You shouldn’t have to remember this.
You have so much to remember as a blogger.
You come up with an idea, research, write, edit, promote, respond to commenters.
You should even remember to put in the “Read More” tag for double page views.
However, the one aspect of blogging you shouldn’t have to remember is your topic.
Will this post tell you how to devise blog topics?
No.
Will this post tell you how to remember blog topics once you’ve thought of them?
No, you have an editorial calendar for that.
This post will tell you how to never run out of blog topics and dramatically increase your blog traffic all at the same time.
Where to Curate Your Blog Topics
A museum curator collects and preserves artifacts.
You collect and preserve blog topic ideas until you are ready to use them.
What if you collected and preserved your potential ideas in a place that could dramatically increase your blog traffic?
Think of it as putting money in a bank. Â You could keep your money anywhere, just like you could keep your blog ideas anywhere.
You could keep your blog ideas in your smartphone using your Evernote app, on a paper editorial calendar, or on CoSchedule’s editorial calendar.
But, if you could your ideas in content curation sites, your ideas could generate traffic for you, just like keeping money in a bank generates interest for you.
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon has the potential to generate massive traffic to your blog. Â I know. Â When I used StumbleUpon consistently as a content curation site, it generated massive traffic to my blog.
The premise of StumbleUpon is simple.  You research, or stumble, other’s articles–thumbs up if you like the articles, thumbs down if you don’t.  If you are not sure how you feel about the article, just stumble on to new articles, and don’t click anything.
If you click “thumbs up,” the article goes to your “likes”.  You are given the option of putting the articles you liked on a list.
In order to use StumbleUpon for content curation and traffic generation, make a list called “Future Blog Posts”.
Put your ideas for future blog posts, the articles you liked, on your “Future Blog Post” list.  Be sure to fill in the tags, so when people search topics, they find your Future Blog Post list with your potential article ideas on it.
Stumblers researching for topics you write about could follow you. Â Then, when you add your own articles to StumbleUpon, interest in your writing will have already been generated.
I have heard varying ratios for how many articles you need to stumble for every one of your own articles you put on StumbleUpon. Â The greatest I heard was that you should stumble 30 other articles for every 1 of your own articles on the site.
Bloggers worry that these ideas take extra time. Â Clicking thumbs up or thumbs down goes fast.
After about two weeks of this consistent stumbling as I looked for new blog post ideas, I found massive referral traffic coming to my site from StumbleUpon.
The point of Flipboard is to make a magazine.
The default magazine titles are Picks for articles you want to read now and Read Later for intriguing articles you want to read later.
However, you don’t have to just keep the default magazine titles.  Having a magazine designed for future blog post ideas will curate the ideas for you when you’re ready to use them, and get others interested in you and your blog in the meantime.
- Go to Flipboard.com
- Click your picture in the upper right-hand corner.
- Click “New Magazine.”
- Title it “Future Blog Topics.”
- Search for articles using the search bar.  Flipboard will actually suggest articles that match your interests and post these under “Cover Stories.”
- When you find an article containing ideas you might want to consider using in future blog posts, click the plus (+) sign to flip the article into your Future Blog Topics ideas magazine.
People can follow your magazine and follow you.
This is exactly what happened for blogger Olivia O’Connor.  She put my article into her magazine Blog Like You Mean It.  As a result, I met a like-minded blogger.  I started following her and her magazine.
When I click on the articles she curated I put in my “Read Later” magazine, she will get blog traffic. This could happen for you for every Flipboard user that becomes apprised of you and your blog in this way.
The premise of Pinterest is to pin graphics of intriguing ideas to virtual bulletin boards.  There are many ways to use a Pinterest board to curate blog post ideas.
What boards do you have? Â According to Living with Batman, your Pinterest boards should include boards with pins from your blog, your most popular tags, topics relevant to your blogging niche, group boards, and boards relating to your personal interests.
However, I’d like to suggest an additional board, one for future blog posts.
- Go to Pinterest.com.
- Create a new board, and title it Future Blog Posts for [the name of your blog]
- Describe the board by describing your blog’s niche.  Explain these are the kind of pins Pinterest users (pinners) will find on the board.
- Find a group board in your niche by going to Pingroupie.com.
- Scan the board for topics you might eventually want to incorporate into your own blog posts.
- Click “Pin it,” and pin the graphic from the post to your “Future Blog Post” board.
- Tag the pin one of the “popular” Pinterest topics.  A dropdown menu next to the search bar will enable you to find the “popular” pin tags.  Tagging from the “popular” category will maximize the amount of traffic you receive.
When you pin someone’s graphic, they will get notified and will learn about you.
Also, you are likely to get new Pinterest followers since people like to follow active pinners.  You will look like an active pinner since you will have an additional board and therefore more pins.
The advantage of this is to generate interest in your blog as well as your future posts. Â Think of it like a preview of a movie. Â A movie trailer is designed to generate interest in the movie. Â You are trying to generate interest in your blog by showing a snippet of an idea for a future post.
The job of a successful blogger is to advertise the post after it has been published.  Some of the most successful bloggers generate interest in their ideas before their posts are published.  For example, bloggers Danny Ray and Suzi 81 advertise their Meet and Greets before they occur in order to generate excitement.
Pinning ideas from other blogs generates interest in you. Â People find out about you and follow your boards
In conclusion, what matters isn’t how you get page views, it’s how many page views you get. These content curation ideas will generate interest in you and your blog as well as store blogging ideas for later use.
Bloggers express concerns that they just don’t have time to do it all.  You have to record your blogging ideas, so you don’t forget them anyway.  You might as well record them in places that will not only preserve them for you but get you traffic at the same time.
Readers, before you go curate your ideas, please share this post, so other bloggers can read about these time-saving tips.  They really do save time.  They enable you to be organized and save ideas at the same time as getting traffic for your blog.
Readers, there has been great interest in Flipboard since my article was published.  It’s such a new medium, many have heard of it but have yet to try it.
Have you tried Flipboard, StumbleUpon, or Pinterest for content curation? Â Have you found your referral traffic from these sites increased? Â Are there any additional sites like Reddit you would recommend for content curation? Â I look forward to your views.
Source:
Pinterest for Content Bloggers: Setting Up Your Boards
