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In this episode of GradBlogger, we talk about content curation and repurposing. We discuss what it is and why it is important. We also provide four direct examples of content curation and repurposing.
This episode is the fourth in the Content Machine series.
Disclosure: Some of the links in the podcast show notes and transcripts are affiliate links (indicated with [Affiliate] in front). If you choose to make a purchase through these links, GradBlogger will earn a commission from that purchase at no extra cost to you
Previous Content Machine Episodes
Tasks, Clusters and Projects – the Anatomy of an Online Business | GBP022
Using Three-Minute Papers to Drive Traffic to Your Site | GBP011
Using Random Topic Blogging as Your First Content Machine | GBP008
Introduction
Chris Cloney: 00:08
Welcome to Episode #22 of GradBlogger, where we’re helping you build an online business through blogging, podcasting, and video so you can create change in the world. We show you how to build an online business, an online research company, an independent research company, or a side hustle that accelerates your knowledge, your learning, and your personal brand and makes you an authority in this space.
Chris Cloney: 00:40
I’m your host, Dr. Chris Cloney. In today’s episode, we’re talking about content curation and repurposing. This is the third in The Content Machine series, which discusses easy, repeatable, scalable processes you can use to build content for your blog.
Chris Cloney: 00:55
The first one was about random topic blogging, which is where we all get started. We talked about it in Episode #8. The second one, which we talked about in Episode #11, went over three-minute paper posts, which are literature summaries or reviews of papers you’re reading. This one is on content curation and repurposing. Once you start creating content, this is a great place to go to start bolstering it because at this point, you don’t have a lot of material to share.
Chris Cloney: 01:35
One of the keys to getting traffic to your website is having material to:
- Share on social media
- Position you as an authority and an expert in your field and help you make connections
- Share in your newsletters.
Chris Cloney: 01:52
In this episode, we’ll talk about what content curation is and why it is important. We’ll talk a bit about what is and isn’t content creation. Then we’ll look at four examples of content curation and repurposing. I’ll use examples and stories from my time spent building dustsafetyscience.com, which is my independent research company, to where it is today.
Chris Cloney: 02:13
We’ve done this a lot. We do a lot of content creation based on curation and repurposing. We’ve done over 500 blog posts in the last year. That’s been one of the key drivers for helping us build out this platform for industry safety, and that’s what I want to share with you so you can start building these in your own fields as well.
What is Content Curation?
Chris Cloney: 02:39
What is content curation? It is the act of processing or selecting or organizing or looking after items in a collection or exhibit. That’s the Webster dictionary definition. Curation is putting things together: selecting, organizing, and putting them in a collection. In terms of content curation, this is putting together news articles, blog posts, and expert opinions in a way that’s relevant for the audience that you’re trying to serve.
Why is Content Curation Important?
Chris Cloney: 03:05
Why is this important? As I stated previously, when you’re getting started, you don’t have a lot to share. One of the big things is being seen as the authority. As I always say on this podcast, we want you to create the best and put together the best content on your topic so you can be seen as the leading global authority.
Chris Cloney: 03:23
You don’t get there by having nothing to share. When you get started, you won’t have a lot of material to draw on. As I mentioned, we had 500 posts last year at DustSafetyScience so you will have a ton of material to draw on when you create new content to share on social media and draw traffic.
Chris Cloney: 03:39
When you’re just getting started, you may only have one, two, five, 10 posts. That’s why content curation is beneficial. When you share it on social media and in your newsletters, people will associate you with the topic and see you as the authority.
Chris Cloney: 03:57
We covered this in Episode# 14 with Dr. Gaius Augustus from the GradBlogger Accelerator Series. He talked about how sharing information on social media about his topic, which was science and art, created a personal brand that was very recognizable in the space.
Chris Cloney: 04:14
Those are some of the reasons why it’s important. This is also an important activity to master before you start monetizing your blog. It builds authority, grows an audience and fosters relationships. We’ll talk about how in a moment. One of the key things I tell people to do before they think about monetization is build up this personal brand and authority and be seen as the leading source of good information in your space.
