Content curation is a marketing tactic that can help elevate your brand and establish yourself as an authority. It’s the act of identifying content worth sharing and distributing it across key marketing channels. When surveyed, 85% of content curators identified thought leadership as their main objective for taking part in content curation.
It’s a tried and tested method. Yet, there’s no question that content curation is something that requires a combination of consistency and long-term planning. It’s not something that is going to drive significant results overnight. Which is why, it’s also considered by many as one of the most challenging elements of the content marketing mix.
Luckily, there are tools available that can make the act of content curation easier and more efficient. When Buffer Daily and Buffer Suggestions retired, Prismatic pivoted and Swayy was acquired – a gap in the content curation space was created. And the community felt it…
Content Curation Alternatives For Social Media
Crate ~ GetCrate.co
Crate is a free content curation and scheduling tool that makes it easy to find content worth sharing and schedule to be shared. In full transparency, I’m the co-founder and wanted to include this tool because it can save you lots of time. Crate is a tool uses your input and intelligence to uncover and recommend the best articles, infographics and blog posts for you to share online. Here’s an example of the tool in action:
The content recommendations are determined by the usernames, keywords and URLs you upload to a ‘Crate’. Your Crate is the engine behind the content recommendations that you’re met with when you login.
Crate (still in beta) also integrates directly with Buffer making it easy for you to share your content with ease. If you want to add your content to your Buffer queue, you press a button and it’s done. The integration with Buffer makes Crate a great replacement for Buffer Suggestions or Buffer Daily.
Feedly ~ feedly.com
Feedly is a great tool for identifying content worth reading but you can use it as a resource for content curation as well. It allows you to follow a handful of different blogs and be met with a stream of the latest content from those sites using their RSS feed.
It’s one of the oldest tools on this list as it was initially launched back in 2008. You can get started by logging in with Facebook, Google or Twitter. From there, I’d recommend following one of the predeveloped lists of feeds based on experts picks. The following is a look at what my Feedly looks like, curated by Rand Fishkin of Moz:
Once you click an article that you think is relevant, you have the ability to share it directly to Twitter, Facebook or any other network. Feedly also has Buffer integration making it easy for you to add content directly to your queue.
IFTTT ~ ifttt.com
Social media can be a massive time suck but with IFTTT it doesn’t have to be.
Using IFTTT you can create ‘recipes’ that monitors triggers (if this) to take specific actions (then that). For example, if you’re interested in articles from Social Media Examiner about Instagram, you can build a recipe that tracks the RSS Feed and when a new article is published, have the URL shared on your Twitter account.
Here’s a couple recipes you might like for content curation:
Google Alerts ~ www.google.com/alerts
If you don’t already have a Google Alert set up tracking your name, you’re going to appreciate this tip. Google Alerts is a service that has been around for years but is rarely used as a content curation tool. It allows you to identify a few keywords and set a scheduled frequency for how often you want to be alerted when new content is published online including that keyword.
For example, if you’re tracking the phrase: Growth Hacking – You’ll be met with an email that highlights a handful of new articles that include that phrase in their domain, title or body of text. It’s easy to become overwhelmed with Google Alerts as it relates to content curation but it’s a viable alternative to Swayy and Buffer Suggestions.
Wrapping Things Up
So there you have it…
These are some of the best alternatives to Swayy, Buffer Suggestions, Buffer Daily and Prismatic. If you’re using another tool for content curation that you think should be on the list – I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
While I believe that content curation is both an art and science, I’m a firm believer in making it easier for people to find content worth sharing online.