6 Content Curation Tools You Need to Try

Have you ever noticed that when discussing content marketing – people always seem to talk about content production and rarely mention content curation? Well, it’s important to know that both practices are valuable and deserve their place within your strategy.

Content curation implies discovering, evaluating, gathering and presenting digital content that revolves around a specific subject. So, instead of generating the content, you are collecting it from various sources and delivering it to your audience.

Given the fact you are not actually creating something from scratch, but rather organizing existing content in an appealing and meaningful way – curation typically requires less effort.

However, it is not always easy as pie, nor does it come down to repeatedly copying links of your newly published blog posts and then sharing them across social media.

What makes a successful content curator?

As an integral part of a marketing strategy, a content curator has to ensure that the curated content contains certain attributes in order to ensure success. 

Content curation that is actionable and brings value

Content curation is not only about having defined measurable goals. Sure, this is one of the integral parts of a successful curation. However, the content you choose needs to be actionable and bring value to the readers. How to approach this?

We suggest providing a commentary as to why your readers should make time to read the curated content. By providing great insights, readers will be more prone to go ahead and read what you prepared.

Content curation should be personal

So, you have a firm grasp of who your target audience is and you’ve taken the time to handpick the content. Now, the next step is to add a personal touch to the curated content. Keep in mind that your audience might be put off by a bunch of browsable links. Instead, humanise your content and put it in a perspective your target audience will appreciate. Don’t forget, featuring personalised content will appeal to your audience. Moreover, it will work in your favour of establishing a relationship based on trust and reliance.

The Purpose of Curated Content

Curated content should complement your own original content, be relevant, bring value to your audience, support your well-earned reputation, and reinforce the relationships you have with your customers. It also enables you to position yourself as a thought leader, given the fact you’ll be perceived as someone who follows trends from the industry and has a clever, expert comment on what’s going on in the industry.

According to research by Convince & Convert, the perfect balance between curated and produced content comes down to linking to third-parties 50-75% of the time. That’s what brings the best results and the highest number of conversions.

You’d be surprised to see the variety of types and formats of content that fall into the category of curated content. It can be in a form of an RSS, which enables people to discover unique content even before it gets promoted across different channels. Links within blog posts can also be a form of curated content, as well as social bookmarking and social sharing.

You know the saying – who you spend time with is who you become? Curating other people’s content also helps you build relationships with other webmasters and communicate who you are by appreciating their effort and showing you share the same values.

Now that we’re on the same page regarding the purpose of curated content, let’s move on to the actual tools that can be of use to you in this segment.

1. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is one of the best content marketing research tools, that helps you discover the most popular content across the web. It can be of incredible use for analyzing the success of certain articles and other content forms that have been shared and then applying the same formula to your own content. Via this tool, you can easily type any keyword or an exact domain, and it will generate tons of results that are relevant to your query.

BuzzSumo also allows you to follow current trends and keep up to date: when you set the settings right and select your industry, you can enjoy automated alerts every time new valuable piece of content is published within it.

Here are some other useful features:

• Filter content by type
• Identify the most shared authors and pinpoint possible guest posting opportunities
• See total number of social shares and uncover popular types of content

With BuzzSumo, you can easily streamline your content curation and ensure you’re truly sharing trustworthy and valuable content with your audience.

2. Curata

Curata is an-award winning content curation software (CCS), designed to fuel your content marketing strategy. It is primarily targeted at enterprise-level clients. Curata generates the most relevant content automatically to your feed so that you can choose which content would be beneficial for sharing.

Today, we are overwhelmed with the amount of content published online, so Curata can be your great ally because it acts as a filter of relevancy. Here’s exactly how this tool can help you:

• Access relevant content that’s proven to be of high-quality
• Use your browser extension to directly curate content from
• Create your own content directly within the platform
• Invite your team to contribute with valuable content they’ve stumbled upon to build a solid base of content worth sharing

With Curata, you can expand beyond your singular brand voice, and show appreciation for other businesses that produce useful content. Eventually, this will lead to better visibility and a more valuable reputation of your own brand. Discover fresh content, refine your current content flow, and make the most of your social media presence.

Prices for Curata are available upon request and you can book a demo to see how the tool works from up close.