Is Content Curation Also Content Creation?
Chris Cloney: 04:39
I want to ask the question: is content curation also content creation? I think it is. If you just take a list or reshare somebody’s article, that’s not content creation: that’s content sharing. But if you take that same material and repurpose it for a new audience, like a literature review or even a topic review, you can use it as a content creation tool.
Chris Cloney: 05:12
I built my original blog, MyDustExplosionResearch.com, using the same curation methods that you’re about to hear in this episode. Using this sort of content machine, we built it up to several hundreds of posts over the last couple of years at dustsafetyscience.com.
Four Examples of Content Curation and Repurposing
Chris Cloney: 05:32
I want to share four examples of content curation and repurposing. Two of these are easy examples that you can start using today, while two are examples of more advanced things that I’ve done to build my business. They take more time and effort, but also enable you to make a bigger change in the world.
Example #1: Collecting and sharing relevant news links
Chris Cloney: 05:54
With that, I want to jump right in to example number one. This is something that you can start doing with your blog today: collecting and sharing relevant news links. It may not work for every topic, but a lot of subjects are talked about online via magazines or publications or newspapers. Industrial safety, which is my area, is often featured in news reports.
Chris Cloney: 06:25
The main tool I use to track topics is Google Alerts, which lets you pick keywords. Every time an article is published and ranks for that keyword in Google, you will receive a list. You can have them send it hourly or daily or weekly. I did daily at first and now we’re at weekly. I use this to access of the news articles that are published in my field.
Chris Cloney: 06:48
Why would you want to do this? There are two big advantages. As I mentioned earlier, when you’re getting started, you don’t have the content to share. These articles provide you with content to share on social media. If you’re on Twitter, you can post a couple times a day and if you get 15 articles a week, then you do three articles a day and post those for five days.
Chris Cloney: 07:06
In my case, I was doing a lot of posting on LinkedIn, only one post a day is recommended, so five or seven articles would get me for the whole week. These articles give you the materials you need to start sharing. If you do that for a couple months, people are going to naturally start to see you as the expert.
Chris Cloney: 07:20
Someone will say something like, “Oh, you’re interested in (insert area)? Have you seen this guy posting on LinkedIn?” That’s what people say about me all the time. I know because I talk to them at conferences and that’s how they introduce themselves. “Hi, I know you. You post on LinkedIn.”
Chris Cloney: 07:34
The advantage of doing this is that it gives you stuff to share in a newsletter. It can be very daunting to write a newsletter every week and keep getting engagement. I know because I’ve done it with GradBlogger. I know because I’ve done it with DustSafetyScience. But if you devote a section of that newsletter to relevant news articles, it gives you a big chunk of content that you don’t have to write. You’re just putting the titles in and linking to those articles.
Chris Cloney: 07:58
That’s a big value for your audience because you’re curating that content for them. You’ll find that you’re getting a lot more engagement with your newsletters just by doing that.
Example #2: Curating other blog content and sharing
Example number two of content curation is curating other blog content and sharing. You use the same keyword searching approach. You also add some RRS feeds or get some sort of reader to plug in to your favorite blogs. Every time they update, you get the content that you like and want to read.
Chris Cloney: 08:27
The steps involved are very similar to example number one. You share on social media. You share in your newsletters: devote a section to best blog content from field X. It would probably be very high value section. The added benefit of this or these news articles is that you’re fostering relationships with other content curators in your space.
Chris Cloney: 08:46
Regarding our podcast guests, I’ve known a lot of them for two or three years, and have been sharing their content through the whole journey: on social media and in the community. Now they’re repaying me, if you want to look at it that way, by coming on the podcast and sharing their stories.
