What is content curation?
When it comes to your SEO practices, along with link building, keywords, and on-page elements, content is also one of the most significant elements. Are you wondering content is still the king of SEO? Well, as per Lee Odden, Content isn’t king, its kingdom. Content curation strengthens your content marketing strategy.
According to Content Marketing Institute, content curation assembles, selects, categorizes, comments on, and presents the most relevant, highest quality information to meet your audience’s needs on a specific subject.
According to Curata, 42% of companies have an executive responsible for content marketing, reaching 49% in 2017
Basically, content curation is not about creating new content. However, to a certain extent, it is about discovering and compiling existing content written by industry experts and sharing it with your online followers.
Why content curation matters?
The reason why a content curation matters are simple; content curation boosts your target audience reach. Content curation also has a role in your SEO. Of course, duplication of content will be penalized by search engines and your rankings will get hampered. But, a correct approach of content curation will augment your SEO, as mentioned below:
Furthermore, content curation will help you establish as a thought leader in your industry. The good thing about content curation is it is not restricted to sharing others’ content. You can curate your own content and share it again and again, which is called repurposing of content. Last but not the least, content curation does matter a lot for you because in this exercise you are going to learn a more about our content and your industry since there will be extensive research and reading of similar other content.
In short, to preserve booming online presence, it’s vital for you to adopt content curation as a digital marketing tactic.
How content curation helps on social media?
Content curation is more like an art rather than science. There isn’t any particular technique to be followed for any particular social media platform. In the case of twitter, curating quality content from industry influencers and sharing it on your feed will send them a notification. In turn, there are high chances that they’ll follow back you and your brand. This way you can engage with others while connecting your content with their audiences.
The most important thing for a digital marketer is to understand that content curation helps you build invaluable relationships while providing value to your audience. That is why your social media page should not be snowed under only curated content. Your social media page should strike an ideal balance between curated content and your own created content.
Most of the acquainted content marketers prefer a content mix in their content marketing strategy as:
If content curation is done right, it assists you to build valuable relationships while providing value to your audience on varied social media platforms.
What are the most preferred content curation tools?
Till now, we talked about why content curation is important. Now let us move to the main point, how to curate the content. For content marketers, content curation is integral to online strategy. Effective content curation helps position you as a thought leader in your domain. Moreover, it is an affordable way to retain a consistent publishing schedule of quality content.
“Content curation is the process of both creating and linking to pertinent content on a B2B website”
– HiveFire CMO Richard Turcott
Content curation process can be graphically represented as:
However, don’t you agree, manually attempting to search for the most relevant content in a given industry and then publishing it across multiple channels can be time-consuming?
Yes, it is not only time consuming but it is also less effective. For perfect content curation, you need to take help of automation.
Here, we present the most preferred and ultimate list of content curation tools.
As we discussed in the above paragraphs, content curation is a grand manner to support a created content strategy, consistently publish content, and keep a track of your desired information sources. Let us know each content curation tool in a deeper way to understand how it can boost your overall content marketing strategy.
1. Curata
Curata is the leading provider of business-grade content curation software (CCS). Curata’s content curation software will ease you if you are struggling to scale your content marketing due to a lack of content. Curata’s CCS enables content marketers to discover fresh content, create new content, curate content from various sources, refine content flow, and publish & promote the most relevant and highest quality content as part of a successful content marketing strategy.
As a part of content curation, Curata’s CCS easily organize, interpret, and contextualize the content. Curata digs content from hundreds and thousands of relevant sources, keeping your content engine buzzing without a requirement of constant creation of your own content. It provides great support on content marketing platform by adding your own unique perspective to curated content and filtering content by relevancy & timing. CCS is best for planning, developing, and evaluating your content marketing.
According to several resources, Curata services start from $1,500 on a month-to-month basis.
2. Pinterest
Reading at first sight you might be surprised how can a social media platform act as content curation, right? But yes, it is indeed a content curation tool.
