Revised January 22, 2021
Revised May 29, 2019
Revised October 5, 2017
Although content marking is now a nearly universal practice—with 93% of B2B marketers using content marketing—half of all marketers still rank “producing enough content” as one of their top five challenges.
Fortunately, content marketers don’t have to do it all themselves. Content curation offers a way to repackage and repurpose the work of others to serve the needs of your brand’s audience. Curation can take a variety of forms:
- Weekly “best of” compilations (example: V3*Broadsuite blog)
- Expert summary compilations (example: Soulati Media)
- Expert interview roundups (example: iDigic)
What’s more, the work of discovering and saving curation-worthy content—and in some cases, even displaying and sharing it—doesn’t have to be (entirely at least) a manual effort.
The 20+ tools showcased here enable you to automatically find, source, search, store, organize, annotate, and/or share content from a wide range of publishers and social sources. Curated content can’t replace your own original creation, of course, but it can certainly supplement your efforts while still engaging your readers, viewers, and followers.
1) Storify
Google Review Count: 350
Create and source user-generated content fast with simultaneous collaboration. Ideal for live blogs, breaking events, and conferences. Store and repurpose content for later reposting. Permium version includes automated content curation.
UPDATE: Despite being possibly the most popular content curation tool in its time, Storify shut down in May 2018. Fortunately, there are several alternatives (see below). CurationSoft is a powerful (paid) tool for users with professional users with sophisticated needs. Additional options include ShareIt by Social Pilot, and Wakelet, a free tool that provides a similar feature set to Storify, and is offering a service for Storify users to export all the links they have on their public Storify stories to Wakelet.
Sample review: “Add and curate content from any public webpage. Alternatively, you can use the integrated search to add content by simply drag and dropping. It’s a great way to capture the buzz from the show floor after a tradeshow, event or conference.” — Maximize Social Business (Drive)
2) Pocket
Google Review Count: 346
Grab content (articles, videos, whatever) from your web browser, email, or a wide range of apps including Twitter, Flipboard and Pulse, and save it in Pocket. View your content any time from any device, with or without an Internet connection.
Sample review: “One of the most important tools in a marketer’s tool belt is knowledge. But who has time to cull through the hundreds of thousands of articles written daily? That’s where Pocket comes in. Stay up-to-date on the latest trends and industry news by saving content to read later. I use the Chrome extension and the iPhone app to sync my content as I save on the go.” — Rebekah Radice
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: ArCompany, Catherine Pham/SlideShare, Express Writers, Gizmodo, Marketing Insider Group (Starup), Maximize Social Business (Grow), Re/code, Rebekah Radice, Social Media Today, StoreYa Blog
3) Instapaper
Google Review Count: 342
Save articles, videos, recipes, or any interesting content to Instapaper with one click. Read and view any saved content on virtually any device, online or off. Highlight noteworthy text in any saved content.
Sample review: “Recently, Instapaper got a refresh; it looks and feels better-organized. And there’s another handy new feature called Highlights. This works much like the highlighting feature in Kindle…it acts more like a news curator than a compiler — and there are plenty of aggregator apps out there — but it’s a fast way to check out what others are reading, too. Lastly, if you’re using Instapaper in the Apple/iOS ecosystem, it can stream saved videos to your TV using AirPlay.” — Re/code
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: Kissmetrics, Re/code
4) Flipboard
Google Review Count: 323
A hybrid curation app and social network—grab any content from the web and save it to your own Flipboard magazine. For bloggers, add a share button to posts to make it easy for others to Flip. Invite others to follow you on Flipboard.
Sample review: “I have connected my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn feeds to Flipboard, enabling me to scan each post in the feed as if they were articles in an electronic magazine. I see the first paragraph of an article, a thumbnail for a video, or an image without having to click on any links. I get a pretty good idea of what the post is about just from my scan. This enables me to scan quite a bit of content and take action only on what I deem important. I can reply, retweet or save to Pocket.” — ArCompany
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: ArCompany, Maximize Social Business (Grow), PR Daily, Shift Communications
5) Pinterest
Google Review Count: 289
A social network / curation tool for images. Find and save recipes, photos, infographics, comics, wish-list items, style inspiration and other ideas to try.
Sample review: “By now I’m sure you’re already quite familiar with Pinterest (and are as addicted to it as I am). But have you thought about using it to curate ideas for your content? Perhaps you see an infographic you like and want to emulate, or new ways to present your content visually. Pinterest is the ultimate visual content curation tool!” — Online Marketing Institute
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: Marketing Insider Group (Curation), Online Marketing Institute
6) CurationSoft
Google Review Count: 272
Discover, review and curate content from blogs, news sites, Google Plus, Facebook, Amazon, Ebay, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, Wikipedia, or any RSS feed. Search by keyword, choose content, drag and drop, add commentary, and post. Share the latest content in your industry, generate backlinks, and avoid copyright issues.
Sample review: “CurationSoft enables you to curate information and discover things based on keywords from Google, Google blogs, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and any RSS feed.” — Maximize Social Business (Drive)
Pricing: $5 per month or $47 per year
Showcase reviews: Maximize Social Business (Drive)
7) