Create Your Own Curation List

When you post about a subject, studies show you’re viewed as an expert even though you didn’t write the content yourself. This allows you more visibility with less effort, but curating also takes time. How do you keep posting without spending all your time looking for content, or merely liking or sharing other peoples’ posts? You can do web searches and end up down many a rabbit hole. Even tools that promise to bring you news and information that interest you can fall short of your specific needs.

The answer is to keep a curation list of websites and blogs that post the content you find valuable. When you find a good source you can bookmark it or use an app to save the link in a place where you can find it again. But another simple method (it’s best to keep things easy when it comes to social media) is to make a table in Word or Excel (or the program you prefer).

Your headings could be as simple as:

Name of source (Example: Seth Godin’s Blog)

Link (Example: https://seths.blog/)

Comments (Example: Posts daily.)

When you’re short on posting ideas, go down this list and click on the links until you find something meaningful.

When I’ve used a curation list, I’ve found that some sources are less useful than I originally thought they might be. Don’t be discouraged, just delete those or move them to the end where you can check them later and see whether the site has improved. Continue to add to the list when you run across great writing.

Be sure to read the full article you plan to post. Titles can be misleading, and the author’s conclusions might not align with your brand. Or the article might name a competitor.

Take Advantage of Other Curation Lists

Sign up for newsletters/emails that do the work for you. Evaluate the items they recommend and post the relevant ones. Two newsletters/lists that have been valuable for me are:

Austin Kleon (Author of Steal like an Artist and other fabulous books). Subscribe to his newsletter and read his blog here.

Construction Dive. This would be interesting to those in the architect/engineer/construction (AEC) industry. They also have articles related to marketing, commercial building, residential building, technology, design, products, green building, economy, regulations, economy, and corporate news. Check it out.

Do you have any great tips or sources? I’d love to hear them. Feel free to share them in the comments.

We Grew Tales, a collaboration of speculative fiction, humorous, and literary tales is now available for purchase.

Photo: Aron Visuals

Leave a Reply