Many companies, particularly smaller ones, find it difficult to create their own content, and instead resort to curating, reusing or even copying content from other sources. Big no no. Doing this can be time consuming (for little or no reward), risky in terms of copyright issues, and your website may not really be advanced enough to host this kind of content.
We always recommend that companies create their own unique content, and if possible host their own regularly updated blog. But if this is not a feasible undertaking – for reasons relating to time, budget, or technical capabilities – it’s better to take action and join the content publishers than take a backseat and simply watch others succeed in this arena.
There are a number of different tools you can use to create your own bespoke news portal in less than one hour. Yes you read that right - under an hour. It’s the perfect way to provide your audience (both internal and external) with relevant and industry related content that you think will add value.
My top recommendation has to be paper.li – it’s a hugely versatile and useful tool and it’s so easy to set up. You can use it as a feed for hot topics being talked across social media and online, and the free version is enough to get you started. It supports sources like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube and RSS feeds - as well as a whole host of other online sources. All you have to do is decide how frequently you want to send out updates, what topics you’ll cover, and at what time and in what language. You can also then share your curated content across social media and show off your curating skills!
And if you want to know what else is out there, just check out the A-Z of content curation below; I’m sure you’ll find one which fits your way of working.
25 additional content curation tools
1. Aggregage
A new site with a content marketing focus. Aggregage creates online “curated” communities by centralising content from quality blogs, whitepapers and social networks around particular topics which is displayed on a new site dedicated to that given topic.
2. BagTheweb
BagTheWeb helps users curate Web content. For any topic, you can create a “bag” to collect, publish, and share any content from the Web.
3. Blekko
This service “Provides a differentiated editorial voice in search.”
4. BlogBridge
BlogBridge is for true info-junkies who want a better way to wrangle all their RSS feeds from blogs and news into one pretty cool organiser.
5. Bundlr
This allows you to create topic pages with photos, videos, tweets and documents and share them with everyone.
Curation Station allows users to gather information, select the items that fit their goals, and then distribute them. It is a paid service specifically targeting marketers.
7. Eqentia
Egentia says “From your context, let us find you content. From that content, let us find you people. You take action.” It allows you to aggregate, curate, and re-publish content that matters.
8. Factiva
A business intelligence platform with a unique combination of authoritative business news and information, plus sophisticated tools. Factiva helps you easily find, monitor, interpret and share the essential information your organisation commands.
9. Feedly
This is a simple and streamlined way to read and share the content of your favourite sites.
10. Flockler
Drawing from social media and the web, publishing videos, photos and text, and personal commentary and editorial, Flockler lets you curate for a particular subject, event, person or business.
11. iFlow
iFlow is a real-time online information exchange that brings together everything you want. You can organise, combine, filter, curate or remix your flows to get a different view on your content and/or to share.
12. kbucket
KBucket is a user indexed search site. A place where experts “content curators” organise, comment, tag and publish their research
13. Keepstream
A social media curation tool that helps organise tweets into shareable, embeddable collection pages.
14. Mlkshk
Save, share and discover. Use browser extensions to save with a simple right-click. The service allows you to pick a topic (Shake) and Invite other MLKSHKers in to post and curate their submissions with one click.
15. Mysinydicaat
A personalised aggregator built on the premise that it should be easy to collect, filter and share web content that is important to you.
16. Pearltrees
This is a place for you to collect, organise and share everything you like on the web.
17. Pinterest
You probably know this one already, but it’s a virtual pinboard that lets you organise and share all the things you find on the web and lends itself particularly to visual content.
18. Scoop.it
To create a topic of interest, Scoop.it crawls the web for related content that you can select and curate for your online magazine.
19. Shareist
Lets you create your own custom curation website. Discover, create, organise, and share content that matters to your audience.
20. Story Crawler
This service intelligently searches and gathers information across multiple online platforms, whether it’s social media, news articles, blogs, RSS feeds, video site forums and user generated content, to bring users the most relevant real-time data.
21. Storyfy
Lets you curate social networks to build social stories, bringing together media scattered across the Web into one singular coherent narrative.
22. Storyful
Storyful was founded by journalists who wanted to separate the news from the noise of the real-time web. Storyful is used to curate “stories” via social media tools, images and videos.
23. Summify
This one was recently purchased by Twitter, and creates a beautiful daily summary of the most relevant news from your social networks.
24. Themeefy
Here you can discover, curate, compile and publish your knowledge from the web to personal Theme magazine(s).
25. Yourversion
Touted as “The best way to discover new content that’s relevant to you”, YourVersion brings you the latest news, blogs, tweets, and videos on your chosen topics in one place. Plus, it automatically organises the bookmarks by topic for you.
Get curating!
Everyone has a list of bookmarks, subscribes to relevant newsletters and blogs that they like, and regularly visits specific websites on a chosen industry or topic. So why not turn these collections into something useful for you, your colleagues and your audience? The best way of sharing this information is to compile and curate it, and distribute it in one singular communication. Personally I have now unsubscribed from the many newsletters and blogs I had opted into, and now receive the same updates all in one place. I can honestly say it has revolutionised the way I work – so what are you waiting for?
Image source: Newspaper Club
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