According to Julia McCoy, Pinterest is also fantastic for collecting useful “hacks”, tricks and tips you can build your content around
It is often called as an online pinboard. Pinterest is a visual discovery platform since it works on images, video clips, and infographics. Open your business account on Pinterest and follow people in your industry and pop culture icons to catch access to millions of great content ideas. You need to save these content ideas to interactive boards on your account and pin them. Apply these pins to curate exceptional videos, podcasts, and images content for you and for your clients.
Furthermore, the content you pin can easily comprise an image and a link that drives back to the source. The source can be either a blog or infographic. With the help of Pinterest search, you can reveal great content that is probably interesting to your audience. It is a great platform to search and share content by domain to various social platforms.
The icing on the cake is Pinterest is a free means for content marketers to discover great content.
3. Scoop.it
A tool called Scoop.it is fantastic for content curation since it builds your relationship with other content curators. Scoop.it helps individuals and businesses to publish their content in a proficient and impacting way. This tool uses big-data semantic technology to assist you in promptly finding relevant content. Scoop.it displays the content curated by other users and offers similar topics shared. This allows you to get insight from influencers and industry leaders regarding a specific topic. It also gives you an opportunity to share your information with others and help them curate their own content.
Its top features include choosing specific keywords with the help of Boolean research, adding own sources with RSS feeds, suggesting content based on big data, and filtering content based on various criteria.
Scoop.it is a free tool; however, its paid options come with a more robust search.
4. Storify
Storify is a wonderful visual content curation tool that creates ‘stories’ or ‘timelines’ by gathering and publishing your content from social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It is intended for organizations of any size, looking for integrating curated content into their own website or their social media page. Either you can create the content and offer people to curate the content, or you can glance through the storyboards and curate content from others.
Storify helped one woman raise $650,000 when her Storify story went viral and had 1.5 million hits
Jeff Bullas
In addition, Storify enables you to research and pool content from multiple sources, merge that content with original content, and then share the mixed content as a unique story. Once can use Storify to search blog posts, comments, and videos that others have shared online.
Storify is a free tool and it also has options of paid versions.
5. Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo believes that there is ample content on internet and web pages, no shortage at all. But what matters most is to search the relevant content and use it on a timely basis. BuzzSumo gets content research to a new level using social search. The key to getting relevant content is to search using filters. You can make out the total number of shares on a particular content resource and even can identify content by author. Buzzsumo masters the art of filtering out the content that resounds with audiences, the content that is currently trending, and the content about to trend.
Buzzsumo was a go-to resource of mine to find the most shareable content that resonated with the largest audience
Margot da Cunha
It is a highly popular content curation tool which is FREE till limited searches and then offers some advanced features underpaid options. Their plan starts from $79/month and goes beyond that based on the package you opt for.
6. Triberr
Basically, Triberr is a marketing platform for influencers. However, it also acts as a content curation tool by providing the ability to discover great content. Triberr is a community where tribes curate their own content and promote others’ content.
Either you can create an account or can log in with your twitter, facebook or LinkedIn ID to join as a tribe and follow relevant people.
Triberr has various plans as follows:
7. Post Planner
According to Ian Cleary, The content engine in Postplanner is a great way to find content.
For smarter content, better posts, and mind blogging results – reach out to only one social media destination called Post Planner. It aids you to find the best and the right content for your audience and post it. Furthermore, it delivers content based on users’ keywords, provides status ideas, and assists users to search blogs and experts in their forte.
Post planner plans start from $9/month.
8. Feedly
Feedly is known for its user-friendly design. It delivers fast, mobile-optimized content using RSS feeds. Feedly enables you to browse and share content from your favourite news sites, blogs, feeds, and YouTube channels. Feedly displays the latest content being shared on a particular website or using a precise keyword on top of the entire content.
Cas McCullough : I use Feedly to categorize content for my own social platforms, as well as my clients’ platforms
Up to 100 feeds, services of Feedly are FREE, and its paid plans start from $5.41 or $18 for a team.
