One of the biggest keys to marketing your products and services is how you’re perceived by the market place in regards to how well you understand your chosen field. What I mean by that is, most successful organizations and individuals have worked to build certain credibility among their target audience as one of the leading thinkers or strategists in their area of expertise.

Positioning yourself as a thought leader on Website Design and Website Development is absolutely critical when trying to separate yourself from the competition. Your prospective customers want to purchase website design and website development services from the BEST designer and developer that they can afford. It is your job to showcase your talents and to showcase why you’re the best in your chosen field.

One way to position yourself as a thought leader in the field of Website Design and Website Development is to execute marketing tactics that help position yourself or your company as a thought leader in the field of Website Design and Website Development. We have talked about a number of different ways of doing this in some of my previous articles. We will cover another tactic in this article that I’ve seen work for others, and that I know can work for you. In this article we will explain how to create an online magazine around website design and website development without spending an inordinate amount of time doing so, the benefits of creating an online magazine to push out to your online community, the different tools that are available to help you complete this marketing tactic, and provide you with tips for leveraging those tools so that you can be successful in positioning yourself or your company as a thought leader in the space of Website Design and Website Development.

What Are Content Curator Tools?

Let’s first start by defining what “content curation” is and then we can get into the online tools that allow anyone to become a content curator for any topic that they so choose. Content Curation is an action taken by one or many individuals to find, organize, and provide context around content. For this article we are going to focus on online content. Now, with the millions of pieces of new content hitting the web every single day you can see how a content curator’s job might get a bit overwhelming if he or she were to go this alone. As it is with anything on the web, when a gap or need arises, smart people are there to develop solutions. Instead of curating content manually, tools have been created to help content curators do their job quickly and effectively. Content curator tools allow anyone to pick a certain area of interest, automatically gather newly created content from many different sources around the web, then organize it in a way that provides context to the reader, and finally push it out to those readers.

The tools that we are going to cover today are truly effective in achieving these feats and are extremely easy to use. They allow Website Designers and Website Developers to produce professional looking online magazines and newspapers in minutes, so that you can complete this marketing task and move on to doing what you do best, designing and developing.

Benefits of Creating an Online Magazine about Website Design & Website Development

This marketing tactic can be extremely effective in positioning yourself or your company as a leading website designer and website developer. Depending on your goals you can create a hyper-local Website Design & Development Magazine, you can go National, or maybe you even want to target a Global audience. It all depends on who your target audience is. Not only are these content curator tools easy to use, but they offer a ton of benefits to those who use them properly. Below are some of the many benefits that I see for Website Designers and Website Developers when using content curation tools:

• Attract new prospective customers into your online community
• Educate new and existing customers and prospects about Website Design & Website Development
• Position yourself or your company as a thought leader in the Website Design & Website Development space
• Build awareness for your services
• Drive more traffic to your website

The list above are just a few of the many benefits that setting up an online magazine about Website Design & Website Development can bring to you or your business.

Use Paper.li to Create an Online Newspaper

Paper.li is a great tool and very easy to use. You can set up your own online newspaper about any topic you’d like. You can also set it to be automatically created on a daily or weekly schedule. Not only that, but it’s free! There is also a premium version that you may want to check out AFTER you’ve used the free version for a while and understand exactly the value that the premium upgrade may bring you. For now, let’s focus on using the free version of paper.li to create an online newspaper about Website Design & Website Development. Follow the steps below to get started.

STEP 1: Sign In with Your Twitter or Facebook Account

STEP 2: Set a Title, Sub-Title, & Distribution Frequency for your Online Newspaper

STEP 3: Find & select content sources for your paper

Here are the different ways to build your content:

• browse & select some featured sources provided by paper.li
• find people on Twitter or Google+ by name or username
• add a Twitter #tag (e.g. #websitedesign)
• add a keyword search on Twitter, Google+ or Facebook
• find RSS feeds by keyword(s) or full feed URL
• find a Twitter list by entering the list address

STEP 4: Publish & Promote!

Seriously, that’s it. It’s that easy. Each day (or each week depending on how you set it up) paper.li will compile a new edition of your online newspaper and publish it to their website. You can then set it up to automatically distribute via your Twitter profile. I’d also recommend that you publish it on other channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, your email newsletter, etc. Get this new content out in front of as many people as possible.

Use Scoop.it! to Create an Online Magazine

STEP 1: Sign In with Your Twitter or Facebook Account

STEP 2: Create a Topic for Your Online Magazine

STEP 3: Drag & Drop the Scoop.it Bookmarklet to your browser toolbar.

STEP 4: Add more content from around the web

Go out to some of Your Favorite Website Design & Website Development Websites (like your own) and click the Scoop.it button in your toolbar to add this site to your Online Magazine

STEP 5: Publish and Promote

Now you can add your social media profiles to scoop.it, publish your online magazine, and start promoting it to your online followers. It’s that easy. You can continually add content to your online magazine by using the Scoop.it bookmarklet widget in your toolbar.

Tips for Using Content Curators to Position Yourself as a Thought Leader

As you can see from reading the information above using content curation tools is extremely simple. That said, there are ways to use the tools just to get the job done and there are ways to use the tools to take your online magazine to the next level. Using content curation tools is great, but as we move further and further into this online content trend more and more of your competitors will also be using content curation tools. You need to create an online magazine about Website Design and Website Development that blow away your competition. That said, below are a few tips that you should consider implementing after you have decided which content curation tool you’re going to use and once you’ve actually created your online magazine. By following the tips below you will absolutely be able to take your online magazine to the next level and leave your competition on the dust!

• After you create your online magazine log into your account and check out your magazine settings. There are usually more inputs that you can provide to take your magazine to the next level. Things like adding an Editor’s Note can add to the reader experience. The more you can customize the better.
• Add links to your social media profiles and your website in order to convert your readers into website traffic and new online connections
• Promote your online newspaper everywhere around the web that you have a presence. Get it in front of as many people as possible.
• Add a picture to your profile to put a face with your name.
• Continually check in and review your stats to see how it’s working. Use Google Analytics to see how much traffic your online magazine is driving to your website. Be sure to learn what’s working and what’s not. Fix what’s not working and ramp up what is working. This will allow you to evolve your online magazine over time to keep the competition away.

Will You Use Tools Like Paper.li or Scoop.it! to Create an Online Magazine about Website Design & Development?

Talking and thinking about a new marketing tactic is great, but you have to actually implement it in order to reap the many benefits discussed above. Will you move forward in creating an online magazine for your online community? I hope so. Has anyone reading this already created an online magazine using one of the tools described above? What has your experience been? Have you been seeing the benefits of creating this new online magazine? Leave your comments below so that other readers who might be considering using this marketing tactic can see what your experience as been like. I really appreciate it and look forward to hearing about your success with content curation tools!