A successful blogger doesn’t only produce original content to share with their readers, they also repost content from all around the web. Good blogging is a mix of content creation and content curation—you want to keep your readers interested with your own opinions while offering material from all corners of the web so that they come to rely on you for all their information.

Plenty of bloggers will give you their personal advice about writing stellar content, but how many of them tell you what kind of content you should share from other sites around the web? Content curation is a major skillset in the blogosphere; if you have the eye for reposting articles, photos, and videos that your readers will enjoy, you’ll go a long way.

Here are my top three choices for content worthy of sharing with your readers. I hope you put this advice to good use!

Great Work From Fellow Bloggers

This should be your primary source for repost material. Your favorite bloggers, your trusted news sources, the image sharing sites that you turn to for a good laugh: these kinds of sites are all rich material for reposting on your own blog. There’s nothing wrong with sharing content from other bloggers with your readers, especially if you think they’ll get something out of the experience. It’ll help you generate more interest in your site, and you might bring in some readers from the other blogger’s site.

A word to the wise, though: think before you share. Who you choose to repost says a lot about your values and preferences as a blogger, so choose the content you share wisely. Posting a borderline offensive video might be funny to a few crude readers, but the negative consequences of posting such a video would probably outweigh any upticks in readership. You want to be mindful of what your readers want to see, so make sure that the content you repost doesn’t isolate or insult any one aspect of your niche. And of course make sure that you’re allowed to repost material before you do so.

Writing That Starts A Conversation

Reposting content on your blog should start a new conversation among your readers. You want to pique their curiosity and make them rethink things related to your niche—that way you keep things fresh and interesting. The point of putting someone else’s material on your blog is that it offers a perspective that either differs from your own or puts a new spin on the topics within your niche.

Reposting content is almost the equivalent to guest posting: you share an outside blogger’s opinion with your readers and hope that it takes the dialogue in an interesting direction. You trust another source to weigh in on things relevant to your readers. In that sense, reposting quality content is a great move for bloggers who want to expand the scope of their blog. It’s a big risk, but a worthy one. If you succeed, then your readers will have plenty to comment about with your reposted material, which would likely result in more clicks on your site.

Content Gone Viral

If anything, you want to repost content that’s gone viral just because it’s something that’s proven to be popular among readers. Reposting viral videos and controversial articles a great way to generate more readers in a short span of time—it’s a quick jolt of adrenaline to your readership. A cute cat video or an incendiary letter open leader to an editor might be a cheap way to get some extra traffic on your site, but it can have a seriously huge effect on your readers.

Posting viral content tells your reader a number of things. For one, it says that you know about trending topics on the web, and you have the good sense to share the best of it with your readers. You’re also trusting your readers that they will stay on your blog for viral content rather than go to someone else’s site. Sure, viral content can be a cop out a times, especially when you’re just looking to bump up your readership, but why not use tactics that you know will get you results?

What content do you share with your readers? What gets the best results with them in your experience? I want to know!

This is a guest post by blog junkie and full time writer Eliza Morgan. Eliza enjoys imparting useful and practical lending and debt advice to the blogging community.