Put your best link forward.

Back in the days when bands sent demo tapes to record companies, they were told to forget about creating a "flow" between your songs.

They were told to put their strongest song first, second-strongest second, and so on. If not, the listener would bail in the beginning of the first song and never make it to the second.

This is the case whether a consumer is presented with free content. Value must be made apparent quickly.

If you're writing a curation-style newsletter, you may be tempted to run analytics on what your readers are clicking on to gauge their interest.

In most cases, you'll only learn one thing: what gets linked to first, gets clicked on the most.

It seems obvious. But it’s not what I see reflected in the design of most curation newsletters. Most seem too concerned with looking good, or being organized by subject or style of link.

If you concentrate on presenting the best of the best up front, each issue of your newsletter will be considered valuable from the start.

Check out the rest of this month’s posts on creating email newsletters.