Curation Tips – What You Should Know about Curating Blog Posts

One of the latest buzzwords on the Internet is “curation”. When I first heard about it, I didn’t understand a thing about it. Then little by little, as I learnt more, it dawned on me:

Content curation is nothing new. It’s only the word, used in this connection, that is new. I laughed when I discovered that I’ve actually been doing curation since 2003, but back then it didn’t have a fancy name. My friends just – unrightfully – called me the “Copy & Paste Queen”!

Yeah, with friends like that you don’t need enemies 😉

Mashable shares five awesome tips for great content curation in a blog post from a few days ago. The author of the blog post is no other than Steve Rosenbaum, the author of Curation Nation.

I fully agree with his tips, although I’m guilty of not following #2 as well as I should. This is a short resume of the five tips:

Curation Tip #1: Don’t just use curation. Create, too. A combination of both works better than doing only one of the things.

Be part of the content ecosystem, not just a re-packager of it. Often, people think of themselves as either creators or curators as if these two things are mutually exclusive. What a curator really should do is embrace content as both a maker and an organizer. The most successful curators include sites like The Huffington Post, that embrace the three-legged-stool philosophy of creating some content, inviting visitors to contribute some content, and gathering links and articles from the web. Created, contributed, and collected — the three ‘c’s is a strong content mix that has a measurable impact. Why? Because your visitors don’t want to hunt around the web for related material. Once they find a quality, curated collection, they’ll stay for related offerings. 

Curation Tip #2: Follow a schedule. You don’t need to blog daily, but decide how often you will blog – curated and created stuff – and follow that schedule. This is my weak point. I have the best intensions, but a hard time following them. Don’t do as I do. Do as I say in this case 😉

Curation Tip #3: Post on multiple platforms. Don’t just post on your blog. Post on YouTube, Tumble, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Be visible.

Curation Tip #4: Read and comment also. Don’t just write. You must participate in the community. Not just spit out content yourself. Even a re-tweet helps and is easy to do.

Curation Tip #5: Share. Don’t steal. Add a link back to the site you’ve curated from.

Allow me to add a tip: If you find an interesting post that is a curated post, go to the source, and curate that post.