Chris Cloney: 09:02
So example number one and example number two are things you can start doing right now. When I’m working with students and doing coaching in this area, I ask them if they have a process in place for collecting other people’s content and sharing it. It makes them look like the authority that they are. It also starts fostering relationships and it gives you stuff to share so you’re not wracking your brain as much to create social media.
Chris Cloney: 09:28
Eventually, you may want to share more of your own content, but this is a great place to get started. That’s example number one and example number two for content creation and repurposing. Those are the curation side.
Chris Cloney: 09:41
Now, I want to move on and talk about two examples for repurposing. Again, these are a little more advanced. They’re going to require more of your time and also give you a bigger bang for your buck. As I said, this is the key driver for the research machine that I have for my company.
Example #3: Advanced analysis of curated content
Chris Cloney: 09:56
Example number three is advanced analysis of curated content. I created a report every six months with a giant list of news articles: a fire in Indiana, an explosion in Perth, a fire in London, wherever it is. I collected them for six months and put them in a giant list in my report. But then I wouldn’t just settle at just making a list. I’d provide analysis. I would create pie charts about the materials involved, what the ignition sources might be, what standards might be in place, or what the causes were if available.
Chris Cloney: 10:32
Giving this cross-sectional analysis adds a lot more value to this content. You’re picking up, you’re curating, but you’re also starting to provide advanced analysis. This became an important resource in my space. People liked it a lot, and you see these in industrial safety presentations for combustible dust. You’ll see people pulling these pie charts out of my reports and hopefully referencing back to me. But if they don’t, that’s fine, too.
Chris Cloney: 10:58
You’ll see a lot of people sharing in my space, which is a key milestone for me to start looking like and being the authority in the space. That’s the nuts and bolts of what I use for my research company today. That’s what we’re bringing in for research machines. These are very high value for the community you’re creating, so there are options to start monetizing this.
Chris Cloney: 11:16
As you create these reports and create this sort of analysis, you can start taking sponsor and advertisers on. You can get sponsored report or you could put a half-page advertisement in it or a full-page advertisement. These are all ways we used to create a more tight-knit community, foster relationships with other companies in our community and be seen as the authority for what is now combustible dust research at dustsafetyscience.com.
Example #4: Repurposing the content you have collected
Chris Cloney: 11:42
Example number four is repurposing the content you have collected. I was sharing all these news articles on social media, I was sharing them my newsletter, and I was sharing them in new reports. I realized that we’re going to get a ton of clicks that could be coming back to our platform and our website if we had relevant sources going to it.
Chris Cloney: 12:14
For example, a report might get 500 clicks to these individual news articles, but the news articles weren’t written by engineers or technical folks. They’re normally written by news reporters, who may not fully understand certain aspects of what happened. They may not have all the information. They may not know the standards and guidelines that might apply. So, in this case, I thought, well, can we repurpose this content?
Chris Cloney: 12:36
When you do this, you can rewrite it as a blog post, This is not just copying and pasting their words: we do a couple of key things to enhance the content. You can make it more relevant for the reader. So in my case, a news reporter is probably not going to write the article in a way that’s most relevant for a say, engineering technical lead in a company.
Chris Cloney: 12:55
So if I rewrite the fire report in a way that highlights what the technical folks are going to care about, that’s more added value to them. You also give an idea about the accuracy of the information. This was collected, say from a fire marshal versus maybe somebody who might be less knowledgeable. You can give an idea in the article that you write about the accuracy of the information.
Chris Cloney: 13:22
You’d also follow up over time. We do this a lot. We’ll give status updates for people who were injured in these industrial safety accidents. We’ll include links where you could support them if there’s a fund set up, and we’ll report if the companies involved implemented a safer solution.
Chris Cloney: 13:42
You can update these incidents over time or these curated pieces of content over time because they’re now on your platform. You can also collect five news articles about the same thing and say, “Okay, well, we’re going to write our own blog posts by taking the best material from each of these resources, highlighting their accuracy, and getting a better piece overall.”
