If you’ve spent any time online in the past few years, you’re intimately familiar with roundup posts — whether or not you know them by name.
Roundup posts are a particular type of blog post where multiple entities are featured in one article. You're probably most familiar with posts that roundup specific products related to a certain niche or genre — both from larger brands...
As well as influencers:
Brands can also publish roundup posts. The title normally starts something like, “X Influencers Share Their Y Tips For...” . The post itself may include expert tips from a variety of influencers:
These types of posts are popular with brands because they help them establish industry awareness (they know the “in” people), and they’re highly shareable. Readers enjoy these types of posts, too. They’re often looking for advice on a specific topic the roundup covers, and they want to find relevant influencers to follow.
But as we mentioned before, brands aren't the ones having all the roundup fun. Roundup posts can be great content for influencers, too.
Read on to find out why. Plus, get tips for developing your own sponsored roundup posts, while boosting your blog revenue to boot.
Think of influencer roundup posts as the inverse of brand-written roundup posts. Instead of featuring multiple experts or influencers, you’re featuring multiple brands or products.
This type of blog post offers you many benefits as an influencer:
It’s unique. Roundup posts highlight brands in interesting and useful ways, and they’re different from the traditional social media shoutout. Brands will welcome your creativity!
It’s lucrative. You can feature multiple brands in a single roundup post. That means you make more money — from more brands — at once.
It’s efficient: Because you are highlighting multiple brands in a single post, you’re able to multiply your revenue without multiplying your time. For example, if you feature four sponsors, you’ll get four times the pay for the same amount of work you’d put into a single post.
Clearly, sponsored roundup posts have a lot to offer influencers. But why, exactly, are these posts so successful, in comparison to other sponsored content? Like everything with influencer marketing, it comes down to conversions and engagement.
Remember what we said about these types of posts being highly shareable? That’s because everyone highlighted in the post has a vested interest in its success — because their ego is on the line. Brands don’t just want to be featured; they want to be featured in popular posts, and they want everyone to know about it.
As a result, they’re more likely to share your roundup post, share it often, and even link to it on their own sites — driving traffic and social shares. That engagement boost drives more eyeballs to your post, without you having to put in any additional effort. More eyeballs means more potential conversions for your sponsoring brands, which spells more money — along with a nice SEO lift — for your blog.
If you have affiliate relationships as well as one-off sponsorships, even better. You’ll not only make good on your deliverable for the one-off folks, but you’ll continue making money from your affiliate links over time — as other featured brands drive traffic to the site.
The format of a roundup post naturally helps conversions, too. To consumers, these posts simply come across as less "sponsored" even though they still are. The inclusion of multiple products makes it seem less like a sales pitch for any individual brand, so fans are more likely to view the products as your genuine recommendations, further driving conversions.
Finally, there’s one last benefit to roundup posts: They help you attract more brands! Beyond including your current sponsors, you can also include other brands you’d like to work with. Then, once your roundup blog is published, you have something compelling to reach out to them with as a way to open the door.
Ready to start creating your own roundup posts? Follow these tips for success.
For your roundup to succeed, it has to be something people will actually be interested in reading. Use a catchy headline and make sure it answers a question or solves a problem for your fans.
If you have a big audience, many of them will be interested in learning about the products you use, but “My Must-Have Fitness Products” will perform better than “Three Things I Used That One Time I Went Skydiving."
Ideally, your roundup topic even has keyword interest. Double check by typing variations of your headline into Buzzsumo or Google.
Treat your roundup post with the same care and attention you give all your blog posts, instead of viewing it as a cash grab. As you look into potential brands to feature, select interesting product photos to include to break up the post and make it easily scannable.
Although it’s not 100% the case, some brands will not want to be featured in a post alongside their competitor, or to be “paying” for a post that could benefit their competitor instead of them. For that reason, you should always ask a brand before featuring them in a roundup post if you plan on charging them for it.
Most of the time, this won’t be an issue. There are plenty of topics you can cover that will feature non-competitive, but related brands. However, you might have an idea to do a comparison post reviewing multiple brands within one vertical, and two of those brands could be sponsors.
In that case, you’d want to ask both brands if they’d be okay with being included, since you’ll need to find a way to position them both positively while differentiating between the two.
Even when they’ll be featured alongside non-competitors, you should double-check with your current sponsors before including them in a roundup post. Feel free to share the conversion benefits we listed above to persuade them towards saying yes.
While some brands don't like the idea of sponsored roundups, it’s more likely you’ll find that most brands love the idea of a roundup post.
