Article Style #5: Roundups

Often known as "expert roundups", you can do a roundup of anything. Recipe roundups are popular among the recipe bloggers, and are a good example of how roundup posts can be used.

Examples:

• 30 Vegan Chocolate Ice Cream Recipes
  
• 10 Travel Bloggers You Need To Follow on Instagram
  
• 15 Ways To Recycle Used Scrap Wood From Your Projects
  

In each of these blog posts, I'd pick out people, blogs, or articles that deserve to be featured on my roundup post. Here's how I'd organize the post:

1. Introduction (including keyword)
   
2. Title 1
   
3. Image 1
   
4. Summary 1 (including link to source)
   
5. Title 2
6. Image 2
7. Summary 2
8. etc
9. Conclusion

How you get images depends on what the post is. For the instagram example, you can just embed an instagram post within your blog article and you don't need permission. The same goes for YouTube, Twitter, and many other platforms.

With images, you should absolutely contact the owner first to ask for permission. Many people say yes, but just as many say no, so put on your thick skin before sending out that email.

Once published, you can contact the owners and notify them they've been featured. They may or may not share your post to their social media following. This is a pretty common tactic to get attention from the "big players" in a niche, so lots of authority bloggers are tired of getting featured and may not even respond.

However, if you feature more of your peers, i.e. newer blogs looking for exposure, people will be happy to collaborate, and may even feature your site on their next roundup.

Expert roundups are basically the same thing, but with a focus on people.

• 10 Bloggers Killing It With Their Amazon FBA Business
  
• The Top 3 Street Artists in Los Angeles
  

This is all about reaching out to those authorities in your niche, and catching their attention. This is a great way to get noticed in your niche, even if it isn't from the actual authority figure.

Often enough, just having a conversation with them on social media is enough to get a couple clicks over to your account, especially if you are adding insightful information. Getting yourself in the mix is important, and if you do this enough times, people will start to recognize you.

Next time you ask for a favor, like a comment, a feature, a guest post, or some other kind of endorsement, you just might get it!