Need inspiration on new ways to use Bundlr? Are you curious about how a bundle embed looks like? Here are five good examples:
JCMB uses Bundlr to show off their companies with press clippings.
The Sociological Imagination team creates blog posts of resources lists for their readers.
Groundviews raises awareness, adding their own perspective to the news they find online.
Brian Fitzpatrick shares with the Game Knight Reviews fans the cool stuff of the week, with a bundle embedded at the end of his round-up post.
My Indie Site shares the latest music on their genre, at the bottom of their Tumblog.
Did you know that you could embed a bundle into any webpage? Here are five good ideas for doing it:
Show off your company’s media coverage by embedding a bundle into your Press section. It will update automatically every time you find and clip a new article.
Clipping inspiring content for a blog post? Share the sources with your readers by embedding it at the bottom of the article.
Create a bundle about your event, embed it on the event website and clip the best tweets, photos and feedback from the attendees as they’re published.
Show a “Top 5 places to have a cappuccino” bundle on your blog sidebar. Or a top list of anything else…
Want to accept donations on your blog? Why not make a list of books or gadgets you want to receive as a present from your audience? Let yourself be surprised.
Looking at Bundlr’s community, we noticed there are two distinct types of bundles. We call them sprints or marathons, and they’re very distinct ways to curate a topic. Neither is better than the other, it depends on what you’re trying to achieve. Here’s some information to help you choose wisely.
These usually take a couple of hours to make, and can quickly have dozens or even hundreds of clips. They are used when you’re working on something time-sensitive. Common examples:
This kind of curation tends to get attention more quickly, since it’s about something interesting at the moment. You can watch the number of views increasing in real-time. But it won’t be of much use following it because there won’t be many updates. And so the attention eventually dies.
Marathons start small, without buzz, like when you’re creating a new blog. Unlike sprints, they keep getting updates. Common examples:
This kind of curation slowly attracts followers. The audience steadily increases. Look at the The Meaning of Life bundle, updated frequently by Renato, for over a year now. It’s one of our most followed bundles, without being promoted. This is the best strategy if you’re trying to build a following and become an influencer in a particular topic.
A good bundle title is short enough to fit the bundle frame (3 or 4 words tops) and to the point. Good examples: Creative Photography, Valentine’s Day Essentials and Surfing in Europe. There is only one way to catch someone’s attention with a less obvious title: a great bundle cover (more on that later).
Since your title should be short, use the description to convince someone to start following your bundle. And don’t forget Google cares a lot about what you write on the description. Here’s a description we love from the Made in Portugal bundle:
The best that Portugal has to offer to the world. The inventions, the art, the technology, the food. A portrait of an old country that is still alive.
A good title is important but there’s nothing like an awesome bundle cover to stand out. Specially an high quality image that looks good whatever the size of the bundle frame. Ludovic knows this and picks good photos for his covers:
If the topic is interesting, your followers will probably start following your new bundles too. However, the most popular authors start sharing their bundles early on Twitter and Facebook, and even embed them on their blogs, to build a following.
Though you can create a pretty good bundle in a couple of hours, the most popular ones are constantly updated, some even daily like Ray Wong’s Awesome Stuff. Too busy? Try adding collaborators to help you.
Great photos and videos work great to impress a new visitor to your bundle, but if you want to keep your bundle interesting and retain an audience, you have to mix different types of media. Look for insightful articles, a good Speaker Deck presentation on your topic or a must-read book from Amazon.
Don’t be a silo. Ask your followers on Twitter if they want to collaborate on your new bundle. If you’re working on a bundle about design, go to design forums and ask for great content for you to clip. You will end up with a better bundle and a bigger audience.
Following up on the last tip, a bulletproof way to create a popular bundle is teaming up with someone who already has an audience on that topic. Nobody said it was easy being popular :)
We know there are websites we all love, but if a bundle is only going to have BBC articles we might as well do a search on their website and skip the bundle. While it can make sense in some cases, you’ll do better by following the example of the LikeSciFi bundle and use as many different relevant sources as you can.
