fuel your blog posts doesn’t need to be a time-consuming process, and can actually be a lot of fun.

But what can you do if you’ve never taken the time to collect and share content for your audience?

One of my favorite places to start is on Twitter.

Twitter has a wealth of valuable content for any industry or audience imaginable. You can find popular content that’s being shared and discussed. You can also find people within your industry who share great content and might even be willing to participate in an interview to share their ideas.

Here are a few ways I use Twitter to find content to share on my blog.

• Seek out industry experts, follow, and subscribe: Twitter Search is a great tool for finding leaders in your industry. Search for terms that are relevant to your industry to see who is sharing content or talking about topics related to your business. Once you find them, make sure to follow and subscribe to their blogs.

• Create or subscribe to Twitter lists: Twitter lists are fantastic for content curation. Once you find some “Twitterers” you really like, that share great, valuable content, pull them together in a list. Check in with this list daily, retweet their content, and look for the resources you’d like to curate for your blog. This is also a great way to find people you’d like to interview for upcoming blog posts.

• Favorite tweets for later sharing: Use the “favorite” button on Twitter to bookmark tweets you want to come back to later for possible shares.

What’s next?

Twitter is just one of the ways you can curate content and ideas from your audience. Next month, I’ll share other examples of tools you can use to curate content, and help you set up systems to make curation a snap!

4 Ways You Can Use Content Curation to Write Killer Blog Posts (Without Starting from Scratch)