Photo credit: handrad
These days, content curation is an important aspect of freelance writing, Internet marketing, and socializing on the web. Content curation can help publicize you and your brand, while also establishing trust with your customers and clients. Curation of online content also helps to display authority in your area of expertise. Curating content is not so much about gathering together interesting links and/or interesting facts and figures. It has more to do with filtering through mounds online content, then sharing it online in a way that is appealing, interesting, and organized.
Content curation is a big job, and it takes a bit of time and skill to mine the hills of online content to find the gems that will help to establish your authority and expertise. According to Beth, at Beth’s Blog, curating content is a three-part process: Seek, Sense, Share. Seek the best content, make sense of this content and organize it, and then share it with your online community. These three processes are important to help you filter through massive amounts of information on the Internet. One way of curating content online is to write a blog post with links or even sharing information on Twitter and Facebook. These are two popular ways to curate information. However, there are now many more online tools that help you to curate information on your particular subject.
Best Online Content Curation Tools
Here’s a list of some of the best online curation tools that will help you establish your authority and expertise, while growing readership, customers and clients via the social web. Each curation tool helps you to share information in different ways; making it useful to use more than one of these tools for your freelance business.
Bundlr (bundlr.com)
Bundlr allows you to clip content you like—from photos and videos to tweets and news you want to share with your readers. Bundlr helps you to share your bundls in two ways—via a grid or a timeline. Readers can also get a quick overview of your content being updated as you create/edit your bundls. Bundlr also allows you to easily collaborate with colleagues and friends, making Bundlr a crowd-sourcing curation tool. Bundls can be public or private, and you can also embed your bundls on your website, where it will be updated every time you add or edit to your shared bundl.
Del.icio.us (delicious.com)
Delicious was originally founded in 2003 as a social bookmarking site, but was bought from Yahoo! and completely redone as a content curation and discovery site. Delicious allows you to create “stacks,” which consist of links to informative online content such as blogs, videos and more. You can keep your “stacks” private or share them with the Delicious online community, your colleagues and friends. Delicious offers a handy bookmarklet you can drop into your browser toolbar. The bookmarklet allows you to create and share your “stacks” directly from the web.
List.ly (list.ly)
List.ly allows you to curate content in the form of lists that can be shared with colleagues, your audience and friends. You can use List.ly to create a “best of…” list (such as Best Prague Restaurants), which you can then embed in your blog. One of the best things about List.ly is that you can allow “crowdsourcing” to help add to your list, with each item being voted up or down and commented on. You need to connect with either your Facebook or Twitter account, and then you can begin creating lists to share with colleagues, friends and readers.
Paper.li (Paper.li)
Paper.li is a content curation tool to use with your Twitter account. Paper.li takes Twitter links, from your Twitter feed and the feed of your followers, and compiles it into a daily “newspaper.” Paper.li is easy to use—you just sign in with your Twitter account and then sign up for Paper.li, then create your newspaper. After you’ve created your paper, all you have to do is set up the publication frequency, then Paper.li will pull the most popular information from your and your followers’ feeds to create your paper. Paper.li then sends out a tweet to alert you and your Twitter followers of the new paper. Paper.li is a helpful way to build relationships with other Twitterers and build trust with your readers, while also driving traffic to your blog and other web properties.
Pinterest (Pinterest.com)
Pinterest is a relatively new to the content curation scene, and has become wildly popular in recent months. Pinterest calls itself a virtual “pinboard” that allows you to “pin” any content you’d like to share online. Bloggers use Pinterest to “pin” their blog content, while others use Pinterest to share products, recipes and more. Pinterest is easy to use and share, and allows other Pinterest members to comment and “repin” your content. Promoting your content on Pinterest is easy and fast, but it’s best to have a mix of your own content and that from other writers/website, as well.
Redgage (Redgage.com)
Redgage is a site that allows you to share links and other online content while also earning money from your shared content. Many bloggers use Redgage to promote their own blogs and online articles, however Redgage can also be used to curate content to help build trust and demonstrate knowledge in your areas of expertise. Redgage helps you to gain backlinks, while also driving traffic to your sites.
Scoop.it (scoop.it)
Scoop.it is another easy site to help you curate content from your blog and from around the web. Scoop.it is makes it easy to save content you find and allows you to organize information by category. You can also follow other topics and “rescoop” insightful information you find, while also sharing “scoops” via Twitter. You can use Scoop.it to help drive traffic to your own online properties, while sharing an unlimited number of sources. Scoop.it also offers a keyword search tool, helping you to find additional content that may be useful to you and your readers. Scoop.it allows you to share your posts on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, while adding a comment to go with your scoop.
Storify (storify.com)
Storify helps you to create “social stories” from social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram and more. Storify is easy to use, as it allows you to drag and drop photos, videos, status updates to bring together the content for your “story.” After you’ve found the elements for your “story,” Storify allows you to write your own comments and narrative to help make sense of the elements you’ve pulled together from around the web. You can write your own headline, intro and insert text at any point in your “story.” Storify also allows you to add headers, links and styled text. Once you have completed your story, you can your Storify stories anywhere on the web by using an embed code. Your story can be connected to platforms such as WordPress, Drupal, Tumblr, and Posterous. You can also send your story out in an email newletter format through your Mailchimp account. Storify is a versatile platform to help develop your brand, while driving traffic to your online content.
Tumblr (tumblr.com)
Tumblr was launched about 5 years ago, and is considered to be a blogging platform. However, Tumblr makes it fast and easy to post links, videos, and other content. When you set up a Tumblr blog, the site allows you to choose the theme and colors you’d prefer. You can access Tumblr across all of your mobile and desktop devices. Tumblr makes it easy to curate your favorite content and share with the online community, your colleagues and friends.
Sum it Up
Each of these content curation tools helps you to organize and share information in different ways with your readers, customers and colleagues. Using a mix of these tools will help you to increase the number of blog readers, connect with others in your field or business, and help to establish you as an expert in your area(s) of expertise. Give them a try and you’ll soon find your freelance business growing!
Here are a few books to help you with blogging and content curation.
