Refresh Your Email Marketing with Content Curation

It's a new year and many of us are taking a look at how things went last year, what seemed to work in our marketing, and what didn't do so well. We're examining our marketing strategies with an eye toward doing things better for more leads and more deals this year.

You may have already taken a look at creating a lot of fresh relevant content for your website and maybe using some of it in your drip email campaigns. That's easier said than done, unless we spend money to hire a writer. Have you considered curated content for your website and email marketing, including newsletters? What's curated content for our purposes?

• Internet articles about real estate in general and market trends.
• Blog posts about our local community and things happening that relate to real estate.
• Home-related Web content about decorating, construction, remodel, gardening, etc.

If you've been doing a newsletter or would like to, instead of paying for content that is going out to thousands of real estate agents who then just put their letterhead on it, why not set up a simple-to-use content curation system to deliver content to you from all around the Web?

There are already thousands of accomplished writers creating millions of articles and blog posts that would be of interest to your prospects on your email marketing lists. Content Curation is not "copying" or plagiarizing their content. It's summarizing an article or blog post of interest and linking the reader to it for the rest of the story.

There are software and online solutions for doing this gathering and summarizing for you, such as CurationSoft.com or Scoop.it and others. However, there are free solutions you can get up and running quickly, such as using an RSS feed service like Feedly.com to deliver content to you from sites you designate.

Using this approach, you may even find that in less time than one newsletter used to take, you can create two or three that are more focused in the news they deliver. One could be for seller prospects with a lot of market information and articles from major sites about how prices are moving. Another could be focused on buyer prospects with articles from around the Web about your specific market or home-shopping in general.

Of course, you aren't just indiscriminately pulling this content together without checking it out first. Read the articles to make sure they have information of value that you want your prospects to read. Check the local stuff for references to competitors, unless you just want to help them out. You also don't want to send them one of those "Sell your home without a Realtor®" articles.

The time you'll spend previewing the material is worth it, as you'll be learning as well, and you'll be more informed about the real estate markets in general and your area. Put together your email newsletter with an introductory paragraph or two about what's happening locally and the articles you've put together in this issue and why. Then summarize each, even using a quote from the material, and link to the full article or post. Then finish off the newsletter with your own comments on the information you just shared.

You're going to find that your prospects and newsletter subscribers will value your efforts in bringing this information together for them, as they usually do not have the time in their busy lives.

To view the original article, visit the WebsiteBox blog.