20 Insanely Helpful Content Curation Tools & Resources + Bonus

A collection of tips you'll find helpful if you're running a startup or a business as a solo founder or as a small team.

If you are running a startup or a business as a solo founder or even in a small team, you know how time-consuming it is to write your own content. There are so many important tasks you need to check off on your list first.

Content curation can be a great temporary alternative to content marketing. When things quiet down and you actually have time to make content yourself or even hire someone to do it for you, curation still plays a big role. Both for inspiration and by sharing others’ ideas you align yourself or your brand with others.

The biggest benefit of content curation is that it takes almost no time at all when done right. You generally don’t want to spend more than 1-2 hours per week.

3 Easy Steps to be Successful and Efficient with your Content Curation

Find

Finding content is easy. Every day new content emerges, so we aren’t really lacking in terms of volume. Finding good content on the other hand is hard. You can use a tool to help you find good sources. Once you find your sources it gets easier!

Filter

One word; human. There’s nothing that beats the good old human filtering feature. Artificial intelligence will probably take over, but we’re far from there right now. Another important factor to consider is relevance. Who are you curating content for? People are counting on you to dig up content that speaks to them and will help them. You do the work so they don’t have to.

Automate

This is key to making content curation as efficient as possible. There’s a handful of great tools to help you with your automation, everything from social media sharing to data entry. Are curating a newsletter? Running a curated directory website? Or sharing to social media? It all depends on what route you wish to take.

List of 19 Content Curation Tools

There are several tools out there that will help you with the steps above. We’ve made a list of all the content curation tools we’ve actually tried ourselves and has been insanely helpful to us.

1. Refind

Refind is a new and improved way to discover content on the web. They aim to create a new “category” in content consumption called relevance. The idea itself is not new, but if they manage to pull this off they might become your single source of content discovery. We have high hopes for this! It’s currently in closed beta, so if you need an invite, sign up for our newsletter and we’ll hook you up.

2. StumbleUpon

This tool has been around for ages. A real classic. It’s more of a trivial tool/service than anything else. Sort of like “I’m feeling lucky” by Google.

3. Buzzsumo

Basically a trend reporting tool. Search for topics to see the most popular content being liked and shared by others. It’s great if you want highly engaged safe bets, but it could fire back too. If your audience is early adaptors it’s likely they have already seen it. It works best if you’re curating to the more general public.

4. Listly

Who doesn’t like lists? Listly is a great way to find inspiration and ideas to make your own lists or curate them directly for your audience. Also, a good way to see social engagement for highly engaged topics.

5. Nuzzel

This nifty tool lets you log in with your social media account and Nuzzel will present the most relevant content being shared in your network. It works pretty well but requires that you follow people related to the content niche you’re interested in to get the most relevant stories.

6. Feedly

Maybe one of our most recommended content curation tools. Subscribe to your favorite RSS feeds and get immediate updates. Sadly not everyone offers RSS these days, so might not work for everything.

7. Anders Pink

Made by the guys at BuzzSumo. It’s much like the president’s daily briefings. Currently in open beta and free to use. It could be a competitor to Nuzzel, it certainly looks better.

8. MyCurator

WordPress plug-in that lets you subscribe to RSS feeds and question them as posts. MyCurator is great for automating a content curation website.

9. Chipmunk Theme

Running a content-curation WordPress website has never been easier. You got the possibility to automate all aspects of your curation with connected plugins, or you can choose the “human touch” route. The choice is yours. Voted the number 4th product of the day on Product Hunt. We recommend that you check out the showcase page for examples.

10. Revue

If you pick the newsletter route, this is a tool worth checking out. It easily lets you collect and share relevant content to your subscribers. They even got a Chrome plugin that lets you add content on the fly. Looks beautiful too!

11. Pocket

This is the reading app for online content. What we do is save everything we find to Pocket and then set aside time to read it all. Each post is stripped of all superfluous designs so we can concentrate on just the words. And it’s super easy to share from Pocket with its many social features and integrations.

12. Curated

Another newsletter tool. It works much like Revue, and also comes with its own Chrome plugin for collecting content to share. A bit more pricey than Revue.

13. Buffer

Schedule your social media posts with ease. One of the first tools in social media scheduling. It’s simple, yet powerful. Connect all your social media accounts in one place, a big time saver if you manage a lot. They also do content suggestions, but they can be a bit generic at times.

14. Flocker

A tool to collect all social media content in one place. You have the option to set up your own page or integrate with WordPress. If you only want to curate social media content, then this is a good tool.

15. IFTTT

Free automation tool! Connect different services to automate parts of your workflow. We use it to automatically tweet website updates through RSS. Works wonders and the possibilities are endless. Highly recommended!

16. Zapier

Automation for the pros. This is not just one tool, but hundreds of them. It’s a smart way to connect apps together so you can automate just about anything. You can do everything from turning your spreadsheet into an RSS feed to automatically Tweet your newsletter publications. These are just basic examples, you can create really powerful automation sequences and save a lot of time.

17. PixelMe

This nifty little tool lets you add tracking to any 3rd party link you share. A very good tool if you want to retarget with advertisements such as Facebook or Google.

18. QUUU

Content curation as a service. It works as a filter and sends you content to share with Buffer and HubSpot. It could work for a period of time to keep up the consistency and some of the suggestions are actually pretty good. Quuu comes with a free plan for you to try out.

19. Twitter Lists

If you need highly specialized topics, we recommend finding or making your own Twitter lists containing influencers and early adopters. This is actually one of our favorite sources of finding good content.

20. Private Groups

Even better than Twitter lists. If you can become a member of a niche group, it’s likely that there will be some good content being shared there. If you can’t find an engaged private group there’s a good opportunity in setting up your own. However it requires a lot of time and effort to create a good private group, so it’s recommended you start off with something established.

Add your own touch

A great way to add your own touch to the curation is commenting. It’s not necessary but absolutely recommended. It doesn’t have to be lengthy at all. Just a few words would be enough.

Crediting

Giving credit is always a good thing. Be sure to mention creators, makers, etc. when curating others’ content. Even if you’re linking to their source.

Final thoughts

If you focus on filtering relevant and good content, coupled with automation you have set yourself up for efficiency and success. Essentially you’ll be able to do more in less time and focus on more urgent tasks.

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