Prevent Blog Content Writer’s Burnout With Curation

As a blog content writer, I’d been doing it for a long time, even teaching it to others in corporate blogging training sessions.  I just didn’t know the name for it.  Then I read “Business Blogging Mistakes and their Easy Fixes” in HubSpot, and learned that it’s called “content curation”.

As a freelance blog writer, I’ve always known that linking to outside sources is a good tactic for adding breadth and depth to my blog content.  Linking to a news source or magazine article, for instance, adds credibility to the ideas I’m expressing on behalf of Say It For You client companies.

And, when you link to another blog content writer’s comments about the subject you’re covering, that’s a way to reinforce your point and also shows you’re staying in touch with others in your industry.

HubSpot takes the concept even further, explaining that content curation means “selecting and aggregating information into one place that creates more value for information consumers.”

One of my best friends had to take courses for two years to become a curator in the art museum in Philadelphia. Her function is to enhance the experience of museum visitors by providing more background information about the artwork they’re viewing. She didn’t create the art, yet she’s adding value to the art experience.

That’s why the “curation” is so appropriate to describe how, in blogging for business, Indianapolis bloggers can really enhance and add value to the online consumers’ experience. While the information itself may not be original, as HubSpot points out, the aggregation of resources is very valuable to the readers. 

The wonderful thing about it all is that while curation is benefitting the readers, it’s also benefitting the people doing the blogging. That benefit takes two forms, I’ve found:

• As a corporate blogging trainer, I find that the biggest fear business owners have when it comes to maintaining a company blog is the fear of running out of ideas. Curating lets writers, every so often, use (of course with proper credit given) others’ ideas.
• One of the side benefits of blogging for business is what I call the “training effect”.  As you’re repeatedly communicating with readers about your business (whether on your own or using the services of a professional ghost blogger like me), the very exercise of planning the content trains you to talk effectively about your own business.

Thanks to HubSpot, I now know what to call the concept I’ve known all along: The cure for blog content writer burnout is content curation!