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I was fortunate to be able to share my thoughts on how digital content curation may be implemented as a powerful pedagogical approach in the latest issue of SCIS Connections. In my article, which y…

Everyone is living their life online and constantly glued to their gadgets, either checking and interacting on their favorite social media sites or just surfing the net. This lifestyle creates an opportunity for brands to reach out and become closer and more engaged with their audience through valuable and attractive content to keep them interested.
Hot new content is always desired as often as once or twice a week. And no matter how many copywriting tricks and secrets you have, there will come a day when you suddenly go through a writer’s block.
But we have options, like content curation. Content curation is the process of filtering through massive available content on the net, organize and share the most relevant ones to your audience.
Though it sounds easier than creating your own content, content curation can be very time-consuming since you need to search and read it through to make sure that it has the same voice and message as your brand wants to deliver.
We definitely need further help. And thanks to a bunch of smart internet people, we have many content curation tools in the recent years to help us curate the most effective contents for our audience and save us some time.
These tools help us quickly find relevant posts, social media content or videos at ease. One thing to keep in mind is the need to use these tools carefully so they won’t hurt your brand. Go the extra mile to personalize the content by adding some valuable insights or a thoughtful comment.
When trying to find the most suitable content curation tools for you, there are some aspects to consider. A good content curation tools must be easy to use, easy to integrate, save you time, allow you to personalize your search so you are only getting content that fits your brand and marketing strategy, and give you access to stats and ROI.
The following list has some of our favorite tools. They have saved us time and even provided inspiration for content creation. There are certainly other powerful tools out there as effective as the ones listed below, which may serve different functions.

Flipboard:

Responsive, custom and beautiful. This most loved “social reader” is designed for iOS and Android users alike, and will help you collect all the information shared with you on your social channels.
One of its coolest features is that you can collect interesting content that you find in other users’ collections and present them in a virtually-pleasing interactive magazine style.
Countless magazines, newspapers, and blogs RSS feeds are available for you to flip through them easily like you would on a magazine, grab all the news in real time and share them across all the main networking sites on the go!

Feedly

Do you want an app that offers simplicity and uniformity? Then Feedly is the answer. It is simple, easy to use and uniform across the app.  It’s a supercharged RSS reader.
One of its coolest features is the ‘Boards’, where you can organize and save the stories you like. These stories can also be shared out to all major social media and third-party scheduling tools.
The layout is clean and beautiful and you can also collaborate with coworkers on content curation with the Team version.

Pocket

With Pocket’s ‘save it for later’ superpower, you will never miss great content. Pocket is a tool where you can store absolutely anything that you bump into: images, articles, news, videos, anything. It’s one of the best read-it-later apps and having been around the longest, it has more comprehensive features than other similar apps.
Pocket’s best feature is its organization system, which operates by tagging articles with searchable terms. It’s an attractive option when we are compiling material to write about. It also has an extension for browsers and an app for mobile devices to easily “share” anything in or from your Pocket while you’re navigating.

Scoop.it

Scoop.it has all that content curators need: intelligent search, relevant content, expert publishing. It enables content curators to enhance SEO and generate leads as well as develop personal brand among professional and social networks.
This is a powerful platform for content curation that helps you find desired files by means of keywords and share selected content easily to your site’s pages. Apart from all those smart features, Scoop.it is a simple and easy-to-use platform that you’ll actually enjoy. Give it a try and you will be hooked.

Google Alerts

Who has never used Google Alerts? It’s free, quick and easy to set up, and it’s powerful when you combine it with other tools. We use Google Alerts “listening” power specifically to find out if there is any mention of a brand, a specific topic, trend or a personality anywhere on the internet and in any format available.
Google Alerts has been the longest web monitoring software we’ve used, however, it’s very basic compared to its rivals, such as…

Mention

If you’re a Google Alerts fan and think that it’s not meeting your business needs these days, Mention is a great alternative. It gives you access to stats and reports and a real-time activity monitoring. You don’t have to continuously google your brand, it will send you the email alerts when your brand has been mentioned somewhere online. The interface is simple and easy to use.
This is definitely our first choice when it comes to “listening” monitoring tools.  We also use it as a curation tool and it has proven to be very powerful on paid versions. There is a free version too that works well but doesn’t allow as many keywords as the paid versions do. But as far as prices go, compared to other monitoring tools, they are pretty convenient.

Pinterest

Pinterest is not only the granddaddy of content curation, it’s also the best platform for curating visually attractive and inspiring content. Hands down.
With massive beautiful photo collections, Pinterest has become a source of inspiration for many. It also allows users to create pin boards for classifying content in a clean organized way and find great content from other pinners too!
If you need content or inspiration for recipes, fashion, home decor, design, travel, life hacks, basically anything under the sun, just come to Pinterest to discover, save and do.
Apart from these 7 amazing tools, we occasionally resort to everything that social networks have to offer for content curation: Twitter hashtags, LinkedIn search tool, Facebook search, Paper.li, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, Instagram and the list goes on.
Each of the tools above has a unique strong point that differs from the rest. Different brands would require a different set of tools. It may take time to discover which one is the best one for your brand, but the search is worth it.
The stage is yours. Comment in 3, 2, 1….
 
[Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash]

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