Nowadays, many media businesses are embracing content curation — the action of collecting, commenting on, and linking to the content of others.
The goal is to find relevant articles, tips and tools that your prospects and customers would find valuable, and share them on your platform. In the end, your prospects and customers would presumably perceive you as a subject matter expert and a valuable source of information in your industry.
Here are some content curation tools that you can use to add value to your brand:
1. Scoop.it
Scoop.it allows you to share and aggregate content from your Twitter followers, hashtag searches, or through a bookmarklet on your browser bar. It’s basic version is free, with prices ranging to $79 a month for a fully branded version.
2. Shareist
Follow RSS feeds via Shareist’s backend and curate them on themed pages. You can also simply surf the web and share what you find through a bookmarklet. The Shareist platform also includes tools for sharing your own curation sets through social media.
3. Paper.li
A Paper.li “online newspaper” can be automated to follow Twitter feeds, social media hashtags — and then publish snippets of articles relevant to your customers. Automated tweeting of your daily paper can result in new followers and retweets, thus extending your social media presence.
4. MyCurator
If your website is built on WordPress, then this plug-in can help you curate content from numerous sources to turn into blog content. It should be noted that the free version is intended for individuals and not-for-profits. So try it on your personal blog before deciding to use it for business.
5. CurationSoft
The free version of CurationSoft is an ad supported desktop tool. It looks only at Google’s blog search to find content. However, with unlimited keyword searches and the scope of Google’s index, it’s still an excellent means of gathering information you may want to share. The pro version is $59 a year, and adds some social media outlets such as Twitter and YouTube to the content sources.
6. Utopic
By leveraging the Utopic network, or your own social media consumers, Utopic allows you to visually create interest areas and share them in any manner you choose. As of now, there are options to log in with Twitter or Facebook.
7. Historious
Historious allows you to bookmark content from anywhere, and capture it as it existed the moment you bookmark it, essentially creating an archive of the web as you see it. You can share your bookmarks as a search engine, allowing your followers and consumers to search your database of curated content. Note that the free plan may include affiliate links, meaning Historious is making money from your curated content.
8. Pearltrees
This platform allows you to curate content visually in a branch-like fashion, and then share elements of your tree with other members and elsewhere. You may sign in and create an account with Twitter, Facebook, or Google credentials.
9. Listly
Listly acts as a crowd-sourced curation tool. After registering for an account, you create lists that you can then invite people to add to, vote on, or comment on. There’s a high level of engagement possible on your own blog if you choose to embed the list there.
10. Pluggio
The Pluggio platform treats curation a little differently, allowing a user to follow along with social conversations, and Tweet or mention things of interest from a content stream. Pluggio is free for one user, and offers team plans as well.