5 free content curation resources to save you time

To be successful with content marketing and social media, content curation is vital. To grow your influence in today’s world, you need to be a great content resource for others. This will help them filter out all of the noise. Content curation is one of the Cs of a successful social media strategy.

What is content curation?

Content curation is acting like a museum curator sharing the best art or a wedding DJ playing the best songs at a wedding. Content curation is the act of finding and sharing the best of other people’s content.

Why should you curate content?

Content curation is an excellent way to help you generate ideas for your own content creation. It is also an easy way to share content because you don’t have to create content from scratch. And it helps you grow your authority on certain subjects such as social media, content marketing or public relations.

People and brands who find the sweet spot of content creation and content curation are successful on social media and with content marketing.

According to Curata, more than 50 percent of marketers who curate content enhance their brand visibility, thought leadership, search engine optimization (SEO), and website traffic.

What is the difference between content curation and content aggregation? 

Content curation uses the human touch while content aggregation uses a computer. If you are using a computer you are doing content aggregation through automation and algorithms to find content.

Content curation is a process where you hand pick the best content. Then, you share it with your audience through social media, your website or blog.

5 content curation resources

To help you save time, I provided you with my go-to resources for content curation.

1. SmartBrief Newsletters

These newsletters provide executive summaries each day of the most relevant industry news. They keep busy professionals like you up-to-date with the latest news and information. They have more than 200 niche email newsletters.

Newsletter topics include business, leadership, enterprise IT, careers, social business, marketing, digital, sales, and business travel. The editors cull through more than 10,000 major media outlets and blogs to find the freshest and most relevant information.

Take action: Subscribe to the SmartBrief newsletters.

2. Who’s Blogging What

This email newsletter is a go-to source for marketing and public relations professionals who want to stay current on social media, search marketing, email marketing, digital marketing, and web analytics. It provides links to the latest news and developments in digital marketing.

The articles include hot topics, new strategies, and how-to articles. Their tagline is that they “spot things that digital marketers need to see.” If you are looking to keep yourself up-to-date and sharp in today’s era of digital disruption, this email newsletter is for you.

Take action: Subscribe to the Who’s Blogging What newsletter.

3. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Blog

Almost every Friday, LinkedIn publishes a trending content blog post that summarizes the must-read marketing articles that week.

LinkedIn provides you with the link to the article. They tell you why the article is worthy of your attention.

Take action: Subscribe to the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions.

4. Convince and Convert

This newsletter is billed as “the best marketing newsletter on content, social, digital, customer experience.” The newsletter is sent to 90,000 marketers. The email hits your inbox just once per week.

Each issue will be devoted to key trends on several of these pillars: Content Marketing, Social Media, Email, Amplification, Word of Mouth Marketing, Customer Service & Customer Experience and Analytics.

Take action: Subscribe to the Convince and Convert newsletter.

5. Quartz Daily Brief

If you are looking to keep up-to-date with interesting news in the world, the Quartz Daily Brief newsletter is a great content curation resource.

This newsletter works nicely across a lot of different platforms (desktop, smartphones, and tablets). It is a text newsletter that doesn’t have big images. For example, you can choose your time zone (America, Europe or Asia) so your newsletter is delivered to you at the right time during the day.

Take action: Subscribe to the Quartz Daily Brief newsletter.

What resources would you add?

What would content curation resources would you add to this list? Are you using content curation? What is your mix for content creation to content curation?