Best Free Content Curation Tools 2012

Content Curation has been on the upside lately, and while there are some who don’t think that it is an ethical form of “content creation”, there are those that think completely the opposite. Whichever side you choose to be, you should know that if you do decide to “curate content”, to always give credit to its original source and never copy an entire article even if you are linking back to its original author. That does not have anything to do with curation and may even be considered as stealing content. While I am at it, creating a list of useless links is also not regarded as curating content.

[talk]Which side are you on? Do you favor “content curation” as an interesting approach of content creation/marketing, or are you totally against it?[/talk]

Curating content done properly, IMO has its positives. I do it here on iblogzone, via my weekly speedlinks (weekly roundups). With so much information out there, this is one method where users are starting to see its advantages, due to its objective of “finding the best content about a certain topic”, combining them together, and letting like minded people to know about them. Really great to filter out the noise, and useless content. Actually, some A-listers, such as Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, even includes it on the list of Charles Darwin’s 12 Rules of Blogging Survival, published not long ago. Number 10 on this list reads:

Be the best curator of meaningful content

Find the best information that others have written and posted online—the best articles, charts, tables, infographics, videos, or pictures. Collect it in a logical, easy-to-use navigational structure on your blog.

Make sure you link to and give credit to your sources and only summarize (or take small portions of) the articles you link to. Content curation is a way to share great information that is already available and to become seen as a key source of great information.

Did you notice the words, meaningful, great information and credit your sources? That’s the essence of being a great content curator and nothing else.

[note]UPDATE: April 2012 – Another article that I highly recommend you reading is Content Curation Guide for SEO – What, How, Why from SEOMoz. This gives you a clear picture of how content curation can be used and more.[/note]

Considering that one of the most recent trends has been the increase in content marketing, 2012 appears to be year where curating content may see a big surge of users and may be yet another content marketing technique that you may want to try out. For that purpose, here are some content curation tools that you can use to help you be the best content curator in any topic of your choice, provided you do it, once again, properly.

Free Online Content Curation Tools

scoop.it curation tool Scoop.it Is my favorite online content curation tool so far. Can’t thank Ileane of BasicBlogTips enough for introducing me to this awesome tool. Please follow the link to find out more info.

CurationSoft (aff link) is the only desktop software that I am currently aware of and I love using it. The free version is fully functional and is only limited to “Google’s Blog Search” to source for content. More info in this post – Content Curation, The Next Big Thing?.

Update Jan 2013: Just found out recently that CurationSoft version 2.0 has been rolled out. This is a huge update and one of the good things that I really like about this new version is the ability to post directly from within the software, something that was missing before. Makes it a whole lot easier this way. Here’s Jack’s video presentation.

Google+ is probably one of those tools that you are using and may not be aware that it is actually a great content curation tool, among other things. Yet another reason to be part of the network.

Bundlr.com is a simple way to “bundle” and share web content easily. You can sign in with your Twitter account.

Storify.com is a popular curation service. Content can be added either using the bookmarklet to curate content from any public webpage, or you can use the integrated search to add content by simply drag and dropping.

PearlTrees.com is rising very fast in the daily content aggregation tool arena. Discover, organize, and share everything you like on the web. Has the ability to share across a number of platforms.

MySyndicaat.com is a personalized news aggregator to collect, filter and share web content that is important to you and others. You can aggregate content from a variety of sources on the web – automate keyword searches (Google, Yahoo, …), pull in RSS feeds from news organizations, monitor discussions on blogs, etc.. Content can be automatically updated to ensure information is current.

That’s it! For now, these are the content curation tools that I recommend you using for 2012. These are the ones that have called my attention and if I find more, I will certainly include them in this list.

June 2012: So you like curating content? This curating tool is not your ordinary software. It is simply mind blowing and if you are serious about content curation, this is definitely one tool that I highly recommend, no kidding. PageOne Curator is one of the best curating tool that I have just added to my arsenal.

Now, and understandably, you may want to know more about Content Curation and why it could benefit you, when done properly. Download this free eBook to find out more about curation and what PageOne can do for you. The eBook is free and no optins. Just hit this button to download the PDF file (opens new window).