Monthly newsletters require a lot of time, commitment, and content to pull off every month. And for most, time is a commodity that you can't spread thin. So how can you still send out a monthly newsletter without taking up so much of your time? The answer: a curated newsletter!
What is a curated newsletter?
Curated newsletters contain hand-picked content recommended by you for your subscribers, served up as links. The good news is this is a lot like what you are already doing for your social networks.
This type of sharing can make your newsletter a valuable resource for entertaining and informative content, which results in loyal subscribers. Curated newsletters are an opportunity for you to spoon-feed subscribers what you want them to read, without it appearing so. YOU become the authority!
What does curated content involve?
First, locate your focus. Find blogs, articles, videos, photos, and more that you know your subscribers will be interested in about your destination, events, members/partners, etc. Some resources to do that would be Feedly or Flipboard, which brings all the content together in one location.
You want to use the curated content as a compliment or supplement to your own content from your website, blog, etc. This works best when you focus on a single topic, as mentioned above, and then hunt down the best online resources related to your topic. You can also make it personal by having a section for article picks from your staff.
This type of newsletter will help you stand out from other destination emails. But remember to go with relevancy over quantity. Your audience wants to read about interesting topics, not just any topic. This is why you are doing this—to keep people interested!
During the month, keep track of links you read and find interesting. For events, think about putting together links from reviews, personal stories about the people involved, or links to stories that compliment the event.
This is a great time to think about how you can use CRM to segment your subscribers for more targeted newsletters, however it is OK to keep sending to your entire list. And when you feel adventurous you can use your email platform's dynamic content tool and send specific links to your subscribers based on data in CRM. For example, if I am interested in the arts, then I would see the top link to an arts festival versus someone who likes sports and would see marathon information.
In the end, you have to make the decision to commit to the curated newsletter approach or not. And to assist, Copyblogger put together a great decision tree which, humorously, helps you with the decision to curate or not to curate. Enjoy!
Examples of curated newsletters:
Click on any of the three newsletters below for a link to their fully-functional, online counterparts.
