18 content curation tools to find (and organize) the best content on the Internet

Using tools for your content curation strategy?

If you’re not, you’re most likely wasting precious time.

Why? Because it’s important to have good sources, of course.

But it’s equally as crucial to have them properly sorted if you’re to quickly find the most relevant content (both to share it with your audience and/or to use it as a guide to write your posts).

And that’s precisely what content curation tools can do for you.

There are lots of them, but in this post, we’ll give you the 18 most popular.

And the best part is that most of them are free. 😉

Let’s check them out.

👉  Content curation tools: Available options + Top 18

We told you about content curation and its advantages in an earlier post, but here’s a brief reminder:

• Expand your audience: by sharing quality content, you reach a broader audience (one of the basics of inbound marketing).
• New ideas for your posts: to help you develop your content strategy.
• Capture (and nurture) leads: sharing quality content isn’t just useful to attract more potential customers or leads but also to guide them through your sales funnel.
• Gain authority: your audience will see your brand as a benchmark that shares quality content, which will set you apart from the pack in this age of information overload.

In that same post, we stated that a content curation strategy has two stages:

1. The first one is about searching for and categorizing information.
2. The second has to do with sharing the curated content with your audience.

And each stage has its own tools.

Let’s start with the first group.

✅  A. Tools to filter out and categorize content

As you may have noticed, we mentioned an important point about how necessary good curation really is:

Information overload (or “infoxication”).

That is, an abundance of information from many different sources (some better than others) that leaves us overwhelmed and “intoxicated” with information.

As a result, we must separate the wheat from the chaff or, in other words, distinguish reliable sources from those that are not.

And for that task, we have some rather handy tools. 😉

➡️  1. Feedly

Every content curation post must start with Feedly, the quintessential curation tool.

As the name suggests, Feedly is a feed and RSS aggregator.

It allows you to receive all the content published by a website or blog in your profile. You can also sort your sources into different categories.

This may be the most well-known tool, but our list is just getting started. 😉

➡️  2. Flipboard

Flipboard is a feed aggregator, just like the previous tool. What’s interesting about this one, however, is that it can be configured to have the sources displayed as if they were news items (with a photo and a heading).

This allows you to find the content you’re most interested in at a glance.

It also has some social media-esque features, such as following other users’ feeds.

➡️  3. Session Buddy

We’re sure this has happened to you.

You’ve accumulated a gazillion open tabs in your browser throughout the day thinking “I’ll check them out later”.

But you’re so tired that “later” becomes “never”.

Of course, you don’t want to just close the browser because there could be an article with some content ideas in there.

And that’s exactly what Session Buddy is for.

This browser extension saves all the open tabs in one single block so you can reopen them whenever you want.

➡️  4. Pocket

Pocket allows you to store any content you find on the web, including whole websites, images, or videos.

It also includes an option to label and sort the information into different categories.

➡️  5. LinkedIn Pulse

A tool that’s halfway between content grouping and content sharing.

Pulse is known as LinkedIn’s blog, a platform within a social networking site that allows you to create and share different pieces of content (called “pulses”) as if it was a blog.

But it also allows you to create a personal feed to receive posts from other users.

One useful feature is that every time you click on something in your feed, it is highlighted in dark gray so you know which ones you’ve already read and those still waiting to be seen.

➡️  6. ContentGems

A tool for the most forgetful of us. 😉

There’s no point in having the best content sources in the world if you then forget to check them out.

To help with that, ContentGems sends you a compilation of curated content straight to your inbox.

➡️  7. Quora

A great source of content ideas as well as anecdotes and fun facts to spice up your blog posts – which is always a good idea. 😉

In case you didn’t know it, Quora is a forum where users ask and reply to one another.

Among others, it has these benefits:

• There are plenty of categories to choose from (history, entrepreneurship, business, finance, literature, etc.).
• It has lots of users, which means non-stop activity.
• Administrators make an effort to avoid repeated threads and to make sure only high-quality information is shared.

Not only is it a good alternative to get ideas for your editorial calendar but it could also help you work out the interests and needs of your buyer persona.

➡️  8. Buzzsumo

This tool helps you spot viral items (that is, those that are the most widely shared on social media) on a wide variety of topics.

You can share these items directly with your audience or use them to get ideas for new content for your social media.

➡️  9. Curata

If you own a big store that generates a lot of content, a tool like Curata might be useful to you.

What makes it so special?

Not only does it help you with content curation, but it also includes some web analytics functions (such as tracking the leads you got thanks to that content), and it even integrates with your CRM.

Unlike the others, however, this is a paid tool.

➡️  10. Trendspottr

Another paid (yet quite useful) tool.

According to its creators, this tool serves to predict emerging trends, potentially viral content, and even soon-to-be influencers you’d be interested in collaborating with.

It’s like Google Trends taken to the next level.

➡️  11. Evernote

An oldie but a goodie.

The “elephant” app that never forgets serves the same function as others on this list, such as Pocket: it saves content you find interesting.

The difference is that, apart from its web version, it’s also available as a phone app – since inspiration may come on any device. 😉

➡️  12. Bookmark OS

I bet on more than one occasion you’ve thought of a website you saw on your computer and saved as a bookmark but couldn’t access it because you were on your phone.

In this case, you can resort to Bookmark Os.

This app centralizes your favorites and allows you to access them from any device. Apart from entire websites, it also saves images and videos.

➡️  13. Scoopinion

Scoopinion can be installed like any other browser extension and it analyzes both your Google searches and the content you consume.

Then, taking all the collected information into account, it recommends new sources.

This is quite useful for finding new websites and blogs.

➡️  14. Google Alerts

With Google Alerts, can set up notifications to have Google send you content about a certain topic right to your Gmail account.

This simple tool creates an alert for a keyword (e.g., “LCD Samsung TV”) so you get a daily email with the latest articles including that term.

So how can you use this in terms of curation?

Among other options, you can track all the posts about an emerging topic, such as a recently released product.

✅  B. Tools to share curated content

Once you build up some saved posts, there’ll be plenty that you’ll want to share directly with your audience.

And if there’s a tool that can automate the process, even better. 😉

Rather than just one, here are several options.

➡️  1. Buffer

If Feedly is the cornerstone of content aggregators, Buffer is its counterpart for content sharing.

The free version helps you schedule posts on social media while its different paid plans also include an analytics sections.

But the best part is that you can integrate it into Feedly.

Thus, one tool serves to search and categorize interesting content while the other shares it directly with your audience.

That’s as convenient as it gets. 😉

➡️  2. Hootsuite

Fairly similar to the previous tool, but Hootsuite’s free version allows you to automate content from up to three different social networking sites.

➡️  3. Ready4social

A very interesting option for community managers.

Both the free and paid versions of this tool allow you to share and schedule content.

Its most interesting feature is that it’s the team behind the tool that searches for content sources for your brand.

Basically, they take care of the task of curating content for you. 😉

➡️  4. Loomy

Loomy was conceived for big teams.

Apart from creating and scheduling your posts, it allows you to develop a work process.

In other words, you can create different stages for all your posts to go through before being published (draft, pending approval, approved, scheduled, etc.).

👉  Now you have all the tools you need to curate content

But remember – it’s not about adding websites just for the sake of it.

You must be careful to choose those that really publish interesting content for your audience. We recommend that you read the following article on social commerce for more information.

Now it’s your turn to put on your detective hat. Go out there and track down some quality sources and create a curation strategy that’ll make your audience (and customer base) grow day after day. 😉