Content curation has become one of the most important skills of the modern content marketer and newsletter creator. People have little time for scouring the internet, and many people consider social media feeds to be little better than ads. Because of these factors, people have turned to trusted sources of information. Trusted bloggers that share high-quality, professionally crafted newsletters are the sole source of news and updates for many people. This is where there’s an opportunity for marketers to automate the discovery process.
Busy marketers know that constantly promoting their products to your audience will cause them to burn out and lose interest. It’s also difficult to keep coming up with new content that engages your audience. Not to mention the fact that people are overwhelmed by the many content channels they have to trawl through daily. However, ex
By curating content for your audience, you reinforce their opinion of you as a trusted and valuable source of information, even if this information does not relate directly to sales of your products or services.
Trusted bloggers that share high-quality, professionally crafted newsletters are the sole source of news and updates for many people
Content curation skills are in demand as marketing teams and businesses learn that providing value to an audience helps drive sales and conversions.
Here are my picks for the best tools for creating content. You can also use tools for finding content to uncover new topics for future blog posts, to share on social channels, or to use in newsletter curation. Social media managers, content marketers, and small business owners can add these tools to their marketing budget without breaking the bank.
I’ve left out expensive enterprise tools like Curata, as it's aimed at large companies with budgets of hundreds of dollars a month for content curation tools.
ContentStudio
Discover and schedule content for social media and blogs
ContentStudio is marketed as a social media content scheduling and content curation tool, but it’s also a great content curation platform. ContentStudio offers a fast route to finding and sharing content. It’s an all-in-one social media marketing tool for sharing curated content and saving you tons of time.
Read more about ContentStudio's features here.
Pros
- One-stop-shop for curation, discovery, and sharing on social platforms
- Analysis tools that let you see exactly what’s working
- Multiple schedules and posting configurations for maximum exposure
- Automation tools for powerful scheduling of content topics
- Content discovery features are excellent
- Add RSS feeds for your favorite websites or your own properties
Cons
- Support can be a little slow to respond. No chat support.
- The content discovery engine is not as advanced as competitors like BuzzSumo
- keyword searching is a little inaccurate at times
- No direct Instagram scheduling
Buzzsumo
Detailed insights on the web & social media's most shareable content
No list would be complete without Buzzsumo, one of the original content discovery tools and one of the most powerful.
Paid plans start at $99 per month, which is a lot to fork out for content curation, so Buzzsumo is best suited to content marketing agencies. This plan gives you 5 user accounts so you can give access to different team members, content curators, or clients.
Pros
- Probably the best fresh content curation engine of all the tools on this list
- Extra features like backlink reports, journalist profiles, and alerts that other tools lack.
- Great for brainstorming new content marketing ideas
Cons
- Expensive
PeakMetrics
Get alerts about new shareable content from multiple web sources.
One of my favorite tools for digging deep into the web and finding great content for sharing on social or using for content research. The automated content discovery tools are the best I've tested.
I primarily use Peakmetrics to find mentions of businesses or topics that are relevant to my business or personal interests. But at the same time, the content curation features are excellent.
Alerts are highly customizable and there’s even the ability to use Boolean operators for more refined search capabilities. PeakMetrics’ search engine is very powerful. Google Alerts on steroids.
Pros
- The most powerful search facility of all the content curation tools
- Specific keyword search facility with boolean logic
- Ability to track journalists and create media lists
- Reporting feature for stakeholders, colleagues, or clients
- The best content discovery features
- Email alerts every day, week, or month for the latest keyword-triggered content
Cons
- The interface is a little clunky and can be slow
- It can take some time to remove the junk results
UpContent
UpContent is a content discovery platform that also helps you automate sharing via easily-connected distribution tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, Curate, Mailchimp, and Lately. You can also connect to many other social media accounts and distribution tools using the Zapier integration.
Also available is the UpContent Public API, which offers developers and tech-minded content marketers direct access to the online content discovery and curation tools to use in their own applications or projects.
Pros
- Flexible and customizable
- Pricing starts at $15 per month
- Custom article summaries
Cons
- The interface is a little clunky
- The database of content is not as extensive as some of the other tools in this list
Find, save, and display great articles from around the web
Pocket is a handy app and plugin for your web browser that allows you to save articles from the web for reading later. Articles are saved without fancy formatting or excessive graphics, so you get a consistent look to your saves.
But it’s also a great tool for curating excellent content to share with others. And Pocket generates content suggestions based on your current saves. I’ve found the automatically generated suggestions to be a great way of discovering and curating new (and not so new) content.