9. Pocket
Pocket, as the name suggests, works like a pocket where you can save your content and view it later when required. Pocket provides service for saving web pages and articles. There you can view later when you want. Pocket, as a content curation tool, enables content discovery as well as arms you with the skill to search for content on specific topics. It displays the most trending and ‘must read’ sort of posts and articles.
Pocket is a great place to get into the habit of accruing content to save and share later.
Pocket is user-friendly, can work in your browser, as well as from apps such as Twitter, Flipboard, and others. If the content is stored in Pocket, (your phone, tablet or computer), you don’t even need an Internet connection to view it again and again.
The pocket can be used for FREE; it’s paid plan starts from $44.99/yr for an ad-free experience…
10. Trap.it
Trap.it is a content curation tool and a social selling service. It is considered as the best social media management solution too. It assists you to manage employee advocacy. With the help of Trap.it, you can search relevant and new content within minutes, which can be shared via email, LinkedIn or other social media platforms. Its top features include salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics Integration and Artificial Intelligence for content curation.
11. Curation Suite
Curation Suite is the renewed version of Curation Traffic. To discover, curate, publish and share multiple types of content, curation suite is the most popular platform. Curation Suite is a robust WordPress plugin that works right within your WordPress dashboard. It works with any theme and any plugin you have, to search content in the form of posts, articles, videos, infographics, and others.
Curation Suite plans start from $97 which is a one-time payment and then you can go for a top-up according to your content curation needs.
12. Quora
Quora is yet another underestimated but most important content curation tool. It is a great place to share your knowledge and ideas and engage with similar interests people. It is a forum where questions are asked and pertaining replies are given by the varied users.
You can set up an account, and then search your keywords to find outstanding content for future use. In addition, you can turn on notifications about specified topics pertaining to your field. By doing so, you can get access to more and more relevant articles and interesting ideas in your inbox.
Quora platform is FREE and can be accessed for multiple times a day
Closing thoughts
The list does not end here, there are much more content curation tools available in the market which can help you boost your content marketing strategy. Over and above these 12 tools, 39 more tools have been listed here for you as additional reading.
| Sr No | Content Curation Tool | Description |
| 13. | Addict-o-Matic | · Search the best LIVE sites across the web. · Dig the latest and trending news, blog posts, videos and images |
| 14. | BagTheWeb | · Search, create and share ‘bags’ of web content on varied topics |
| 15. | Bundlepost | · Aggregate and plan social media content · Find, edit, and schedule with the browser plugin or social media dashboard |
| 16. | Channel kit | · Enables you to tag and organize all sorts of information in one place · Includes articles, websites, contacts, PDF files or various format images—all showcased as neat cards in channels |
| 17. | ContentGems | · Find, curate, and share engaging content · Boost qualified website traffic and build your company’s thought leadership |
| 18. | Crowdynews | · Mechanically integrates real-time social content beside editorial content to raise engagement and boost revenue |
| 19. | CurationSoft | · Helps establish brands as a reliable voice, and a “not to miss” source of information |
| 20. | DrumUp | · Mines web content in real-time to suggest to your audience · Reduces your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter management time |
| 21. | elink | · Offers a swift way to transform a bunch of links into content · Enables to curate, publish, and share content online in a visually appealing manner |
| 22. | · Create your own personalized magazines and brochures · Catch up on news, read stories across the globe, and browse articles,videos,and photos your friends are sharing across the web | |
| 23. | Flockler | · Combine all your content, including what your fans and followers say about you, into one social hub. ·Create your own social hub or bring social content into your existing websites, applications, eCommerce sites, and other services |
| 24. | Folloze | · A great B2B platform to create content experiences that dynamically adapt to a visitor’s profile, company, industry, and stage of the deal |
