Content Curation, How It’s Done and Tools

In previous articles, we have seen that links are very important for SEO, well, content is not far behind. 

By creating and curating content, we can rank for those keywords that generate business for us. And from the user's perspective, we manage to connect with them organically.

Quality and useful content is not present on all websites or blogs, and to achieve it, we must find valid information from different sources, process it, organize it, and present it to users in the best possible way.

This is basically what content curation consists of, and in this article, you will learn everything essential to carry it out, tools, and much more.

Stay tuned because we are starting!

Table of Contents

What is Content Curation

It involves searching, collecting, filtering, and selecting the most relevant information you find on the Internet to meet the needs of your target audience. Generating value and with it, more business opportunities.

In other words, selecting those contents that add value to our community. This task is usually performed by the content manager of a company, and if the business is small, by the person responsible for managing the blog's content.

What is a Content Curator?

The Internet brought with it the so-called “infoxication” or information saturation, which makes users increasingly demand answers that address their searches.

This is where the role of the content curator comes into play, who is the professional that seeks and selects the most reliable sources, offering valuable content.

This content can be, for example, a post, a video, an image, or a LinkedIn publication, among others.

It is common for journalists or communication professionals to carry out this work.

What skills allow us to develop content curation?

We would say that skills such as judgment and analytical ability are the foundation of content curation.

There are many tools (we will see them now) that can help in the task of curating content, but they will be of little use if the person using them lacks analytical skills and critical vision.

The task of deciding what is relevant and what is not, and how the content is ultimately structured, are two fundamental aspects when creating good articles that meet the user's search intent.

A good content curator will not limit themselves to plagiarizing but will take third-party content as a reference and inspiration. In that case, we would incur a serious error as it would be duplicate content and would harm us at the SEO level.

Ultimately, what is sought is for the entity or person behind that content to be perceived as an expert in their field.

It is also very important for the content curator to have writing skills to effectively convey the information.

Benefits of Content Curation

Some of the most important benefits that content curation brings are:

Helps improve SEO positioning and brand visibility: By showing valuable and relevant content on the website, it can attract more users and generate an increase in traffic.

Additionally, by presenting useful information, users are more likely to interact, comment, and share the content, which increases visibility, reach, and trust in the brand.

Saves time: Since content curation selects the most relevant and useful information on a topic, users will not have to search as much, saving them time and effort by providing the content they need.

Staying updated: Content curation involves keeping up with the latest trends, news, and developments on a topic.

Methodology You Should Follow

Depending on the topic, we can probe directly into the top results on Google or on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or other social networks.

Let’s look at the steps to follow:

Identify the needs of your audience

First of all, we must identify what the audience we aim to reach considers useful and quality content.

How to know the needs of our audience?

For example, by analyzing feedback on social media, you can make decisions to focus the content curation.

If we actively listen to the audience, they will tell us what we need to do. This way, we can quickly respond to their needs.

Analyze the collected information and create the content

Once we have searched for relevant information for our audience on the Internet, we must organize it.

We must understand the contents to process them. This way, we will be in a position to evaluate what may interest us and what may not.

Now we are going to create our content.

This point is important because this is where we can contribute the most. For example, if we believe that something we found can be improved, we should do it.

This will add distinctive and unique value to the content. Similarly, it also works to put into practice what others theoretically expose and share the results.

It is also advisable to consider the opinions of authors and content curators. Many people follow them for the comments or perspectives they can provide on a specific topic.

Citing third parties is permissible and advisable, always referring to the original source. 

Share the content

It’s time to disseminate and promote the content so that it reaches your target audience. Depending on the type of content and its target, the most suitable channels will be chosen.

Measure the results

Finally, we must analyze the results to evaluate the impact of the published content and see to what extent we have achieved our goal.

We can use SEO tools like Google Search Console, which will tell us if we have gained positions for a specific keyword compared to its position before the content curation.

This will allow us to know what type of content we should curate and create to meet the needs of our audience.

Content Curation and SEO

We have said that curating content is about searching, analyzing, and sharing relevant content. Well, within SEO, content curation is key as improving the content can lead Google to rank it higher in its results.

You can use the information provided by Google Search Console to see the average position of pages and clicks. This way, you can analyze which of them you are interested in curating.

Content Creation and Google

In this update of useful content, Google states that it will better reward content that provides a satisfactory experience for visitors, while content that does not meet visitors' expectations will not perform well.

AI-Generated Content and Google

Regarding AI-generated content, Google is clear on this matter and basically states that it will reward quality content regardless of how it is created.

Example of Content Curation

An example of content curation is what a guy we really like does, who sends valuable information weekly through his newsletter.