In fact, at Dealspotr, almost all of our merchants allow their brand or product to be featured in a roundup post. To identify roundup candidates, navigate to Browse Campaigns in the Dealspotr Marketplace and look for the green checkmark that says “Allows roundups” by a brand’s name:
This means that a brand has previously marked that they're open to being included in a sponsored roundup post.
You can even narrow your search of merchants to include only those interested in roundups. Scroll down and click the “Allows roundups” filter under Formats:
As you write your post, include a clear call to action (CTA) for all of your sponsoring brands, directing readers to go purchase their product or check out their site.
If you’re working with Dealspotr merchants, you'll want to share your personalized referral code at this point, and make sure your CTA links back to your tracking link for that particular campaign.
If you really want to make your CTA stand out, we have a deal widget tool that can help. Here’s an example of how it looks, courtesy of Dealspotr influencer Diana, the blogger behind Nanny to Mommy:
Looks nice, right? You can customize the headline and description, and add your own tracking links. Plus, if the deal ever expires, we’ll automatically update it with another relevant deal for your readers, so you never have to waste time going back and updating your post.
Follow these quick step-by-step instructions to add the Dealspotr widget to your blog posts.
Once you’ve published your roundup, reach out to all the featured brands and let them know the good news! Encourage them to share it via their own social channels.
If you mentioned brands who aren’t already sponsoring you, don’t be afraid to send a second follow-up email, and to tag their brands in your social media shares of the post. Even if they’re not open to an sponsorship with you at the moment, they’re likely to at least share the post with their followers, gaining you more visibility (and conversions for your current sponsors).
Plus, writing about their brand free of charge shows that you have a genuine interest in their product. You’ll make their marketing team swoon. Don’t be surprised if they reach back out soon to discuss a sponsorship agreement.
There are multiple approaches you can take to sponsored roundup posts.
Think about brands you’d like to sponsor. Write a post about their industry and highlight some of your favorite brands.
Think about your current sponsoring brands. Is there a way to combine them in a single post around a theme? For example, if you partner with both email marketing and web hosting companies, you could create a post around “5 Tools You Need to Start Your E-Commerce Website.”
Do any of your current sponsors have extensive product lines? Give them the VIP treatment with a dedicated roundup post, highlighting several of their products at once. This is ideal for affiliate relationships where you make more money per product sold.
Get creative with theming. Consider less-obvious relationships between your current sponsor brands and your wish-list brands. Maybe they’re located in the same city (“My Favorite L.A. Brands”), or the products complement each other (“Bedtime Beauty Routine: The Hair, Skin, and Bath Products I Use Every NIght”).
It’s time to get inspired. Let’s take a look at how other influencers are producing successful roundup posts.
Blog reviews are a staple for influencers. You’ve probably written many of your own. Transform your blog reviews into bite-size, mini review roundup posts, like this example from Adam Bryan at Urban Tastebud:
The featured subscription boxes do not compete with each other, but they all share a theme, being subscription boxes who give something back with each purchase. As you look through the post, you’ll see multiple products have affiliate links - but not all of them, giving Adam the opportunity to connect with potential new sponsors.
If you want to drive more commissions for a company, feature more of their products. Dealspotr influencer Leah Schulz of Miss Pettigrew Review did just that with her blog post roundup for online marketplace jClub:
Instead of making it all about jClub, she did her keyword research first, using an irresistible title like “Top 5 Perfect Fall Handbags | 20% Off Code!” This way her post could attract anyone looking for fall handbags, whether or not they had heard of jClub. As a result of partnering with influencers like Miss Pettigrew, jClub enjoyed 550% ROI and $16K in sales — tell that to your sponsor brands!
A themed roundup post allows you to feature multiple brands at once, both sponsors and non-sponsors alike.
As a travel influencer, fans are eager to take advice from Natalie Marie, the travel blogger behind Tily Travels. In her roundup post about travel essentials for solo female travelers, she included multiple Dealspotr brands, including the Soothi journal featured at the top of the post:
Roundups are versatile. Take them from written to visual with a video roundup. It’s a nice way to spice up your YouTube product reviews.
TechMeOut is a YouTuber known for her unboxing videos. For her roundup video, she made her tech bag the unboxing item, and revealed the tech essentials she carries with her every day. The backpack itself is from a sponsored brand, as are many of the items within. She included affiliate links to all the products in the description.
Roundup posts are fun. They’re flexible. And they make you and your partner brands money.
Boost your blog revenue and start getting more out of each post. Create roundup posts to build traffic, increase social shares, and attract more sponsors.
Amelia is a writer, content marketer and SEO strategist who spends her days trying to crack the code of Google's mighty algorithm. When she's not working, you can find her running around town with her dog Rockefeller.