Chris Cloney: 14:03
It’s about enhancing the content, verifying the content and repurposing it on your own platform. This was a keystone moment in the development of DustSafetyScience because we were sending literally hundreds of clicks, maybe even thousands of clicks to these other news sites, and then the visitors weren’t satisfied with what they’d find there.
Chris Cloney: 14:26
Now we collect them and rewrite them on our website, enhancing the content for our audience. Not only do we get those clicks back to the website, but they’re also enjoying the content more.
A note about this repurposing is that it does take a lot more time than just the curating part. When I started repurposing this blog content, it took me about an hour to write up one incident and we were doing five to 10 a week at that point. We were finding them around the world. So five to 10 hours of my time were spent just writing up these blog posts. We get a lot of content and we get a lot of high value material put out into the world, but it does take a lot more time to repurpose these.
Chris Cloney: 15:09
So you may have to be selective or you may have to grow a team. We put a process in place now where I analyze the data and have a research system that looks at it. We have a technical writer who then writes up and summarizes the article. We have somebody that proofreads it. Now, we’re able to do 10 or 15 of these a week and get hundreds of posts put up every year, all of which goes into our research machine actually.
Chris Cloney: 15:34
Now, I’m providing analysis of that for my research field. That’s what I present at conferences. That’s what I write papers about. I am providing all the analysis across these different datasets. It’s all because we started building a team out for this process. I guess the point I want to share was that it does take more effort. If you want to repurpose all the content you’re putting in, the payoffs can be quite high.
Chris Cloney: 15:54
We found that the traffic scaled linearly with the number of posts that we were releasing and when we rebranded from MyDustExplosionResearch.com to dustsafetyscience.com, we’re able to get away with not too much of a drop in traffic because most of our traffic was coming off the social sharing and the newsletter sharing. Some of the organic traffic definitely dropped off, but we’re back now to where we were and quite a bit more because we have so many blog posts on the topic.
Chris Cloney: 16:19
If you type in things like ‘dust explosion in Kentucky’ or in Ohio or in The Netherlands, you’re likely to come across DustSafetyScience in top Google rankings because we’ve reported on a fire and explosion incident that happened in those areas. It’s because of the number of materials that we’re putting out into the world using this process.
Conclusion
Chris Cloney: 16:40
That’s it for this content creation and repurposing. There are four examples I’ve shared, starting with collecting and sharing relevant news links and curating other blog content. Again, these are similar but the big step for other blog content was that it fosters relationships with other creators in your space. Example number three was advanced analysis for curating content. In this case, you can write new blog posts and use that to provide a research spin on the material that you’re collecting.
Chris Cloney: 17:06
Example number four is repurposing the content into new and different blog posts. The fifth one is to always give attribution: we provide links back to every news article we mention in all our blog posts.
Chris Cloney: 17:42
If you want to check with the other content machines, we talked about random topic blogging and three-minute papers in Episode #8 and Episode #11. In this one, we talked about content curation and repurposing. If you want to get the cheat sheet that we created for this episode, you can do that at gradblogger.com/23. We also have the transcripts at the show notes.
Chris Cloney: 18:07
If you’re liking this material, if you like the content that we’re creating at GradBlogger, if you’re excited about the power of you as an academic, you as a person with a PhD or a higher degree to build an online business to make big change in the world, definitely give me a shoutout. You can email me at chris@gradblogger.com. You can comment on the show notes. You can tag me on Twitter and Instagram
Chris Cloney: 18:30
Just let me know what you like about this material, maybe what you’re struggling with as well, and we’ll address that in future episodes of the podcast. As always, I appreciate you listening. I’m excited to keep helping you build your online business and create content in the world, and I look forward to seeing a wave of academics being able to build online businesses and change the way the world is functioning.
Resources
DustSafetyScience
GradBlogger Connect!
GradBlogger: Twitter and Instagram
Previous Podcasts:
GBP014- How to grow a brand and generate freelance income with Dr. Gaius Augustus (Accelerator Program Case Study)