3. Scoop.it!

Scoop.it! is designed both with individuals and businesses in mind. It allows users to publish a topic page with curated content and distribute it automatically within their network. On the other hand, companies can enjoy private hubs and read, share, and curate content with minimum effort. The platform is extremely useful because it centralizes your numerous content market efforts to one place and enables you to:

• Discover valuable web content, social communities, and individual content creators and users
• Select and edit all of the content that you think might bring value to your audience
• Directly publish across different platforms (website, newsletter, social media networks – you name it)

In addition, you can monitor and share content privately, within your business team. For example, you can send internal email newsletters to keep everyone in the loop and enable optimal communication across different sectors. A lot of actions within the tool are completely automated, which saves you a lot of time and money. Scoop.it! supports your content marketing activities, bring manual work to a minimum, and allows you to focus on things that really matter.

4. Elink.io

We can all agree that curating content for your website, email newsletter or social media is not only time consuming, but at times daunting as well. Add to that the task of collecting content from various websites, and then distributing the same in a meaningful and presentable way, and you just might give up altogether.

Elink.io is one of those tools that helps take the pain out of content curation. The tool has an array of features that allows anyone to save links on the go and turn them into alluring and shareable content. Want to convert your links into a web page? No problem. Fancy an embedded link on your blog or website? Sure! Or you might want to send your curated content as a newsletter? Great, Elink.io will help you with that in a heartbeat. 
With 30+ responsive templates, which are easily interchangeable, and over 80,000 users worldwide, Elink.io is one of the best tools out there.

So, what features does Elink.io offer? Bookmark Manager allows you to save, edit and organise your content like never before. You can use Elink’s RSS Feed Builder to read, manage and create content. The content editor feature lets you create beautiful content in minutes by just adding links. Use Elink’s email newsletter feature to create beautiful HTML emails that can be sent across just about any 3rd party email provider. The Elink’s automation process to schedule and auto-generate content that can work across just about any workflow. You can use Elink’s editor to create social bio links or to create single web pages that can be shared anywhere with a weblink. At last, the Elink’s team collaboration feature can help bring your team into one beautiful space and work together.

5. Zest.is

Zest.is is an awesome Google Chrome extension that relies on the power of marketing community and their own expert contribution. The number of members is continuously rising and for now – this is an open community where anyone can join. As a “tribe member”, you can suggest your own content or some other article piece you’ve read you found valuable, and share it within the platform.

Of course, not everything is arbitrary as that would probably lead to chaos and spam. Chief Moderators are there to monitor the quality of suggestions and ensure the set level of quality is not disrupted.

The platform is not completely human-based. However, it uses an algorithm for the initial screening work. After that, it lets users do additional filtering and quality assurance. In fact, it’s completely “garbage-free”: only 1% of the total amount of suggested content actually gets published within the platform.

Once you add the extension to your browser, Zest.is will serve a fresh feed of content to you every time you start your browser.

Here are the main benefits:

• Content is curated both by marketing professionals and the algorithm
• You can suggest your own content and consume the best pieces in the industry
• Use content filters and tags to narrow down your search
• Integrate Zest.is with Trello or Slack to easily share and manage your content

There are also many personalization options, so that your content stream fits your taste perfectly.

As for the price, Zest.is is free to use, but there is an additional feature called The Content Boost which allegedly gives your content higher visibility and 10x more clicks. However, the application process is strictly organized and you would have to put your content on a waitlist in order to get considered.

6. Everypost

We already wrote about Everypost.me, an extremely useful tool for both content curation and social media publishing. At Everypost, they are well aware of the importance of having different types of content formats in order to animate your target audience. And their main focus is on visual.

In addition to content curation, Everypost enables you to optimize your social media workflow. Here’s exactly what you can to within the platform:

• Create and curate content
• Maximize the effectiveness of each post by customizing each piece of content before you cross-post
• Effectively collaborate with all your team members
• Schedule posts to target the exact times your audience is online and ready to interact
• Make data-driven decisions with the built-in social analytics

So, there you have it! Five content curation tools that can surely amplify your content marketing efforts and broaden your perspective on various topics. Of course, this is not an extensive list, but it’s a good start.

Both your blog content and everything you post across social media needs to satisfy or even excel your audience’s expectations; you cannot achieve that by living in a bubble. Networking is the key and so is interacting with various types of content.

In case your online presence comes down just to your social media profiles, you need to take a leap and make your own website. Do it with .ME: check the availability of your desired .ME domain name and snoop around some of the free website builders (no coding required) that can help you create a stunning website for yourself or your business – within minutes! Be original and let the world know your story.