He is David Carrasco, aka “the Boss,” and what he does is gather relevant information and send it explaining in a few lines the links he shares and why they are important. He also includes an intro that will not leave you indifferent as it encourages you to reflect.

The result is a content curation with a lot of value for his audience, with all the week's news from Google and SEO, Digital Marketing, and Social Media, the Digital World, Tools, Tutorials, guides, cases, and a thousand other things.

Highly recommended to stay up to date.

15 Tools for Content Curation

On the Internet, billions of online content are generated every minute. That’s why there are hundreds of tools that help in some way to catalog them.

Here are the 15 tools that we believe are the most useful for carrying out content curation:

SEO Content Audit

A very important part of an SEO audit is to analyze the content of the website. By reviewing points such as duplicate content, content structure, keyword optimization, image analysis, EEAT, we can evaluate which contents have generated the most visits.

Google

Search queries can be a good source of inspiration for knowing how to enrich your content. You can use the sections “Other User Questions” and “Related Searches” to get ideas.

Now you can create quality content based on those ideas to offer value to your audience.

Feedly

Feedly is a free news aggregator that helps you know when other blogs publish their articles and stay up to date with those updates. With this tool, you can:

-See when the competition publishes.

-Your readers can see when you publish on your blog.

-It allows you to stay informed about all the news on a specific topic and save articles. You can also share articles through social media.

You need to create an account to use this content curation tool.

Flipboard

Flipboard is a content organizer where you can search for social content, news, photography pages, and other websites presented in magazine format.

This content curation tool, while not a social network, can be considered a social tool or news aggregator since you can share information and check the profiles of other users.

A multifunctional application that emerged in 2010 and has come to stay, with a simple and intuitive interface.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a visual social network that you can use to find ideas for your projects in the form of images. Ideas on any topic, as there are about fashion, business, travel, cooking, gardening, marketing, painting, and much more.

Pocket

Whenever you come across an interesting article, video, blog post, or other type of content, you can add it to your Pocket account.

Later, when you go to publish curated content, you will have a collection of material ready to be shared.

LinkedIn Pulse

LinkedIn, as you know, is the most used professional social network in the world. It is used as a communication and personal branding tool to promote and generate a network of contacts and seek or offer jobs.

To improve the positioning of each profile, it has the LinkedIn Pulse functionality that allows us to find and view information on the topics that interest us. To do this, we must add content and select what we are interested in seeing.

You can also create your own content as if it were your blog, share curated content on other social networks like Twitter or Facebook.

It offers statistics so you can see the reach of your publications.

Paper.li

A very useful tool for curating content. Paper.li is used to publish, share, and collect information automatically and quickly. It has a free version and a paid version to expand functionalities.

Evernote

It’s like a notepad where you can jot down relevant information that you find on the Internet.

Evernote is a tool for organizing information for use on mobile devices, although it can also be used on a computer.

Later, you can filter and save the information that is truly useful.

Google Alerts

Set up Google Alerts for relevant keywords in your topic. This way, you will receive an email notification every time Google finds new content for those keywords.

Now you have a source of updated content that you can review whenever you want to create posts.

Twitter

As you know, Twitter is the most instantaneous free social network (for now) that allows sharing links to blog articles, images, and videos.

Twitter lists allow you to organize and customize Tweets according to your interests. You can create your own or join already created lists. You will see a timeline of Tweets from the accounts included in that list.

In them, you will have valuable and relevant content for your audience, so you will always have options to work with.

Trendspottr

With this not-so-friendly name, we find a useful tool to anticipate trends and know viral stories about the topics we search for on social media. You have a 7-day free trial, and then you have to pay for their services.

Storify

An example of what some have come to call “transmedia narrative,” it allows you to collect in one “container” information published on a specific topic across different social networks and websites. It is free.

List.ly

Listly is one of the best tools for easily and effectively selecting content.

It allows you to create lists of almost anything: images, videos, applications, or texts.

Listly is about creating and curating lists. It allows you to vote on each list, leave comments, share your user experience, follow the list, and even share it on Social Media.

Content Gems

It is another of the most used tools for content curation with which you can search for published articles on the Internet on any topic and set alerts based on your interests for new articles published.

Conclusions

You can apply content curation in various areas, such as email marketing, blog posts, infographics, websites, magazines, and social media, among other formats and media. In addition to providing additional information to your readers, it allows you to become a reliable source of consultation.

As a result, you will get more visits through the various channels of your brand. It is increasingly proven that when a user, consumer, or reader ensures that the content comes from reliable sources or an expert in the topic, there is a higher probability that they will read, visit, or buy from you.

We hope you found this article useful, and as a bonus, we leave you the latest Unantalks on Content Creation and Curation with Álex Castro and Jessica Quero.