4 Content Curation Tools to Boost Your Content Marketing

Time is of the essence when it comes to life, the web and even content curation and content marketing. It’s a fast moving web and content should be in the right place at the right time.

Content curation is an important part of a content marketing strategy. It’s one solution to creating meaningful content that resonates with your target audience on a regular basis.

As most of you know, it’s no easy task to produce quality content on a regular basis, which is why you need to implement content curation into your content strategy. It’s the perfect gap filler between those times when you’re creating and promoting your own original content.

But it’s not just simply adding content curation into your strategy that’s important. Timeliness is a crucial part. If you are not timely with certain pieces of content then you could be missing out on valuable traffic to your site, but more importantly leads and revenue.

Content should be curated quickly

When I say quickly, I don’t mean be lazy in your curation efforts. The lazy way of curating content is quickly throwing a few subpar content pieces together without adding much insight. This could not only be harmful to your SEO efforts, but it provides little to no value to users that visit your site.

Correct content curation should have the following components:

• Unique content that includes your personal insights that supplements the content you are referencing. You want to help readers understand why the information you’re citing is valuable and relevant to them.


• Curate content that is actually newsworthy and high quality. If you are going to be curating content make sure you share information from credible sources. This not only adds to your credibility but helps your content performance in search engine results.


• Add value to your readers by being a timely and relevant source of information for your audience, which you can be if you have the right kind of content for your audience.

How do you curate content fast?

It is essential that you know your audience’s informational needs. You need to know the content types they like to see, you need to know where they go to get their information and you need to know when they spend time online most frequently. All of these components can drive your content curation strategy.

But it’s not just knowing your audience. It’s also listening to your audience. You must listen to your audience because they will tell you what they want to hear and when they want to hear it. A good example of a company that did this is Yale Appliance, a kitchen appliance company. The owner, Steve Sheinkopf, has trained his staff members to carefully listen to their customer’s questions as potential blog posts. In doing so, they’ve been able to lead the race in the information their customers want by answering customer questions on their blog before their competitors and instead of letting other review sites produce this information.

So what were the results of this fast and timely approach? Yale Appliance’s site visitors nearly tripled in a year, and they garnered some of the top spots in Google search results for several keywords.

Fast curation doesn’t mean you don’t spend the necessary time and thought to gather, organize and provide news and information that relates to your audience with your added voice and unique insights included. It means you want to be the first source to put this information online. Being the first makes you a powerful source within your industry, a thought leader, and means your audience (and sometimes others) continually come to your site when they have questions. It’s also good for you from an SEO standpoint because as shown in the Yale Appliance example above, they were able to achieve top ranking for several keywords.

Curate with a purpose

Another way marketers take this the wrong way is thinking they must quickly jump into a trending topic or breaking news story and force their way into the topic. Don’t jump in too quickly or you’ll most likely get your facts wrong, and don’t shove your way into every breaking or trending topic because your company can’t and doesn’t need to be involved with every one of these topics. It makes you look bad; it makes you look like a desperate news vulture.

Tools to help you find the right content

You can’t curate content on your own.

To give each piece of content you curate the attention it deserves, you need a little help. This help comes in the form of widely available content tools. Today, numerous tools are available at your disposal to ensure you quickly and effectively curate content that’s fashioned to your audience.

The tool you need depends on your audience, the types and amount of resources you want to scan and the publishing platforms you use. Some of the tools I use regularly include:

1. Right Intel

With Right Intel, you find content that’s valuable to you and your audience. After finding said content, you then add in your own insights with the Intel It! function. You publish your content and insights internally for your team to see, but you also have the capability to publish this content externally through stories, social media, emails, etc., helping you create credibility and thought leadership with your target audience. Right Intel also keeps your curated information organized in your own knowledge dashboard.

2. Trapit

With this content discovery tool, you personalize your content needs by setting up “traps” based on the type of content you’re looking for, and you set as many as you want. Trapit learns your content preferences as you give a thumbs up to content you like or a thumbs down to content you don’t like. You have the option to add commentary to the content this tool finds for you and then share it to your audience via the online channels you wish to use.

3. Feedly

Feedly is an app that lets you browse through, read and then share content from your favorite blogs, feeds and news sites using RSS feeds. It’s tailored to you because you choose what to follow, and to get even more detailed, you can break down your feeds into separate folders for a better and easier overview of select niche markets. It brings together all the sites you like into one place.

4. Pinterest

Pinterest isn’t just for sharing inspiring quotes, delicious recipes and ways to decorate your home for the holidays. It’s a visual content discovery tool that lets you collect ideas for different projects or topics by creating your own interactive boards. You make your own boards and choose other boards to follow to help you find new ideas and receive inspiration from others that have the same interests as your target audience.

Using social platforms as curation resources

Besides Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are other social media platforms that make for good resources to use with content curation. These platforms are not just places to find content worth curating, they’re where you quickly send out curated content. Search hashtags on Twitter and Facebook for particular topics relating to your audience. Search for topics in LinkedIn’s search bar. Follow people and organizations on each platform that share your values and interests and provide information relating to your audience’s needs and wants.

Social can be fast

Sharing information through social platforms is also a fast and easy way to curate. But don’t just retweet or share a piece of content without adding your own opinions. Doing this doesn’t do you any good. It doesn’t set you apart or make you a thought leader within your industry. Anyone can retweet or share content. A real thought leader — someone who understands what it takes to correctly curate content — knows that without providing your own insight and voice to the content, the content you send out adds no real value to your audience.

Content curation is a crucial part of your content marketing strategy, and it’s crucial to your brand. Your target audience craves interesting and informative content that solves their problems every day. Curating content — and timing your curation efforts right — is how you can provide useful information to your audience on a regular basis and how you maintain and grow a loyal customer base.

4 Content Curation Tools to Boost Your Content Marketing