The Best Content Curation Tools for SMBs

With the rise of inbound marketing and the growing popularity of curating content, the number of content curation tools to help you find and share content has exploded. Use the following list of the best content curation tools for entrepreneurs and small businesses to jumpstart your efforts as a curator.

*Please note: we haven’t been able to test every content discovery and curation platform out there, but all resources listed in this post are popular and have great recommendations.

Finding Content on Twitter

Twitter search & lists ~ Sometimes the best tools are the simplest. Start by searching, marking favorite tweets, and creating lists of Twitter users.

Favourites.io ~ Save and organize your own tweets and embed the collections into blog posts.

Monitter ~ A real-time Twitter search tool that helps you keep tabs on specific keywords and even geographic locations.

Sotwe ~ Aggregates your Twitter stream into a personalized newspaper. It’s not a full curation platform, but it can help you get a better idea of what’s going on in your industry via Twitter.

Finding and Organizing Content from Around the Web

Bundlr ~ One of the most popular content curation tools, Bundlr lets you clip videos, tweets, photos, and more into bundles, and share and embed those bundles across all major platforms.

Social Mention ~ Track and measure what people are saying about you or a specific topic across hundreds of social platforms.

Blekko ~ With a tagline of “spam free search engine,” Blekko uses slashtags to deliver better search results than regular keyword searching.

Bag the Web ~ Save content you discover in collections called “bags,” then link your bags together to create rich, dynamic information networks.

Pearltrees ~ This recently popular content curation tool creates hub-and-spoke style tree diagram of content you have searched, discovered, and collected. Hover over a pearl to see new content and “pick” it to add it to your collection.

Curation Station ~ A paid content curation platform, Curation Station is an enterprise-level tool that helps you gather, monitor, select and share content with plenty of customization options to match your branded website.

Your Version ~ A single dashboard that organizes keyword-based interests into tabs like News, Blogs, Friends, and more. Adjust Relevance and Recency to get the right blend.

Summify ~ This content curation tool creates an easy-to-read daily summary of the most relevant news from your networks delivered via email, web, or mobile.

Redux ~ Specifically for videos, Redux helps you discover the best videos in very tightly-focused topics. Curate content by creating your own channel.

Netvibes ~ This platform creates a dashboard where you can see videos, news, mentions on several social platforms and more for specific keywords or categories. The free version features real-time monitoring, lots of personalization, and mobile syncing, while the paid versions offer analytics, tagging, alerts, and more.

Diigo ~ A true bookmarking tool you can access and share from anywhere, Diigo helps you collect and organize content both on the web and off, including bookmarks, highlights, screenshots, and more.

Instapaper ~ When you find great content and don’t have time to read it right away, you can save it to Instapaper and read it later in a newspaper format from any device.

Using News and Feeds to Find Curation-Worthy Content

RSS feeds ~ Subscribing to relevant websites and blogs via RSS keeps your email inbox clean and saves you the time of visiting each site individually.

Blog Bridge ~ If you subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds, this handy tool helps you organize and manage your feeds so you can more easily find the best content.

Feedly ~ Sometimes described as a “RSS reader on steroids”, Feedly lets you customize your RSS subscriptions to bring the best content to the top. Requires a Google account.

Google News ~ Search Google’s News tab to see the latest news.

Google Trends ~ Search the trends data collected by Google to learn what’s hot in your industry.

Google Alerts ~ Set up alerts for keywords and company name for a bird’s-eye-view of what people are saying on the subject.

MySyndicaat ~ A no-nonsense news content curation tool that lets you aggregate, filter, and dynamically deliver the best news content.

Story Crawler ~ Prides itself on being an intelligent search engine and information-gathering software that constantly hones in on your specific needs.

Storyful ~ Using tweets, videos, and images, this content curation tool helps you tell a visual story about a particular topic.

Evri ~ Find the greatest news stories, track the ones that matter to you, and curate content through your own channels.

Sharing Curated Content On and Off Your Blog

Shareist ~ With this handy tool you can create a custom curation website where you publish and comment on curated content.

Storify ~ Create a coherent narrative about a topic or story with tweets, other media, and your own unique commentary. Then share or embed your story to rack up the likes and comments.

Paper.li ~ Create an online magazine full of curated content in a matter of minutes with this tool. Pulls news and links from your RSS feeds, Twitter, and Facebook.

Scoop.it ~ This platform creates magazine-like hubs of curated content for you to share with your audience. Both free and paid versions allow unlimited amount of sources, but the paid version includes analytics and branding.

Equentia ~ Become a professional publisher with this rich platform, which includes dedicated topic portals and analytics. Free and paid versions.

CurationSoft ~ Integrated with many major curation and publishing platforms like Google+ and WordPress, this tool cuts out the middleman so you can curate better content faster.

XYDO ~ This content curation tool specializes in sharing curated content with social networks and email newsletters, and it tracks all social engagement for you.

Curata ~ Find, organize, and publish curated content with this all-in-one product. Intelligent cataloging indexes your content to help you find what you’re looking for faster and makes suggestions to help you help your audience.

FlashIssue ~ Curate attractive and professional email newsletters in minutes with this platform. It helps you find and present content, email through different providers, and get more conversions from readers.

What Content Curation Tools Do You Use? We’d love to hear your opinions and experiences with the tools listed above or others that work for you. Please share your thoughts in the comments below!