The complete guide to creating curated content
Hi fellow writer,
I’m writing today’s letter from my Swedish bedroom with piano music in my ears.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term:
Today’s edition will be all about how to create curated content.
I’ve paid $1000+ this year to be part of writing communities, but found no resource breaking content curation down from beginning to end - so I decided to write one myself.
So I spent 10 hours studying how the world’s best curate content.
Turns out, writing curated post is simple - if you know these 5 things:
What is curated content?
Curated content means that, instead of creating something yourself from scratch, you consume someone else’s content, and put takeaways together for your reader.
This could be:
Summarising information for the reader (Key takeaways from a speech/book/any other resource)
Selecting information for the reader (Which books to read, what podcasts to listen to, which creators to follow)
Remember this:
With curated content, you create value for your reader by saving them the effort & time of finding information.
To create curated content, you need to consume content first.
What’s unique about curated content is that it allows you to borrow credibility from someone else.
And credibility matters A LOT.
Example:
Who would you rather learn about copywriting from?
a) 19-year-old-wannabe-LinkedIn-creator Nils
OR
b) Gary Halbert, legendary copywriter whose sales letter created over $1,000,000,000 in revenue
(Apparently, you chose a), otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this…)
Where I’m getting at:
Your readers won’t read your writing unless they trust the source.
As a newbie writer with no niche-authority, you can borrow credibility from expert's by writing about their ideas or referring to their content.
Who should write curated posts?
Anyone benefits from creating curated content.
But the less credibility you have yourself, the more powerful curated content is for you.
If you’re a newbie in your niche, the easiest way to grow to your first 1000 followers on any platform is without a doubt curated content.
(This insight led me to adapt my own LinkedIn strategy - expect more curated posts in the future!)
Which people to curate content from
The credibility of your writing is equal to the perceived credibility of the expert you’re curating from.
Thus, only curate content from people with high niche-authority. The higher, the better.
I say perceived credibility because few names are so well-known that everyone recognises them (Steve Jobs, Amazon, Beyonce).
If their names aren’t world-famous, add an explanation in the hook of why they are credible.
Here’s an example of when I curated JK Molina’s Four Forces Diagram:
(Post performed really well, by the way, with 6X more impressions than my follower number.)
Another one:
See how Dickie explains directly who Gary Halbert is and why he’s credible?
(I know the hook is compelling AF - but please don’t leave the newsletter yet. I’ll link to Halbert’s letters in the end of this edition.)
In 99% of cases, numbers to the job of establishing credibility, because they are tangible and easy to compare for our brain (see what I did with the sentence?).
Ways to establish credibility with numbers:
Amount of sales / revenue generated in $
Experience level in years (I’ve worked 40+ years in sales)
High habit streaks in days (I’ve written for 500 days in a row…)
The other 1% of credibility is established with stunning facts - like how everyone who’s reading “48 Laws of Power” tells you that it’s forbidden in prisons.
That must mean something, right?
Now that we know why we should create curated content, and how to establish credibility, let’s look at how to actually write one:
How to create curated content in 4 steps
1) Consume content that you enjoy.
Having a habit of high-quality content consumption is a prerequisite for content curation.
The better stuff you read, the better stuff you write.
Look for content that:
a) Interests you
b) Is in your niche
c) Comes from a credible person
If the resource checks these three marks, it is:
Relevant for your reader
Fun to consume for you
Credible enough for curation
Read books from famous people, tweets from experts, or listen to podcasts by thought leaders.
As a general rule of thumb, the longer time it takes for you to consume the content and create your writing piece, the higher perceived value it will have.
But, you can also make just a short piece of information seem really valuable - if you use a good hook, like Connor did:
(The actual resource was a 10th of this newsletter’s length, but got him 50+ followers)
How to systematize this:
Carefully pick a handful of creators that fill all criteria & curate their content over and over again.
That way, you don’t have to go through the length process of finding new resources.
2) Take extensive notes while you consume it
While you are consuming the content, make sure to take high quality notes.
Some ways to do this in a systematized way:
Keep physical notebook close to hand
Take notes in Notion
Use Snipd to take notes while listening to podcasts
Regardless of how you do this, I recommend you to create a knowledge base where you put all your notes, so you can snowball your curation process, by re-using old notes & combining them with new ones.
Use a note-taking app like Notion (my choice), Roam, or Obsidian for this.
3) Write the hook
With your notes at hand, you have to decide what content piece you will curate out of them.
The easiest way to do this is by writing the hook first.
This seemed hard to me at first, until I came up with these three questions:
What benefit(s) are these notes unlocking for me
How does it unlock these?
Why is this source credible, again?
Answer these & write down the answers, then plug them into your hook template:
[CREDIBLE SOURCE] [WHY THEY ARE CREDIBLE]
[STATE THE BENEFIT]
[HOW IT’S UNLOCKED]:
Example:
I took notes on Shaan Puri’s Kick Off document.
What’s the benefit:
Stop wasting time with kick offs.
How it’s unlocked:
By providing a clear 4-step framework that works in any occasion.
Credibility:
Shaan Puri has done hundreds of kick offs, as he’s invested in 100+ companies as an angel investor.
With this information, a hook for a curated resource might sound something like:
As an angel investor, Shaan Puri attended hundreds of kick offs.
He used the same process to prepare for every single one of them.
Steal his 4-step kick off document:
Example 2:
I listened to 500+ hours of copywriting podcasts
What’s the benefit:
Learn which copywriting podcasts to listen to
How it’s unlocked:
I tell the reader which episodes to listen to
Credibility:
I listened to 500+ hours of podcasts
Hook:
Over the last year, I listened to 500+ hours of copywriting podcasts.
Sadly, most of them were a waste of time.
Here are the 10 worth listening to:
4) Create the content
With the notes at hand, the hook figured out, it’s time for your to put the content into action.
Start by writing the hook, then fill in the lines.
Some formats you can use:
Listicles
How-to-guide
Process explained
Organise your notes and fill in any gaps by going back to the original resource.
And voilá!
You got your first piece of curated content.
Wrap up
I hope this letter was useful to you, as it took me about 3 hours to write.
As always, I appreciate if you give me feedback to this edition.
What what especially useful to you, and what can I improve?
Have a great start of the week,
Nils
Link to the Halbert Letters: https://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/