Old School to New School

For anyone starting out on content curation, here is a beginner-level list of content sources.

Courteny Seiter writing at Shareaholic:

"Reasons to curate content include developing thought leadership in your industry, taking a break from always talking about yourself on social media sites, and, well, just thinking something is cool enough to share."

Her 10 sources are excellent places to begin setting up the stream of content that will make you a great curator in the long run. 

Social media strategy: How to choose the best social networks based on your business, experience and community. 

Very good guide if you're starting out. 

If you are just starting out as a blogger (business or personal) you need to know when to publish your posts. 

Dan Zarrella, who studies social media data, has done an analysis of posting times. For example, 8am seems to be when most people share links. 

Blogs will vary - it depends on who your target audience is and what their daily scheudle is like - but start by using Dan's info and then experiment. 

The important thing is that random posting times will probably not get you the most readers/subscribers. 

A few thoughts from me on why old-school publishing people should feel optimistic about the future. 

A great free guide from Contently for anyone starting out in blogging/content marketing/building a social media strategy - very well worth the time to read. 

www. contently.com is a site that matches content providers with content buyers. It's also worth subscribing to their blog, The Content Strategist. 

How to get started with a personal or professional blog.

Moving from print to online writing? Here are 8 basics for making your copy highly readable.

The post is written by Pamela Wilson who has a design business and is also a successful blogger.

Some of the ideas are probably familiar - but she had some tips I hadn't thought of.

*Use deep captions - "captions are consistently some of the most-read copy on a page"

*Check both routes through your copy - the one where the reader scans the whole text and the one where they only scan headings, subheadings, lists and bold text.

 Every point is valid. All the ideas are simple to apply, and can be done for your next blog post.

Find Pamela here http://www.bigbrandsystem.com/my-gift-to-you/

Original article here  http://www.copyblogger.com/scannable-content/

Good advice for new bloggers. 

Explore the free tools out there that will help you be better at business blogging and content creation.