Curate to Become a Trusted Resource

Whatever your specific goals are, your content needs to get read to have any impact and be valuable. It must be useful and interesting to get read. It must get read many times (consistency) to be trusted. You want to be that trusted resource.

I have a trusted resource for social media updates which is a great example of valuable curated content. Do any of us have time to keep up with all of the changes to the social media platforms? Yet we use them every day. I like to know about new functionality and new apps, but I don't have time to keep up. Getting a point form summary of all the changes in my inbox once a month is extremely valuable. It saves me time, I can dig deeper if I want, and I can use the information to make decisions about my social media strategy.

Curating content is a great strategy for providing timely updates about things that change fast. (Tweet This)

social media update section in newsletter
Want to see this great example? Click here to view Twirp Communications’ newsletter archive and open the most recent issue. You'll see there’s a section for social media updates. I love this format because it gives me a snippet of info - enough to decide if I want to know more - and a link to the details.

You don't have to be able to write to provide this kind of valuable information to your target market. But you do need to stay current and have a process to capture the info you gather. I asked Head Twirp Anita Kirkbride to tell me about her process.
Here's my three-step content curation process for my newsletter:
  1. After an issue goes out, I copy my Word template and rename it to the new month. Every time I hear about a new feature/change to a network, I copy the link and paste into the appropriate section of my template. Sometimes I write a sentence or two right then and link the article. But if I'm in a hurry, I paste the link in and do that later. These changes are usually things I see coming across my Facebook or Twitter feeds, and sometimes they come in emails from my favourite tech sources. 
  2. When my monthly deadline arrives, I go to the corporate blog of each network and scroll through the last month's news to see if there are any changes I've missed. If so, I add them to my template.
  3. I double check to ensure I've summarized all the links in layman's terms before sending for publishing.
If you are an expert, you should be keeping current. And if you're keeping current, gathering the information doesn't have to be a big chore. Anita’s process can be applied to just about any topic - give it a try for yours.

PS: You can sign up for Twirp's newsletter here. It's a great example of a sign-up page!

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