| 25. | HeadSlinger | · Saves your research time by 50%, find all your news in half the time · Scan your favourite sites’ headlines in a matter of seconds and store your favourite news sources in a swift and simple manner to find folders |
| 26. | Huzzaz | · Video curation platform that enables you to search, mine, collect and showcase YouTube and Vimeo videos · Analyze user’s viewing behaviour and figure out which videos matter most to your viewers and to enhance the site engagement |
| 27. | Juxtapost | · Swift, simple and FREE way to bookmark online images · Gather and handle categorized post boards |
| 28. | Kbucket | · Being it a user indexed search site, here, skilled “content curators” categorize, comment, tag, and publish their research to support their content marketing strategy |
| 29. | Curator | · Persistently publish fresh and new content on websites or blogs in minutes a day to keep up readers engagement |
| 30. | LinkHubb | · Curate and share multiple links from around the web in one organized page, upload documents and files to the cloud, and use affiliate technology to generate ad-based revenue |
| 31. | List.ly | · Curate, crowdsource and engage readers via LIVE rooted list content inside blog posts |
| 32. | Newsle | · Track users’ Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, and email contacts in the news. By no means miss a key story about a follower, professional contact, or public figure |
| 33. | papaly | · Bookmark management and discovery tool |
| 34. | Paper.li | · Publish ‘newspapers’ comprised of content from anywhere on the web to treat your readers to fresh news daily |
| 35. | Pearltrees | · Visual and collaborative curation tool. Allows you to collect, organize, and share any URL, and upload personal images and notes |
| 36. | Pluggio | · Secure web-based system that helps individuals, businesses, organizations and marketers easily grow and manage their social media profiles |
| 37. | RebelMouse | · Create a blog, website, or social page in seconds. Simply connect your social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+ or LinkedIn. |
| 38. | RockTheDeadline | · Simplifies for brands, agencies, and publishers to create and manage compelling content ·Curate timely and trending news and promote that content over multiple channels |
| 39. | Roojoom | · Create Smart MiniSites, online magazines, and e-newsletters · Content can be personalized to increase engagement and improve conversions across the customer life-cycle |
| 40. | Shareist | · Capture bookmarks and ideas, share them on social media and save them for building and publishing pages to blogs |
| 41. | Sharpr | · Segregate information silos, advance collaboration, and share what matters most with the users who matter most to your business |
| 42. | Spredfast | · Helps brands, media, and agencies involve and connect with audience integrating social media into their marketing and advertising efforts |
| 43. | sprinklr | · Helps brands and organizations distribute curated social media content to support their content strategy. Platforms include websites, event displays, retail signage, and mobile apps. |
| 44. | Storyful | · Helps newsrooms find the most valuable content on the social web. Uses a “human algorithm” to sort through verified curated news from various mediums. |
| 45. | Sutori | · Create and share visual stories, collaboratively |
| 46. | symbaloo | · A personal Startpage that allows you to easily navigate the web. Compile your favourite sites into one visual interface. Save your bookmarks in the cloud and access them from anywhere with any device. |
| 47. | TagBoard | · Social media hub for hashtags · Collect, moderate, and follow hashtags, as well as create and follow your own hashtag conversations |
| 48. | The Tweeted Times | · Comprehends news in your Twitter flow every hour · Ranks each section by its popularity amid your friends |
| 49. | UpContent | · Content mining and content curation tool that crawls the web to draw news, articles, and blog posts · Sorts by parameters such as the social influence · Reduces browsing needs of surfing 1000s of page results |
| 50. | Vidinterest | · A platform to discover social videos that enables you to bookmark videos and create private or public playlists of videos · Allows surfing any website featuring videos from Vimeo, YouTube, and Daily Motion. |
| 51. | Waywire | · Video curation tool that embeds hundreds of top-quality sources from trusted media makers to improve your site with current, timely, trending and contextually-relevant videos |
Again, this is not an exhaustive list of content curation tools. Feel free to drop in the comments section if you use any of the other tools and how is your content curation experience with that content curation tool. We are excited to hear from you regarding your insights on content curation tools!