The Discover tab on the app is a useful way of checking what Pocket has found not the web-based on recommendations sourced from millions of web stories and recommendations from people you follow on Pocket. You can also filter by topic, for example, travel, technology, self-improvement, or personal finance.
There’s a search feature for finding content, but the best way to use the tool is to strategically follow people who curate content on the topics you and your target audience are interested in.
Pros
- The free plan is suitable for most businesses and individuals
- Content discovery platform for high-quality, popular blog posts
- Ability to export all bookmarks to an HTML file
- Easy to share recommendations with friends via links or on social networks
- Saving links is super easy with the browser extension
Cons
- None unless we consider that full text searches are a premium feature
Feedly
Discover, read, and share all the best content in one place
Feedly is a feed reader and news aggregator tool that scans the blog feeds of the websites you select to download and present the content inside the app so you have all the content that interests you in one single place, nicely formatted. It's one of the original and best content curation tools. Millions of people still use it, despite the increased competition from newer curation tools.
If you want to follow content about digital nomads on Reddit, for example, but you would rather not log in to Reddit (to avoid distractions), you can add this subReddit to your favorites in the dashboard. Feedly will watch the subReddit and surface valuable content for you to browse later on.
It’s a great system that simplifies the content curation process. Feedly's content curation app is free but the platform offers premium features that you might find useful. For most people, however, the free plan is good enough and adds a powerful tool in the quest for better content discovery.
Pros
- Powerful features are mostly free
- Integrations with Notion, Evernote, Dropbox, Pocket, and other useful apps
- Ability to create custom boards of topics and articles to share
Cons
- Can’t filter a feed by keyword
- Adds in the feed on the free version
Elink
Curate best content from the web, Facebook, Reddit, Pinterest, and Twitter.
Link is an advanced bookmark manager and content curation tool. This powerful tool makes it easy to create landing pages, email newsletters, RSS widgets, social bio links, social walls, automated content promotion, and more. It requires no HTML knowledge to use. Make your own content in minutes!
Elink combines social bookmarking, visual content creation, website creation, and email newsletter curation app into one product. It has been dubbed a “professional Pinterest” by its developers. That sums it up quite well, in my opinion.
Quuu Curated
Automate sharing of curated content to social networks
There are two sides to the Quuu Platform. The first is the promotion side, called Quuu Promote (an excellent tool – check it out) which lets you submit relevant content to a database of bloggers, social media managers, and influencers looking for new content to share. The other side of the platform is the curation part, simply called Quuu, where you can get quality-checked, hand-curated quality content shared to your social media accounts on autopilot. If you prefer a more hands-on approach, you can also curate blog posts individually. Or combine the two. Either way, your content marketing strategy will benefit.
Pros
- Easy to set up and start curating relevant content automatically
- Free for 1 profile
Cons
- Some categories are not well supported
Social Animal
Discover the best content around the web, Facebook, Reddit, Pinterest, and Twitter.
Get insights on shares and engagements. Analyze headlines for length, sentiment, emotion, and “eye scanning”. View the accounts of people that share content and more. Social Animal gives you plenty of data on what relevant content works with your industry and why. Social Animal is a great curation tool. It gives you the ability to see what content is working in your industry, and why. You can also use it to find influencers that share similar interests as yours.
Pros
- Excellent keyword-based searches for specific topics
- Social media account performance statistics
- Influencer metrics
- Domain and author insights
- Popular social media post recommendations
Cons
- Expensive
Frequently Asked Questions
How does content curation work?
Content curation is the process of finding, organizing, and sharing content. Most likely, you have seen how people and businesses curate content in one form or another on Twitter, Facebook, Medium, or Reddit, among others. The benefits of content curation are numerous and diverse. Firstly, content curation allows individuals and businesses to save time and resources by gathering text, video, images, and other content that is already available. Instead of creating original content from scratch, curating content allows for the collection and organization of relevant information from various sources.
How do you share curated content?
Many social sharing tools offer one-click content sharing options or integrations with Buffer, HootSuite, and similar. Curation tools like ContentStudio offer fast ways of sharing content directly from the platform. Newsletter software tools like Beehiiv make sharing links quick and painless.
How can my business use content curation?
Use content curation apps to provide value to your audience even when you're not producing original content for your own business. This helps maintain a connection and helps to build trust as a source of valuable information.
Is Pinterest a good content curation app?
Pinterest is a great tool for anyone looking to discover content ideas. It's also a perfect platform for curating content around specific topics that can drive traffic and generate leads.
Is content curation bad for SEO?
Content curation is bad for SEO if you repost other people's content on your blog without attribution or canonical tag references. Don't use your website as a primary sharing channel for curated content. Newsletter curation and social media sharing are the best places for this online content.
