Posting to your social media sites on a consistent basis is an important part of a successful marketing strategy. But if all you share is your own promotional posts, you’ll most likely lose followers.
A better way to have long-term success on social media is to curate and post other people’s content as well as your own. Content curation in this context means to find, sort, comment on (if applicable), and share content other than your own.
But how do you (1) find good content to share and (2) organize all that content to share with your community?
There are many content “curation” tools and Apps available. The following is a list of 10 tools that are free, and relatively easy to use. I’ve either used them at one point, or currently use them for myself and my clients.
Note: latest update to this post occurred on 3/23/17
1. Feedly
With this RSS Reader, you can add your favorite blogs or websites to folders and then check each folder regularly for the latest posts from those sites.
This is my main go-to source every morning, as I’ve worked to build up a collection of over 100 sites I use for finding great content for my and my clients’ social media sites.
You can add to blogs to your Feedly account by doing a search within the site itself, or by finding a blog through another search and then copying its URL into the Feedly search bar.
2. Nuzzel
This site displays top stories from the web, plus trending stories based on your Twitter connections. You don’t have to link Nuzzel to your Twitter account, but doing so gives you a more tailored experience. And may help you see what topics your community is most interested in.
3. Right Relevance
Choose topics of interest with this tool and then view top articles in each of those topics.
You need to sign up with your Twitter account for this site, but it also includes a “community”- building feature: Followers, Influencers, Conversations, etc.
4. AllTop
This content aggregator gives you access to a wide variety of topics, which you can customize based on your interests.
Just create your My AllTop account and then search for topics based on keywords or phrases. You can then add the appropriate blogs to your account and visit it on a regular basis.
You can also check out what’s trending on all AllTop channels for current events and hot topics.
5. Scoop.it
Scoop.it helps you create your own online “magazine” or hub for articles and resources that you find most interesting.
Use the Scoop.it browser extension to easily add (or “scoop”) items you find on websites, and then share those items with your social sites (free accounts let you share to a maximum of 2 social sites).
You can also search for items based on topics within the Scoop.it site.
6. Flipboard
The newly redesigned tool lets you create targeted magazines for topics of interests.
Create your own magazine to collect articles or follow others’ magazines. Check out Flipboard’s “Top Ten” for trending stories on the site, or through an email subscription.
7. Pocket
Pocket allows you to save content you find online to read and/or share later.
Install the browser extension and then save articles, videos, etc. from any website.
8. ContentGems
ContentGems says it “Monitors 200,000+ news sites, blogs, and social media accounts” for content. Search by custom keywords, filter content in several different ways, and receive a daily email with your top results.
If you use Hootsuite, you can also view results from ContentGems within a new stream.
9. Google Alerts / TalkWalker Alerts
These two tools (which are very similar), allow you to create an alert based on a keyword/phrase and receive an email with content based on those parameters.
Once you’ve set up the alert, results are emailed to you, so you don’t have to actively search yourself. Just check your daily email for results.
10. Built-In Features on Major Social Sites
In addition to the tools listed above, make sure you take advantage of the built-in features on some of the major social networks to help with content curation.
Twitter – create Lists to sort Tweets by topic or users.
Facebook – use the SAVE feature to put content you find on your News Feed in a “folder” for later sharing.
Google+ – Communities and Collections can both be sources of great content. You can also use your Circles to organize the Pages/People you follow by topics or industry influencers.
Pinterest – as this platform’s SEARCH function has improved, you may find the site serves as a great resource for content. Use Pinterest’s Guided Search and in addition to saving the Pins to one of your boards, go to the original source and share the article on your social sites.
It’s not necessary to use all of these tools at the same time; experiment with a few and when you find a system that works for you, stick with it.
No matter what tools you use, remember that consistently updating your sites with fresh content is one of the keys to success in using social media.
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Contact us (click here) for a free 15-minute consultation to determine your next best steps.
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photo credit (derived from): markus spiske via photopin cc
About Terry League