Consistently and continuously creating new high-quality content is hard! I mean, how are you supposed to come up with new stuff all the time? You’ve got a life. You’ve got a family! And you know what? You don’t even really need to. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll need to do so most of the time, but some of the time you can do something which your readers will love just as much. What am I talking about? Content curation, of course.
Because if we’re happy with one of your great articles, we’ll be ecstatic if you can point out ten articles that you find particularly impressive. What’s more, because content curation doesn’t require quite as much creativity (just finding the right sites) you can spend just that bit more time working to build your audience by to make one of your posts absolutely smashing, so that you end up getting that featured blog.
Now who can argue against that, right?
Trap.it
The first time you use this tool it will seem useful, but not that special. You’ll search around, find some interesting content, store it and head out the door.
It’s when you come back that it really starts to work its magic. Because while you’re away, Trap.it does not sit idly by. Instead, based on the choices you made the last time, they’ll go ahead and start curating more information for you as well. Yup, that’s right, the program learns what you like and then starts looking for it on its own. Kind of creepy, but a fantastic time saver.
Triberr
Where can you find content that you can curate? Well, obviously, by looking at other curated content! Triberr is fantastic for that. Here bloggers and influencers come together and curate content for each other, so that you can find fresh ideas, fresh perspectives and entire new categories of stuff that you didn’t even know existed.
Storify
This fantastic app allows you to build a social newsroom where several people can conjointly work on a project in real time. Yup, that’s right, no more email chains where you’re not sure what’s been done and what hasn’t. Instead, you’ll all have oversight and be on the ball by using Storify.
Feedly
Of course, just being able to work on a story collectively isn’t enough. You also need to find the material you want to use. That’s what Feedly is for. With this phenomenal app you’ll be able to find the content you need so that you can curate it and turn your story into something that really knocks your audience’s socks off.
Quora
Sometimes you can ask Google and sometimes, when you don’t know the exact keyword or the jargon that people in the profession use, you need somebody who actually understands what you’re after. In the latter case, look no further than Quora, where a phenomenal group of very smart people offer up information and ideas.
So got a question you can’t find the answer to? Don’t be surprised if you’ll get the whole answer and a whole lot more by asking Quora.
Yes, you’ve probably heard of it. Heck, you probably use it, but have you thought about using it as a curation tool? In case you haven’t, then you’re truly missing out as this fantastic social networking site really lets you explore every idea in depth and in width as well (no, I’m not sure what that means either).
The great thing here is also that you can rely on other people to find the really interesting stuff out there, which you can then share around – though perhaps the people would like to be credited (or at least thanked).
Learnist
Another great tool that allows you to create boards or collections based upon keywords. What makes Learnist stand out is that the people collecting the information are real leaders in the industry, which means that you can be sure the information you’re reading is right at the bleeding edge.
And that’s what we’re all after, isn’t it? Because with staid content we can be pretty sure our readers won’t stay on our site for very long.
Curata
Another example of machine learning in action, Curata becomes more and more useful the more and more you use it. In this way your search results will become ever more accurate and you’ll have to spend ever less time throwing out the stuff you don’t really need.
SlideShare
Whether you want to look for presentations to plunder for information (a strategy I’ve effectively used numerous of times myself) or if you want to put your curated content into a slide (which just ads that little bit of zing to your site), SlideShare is the way to go.
There are 70 million professionals that use the site, who’ve created 18 million slides over 40 different categories. Now that’s a lot of information!
Last words
Oh my! That is a lot of tools, isn’t it? And when I first started out I didn’t know where to begin either. There is a lot of stuff out there. If it all seems a little overwhelming, don’t despair. The best place to start it to find out what you need. Do you need to find information or do you need to organize it? Can you trust the experts or is your niche too specific for that?
Will it help if the program learns or do you think that will just make it more likely that you’ll miss out on the stuff that really matters? Once you’ve answered these questions you’ll be in a much better position to figure out which tool to use.
That not quite good enough? Then hit up your network! No doubt the people you interact with have some experience both with these tools and content curation. They’ll be able to give you a good idea about what will work better for you and what won’t. So try asking them.
Still don’t have the right answer? The just go for the one with the coolest name. It might not be the most effective strategy, but it’s not like your marrying it – and so you can always change it up later.
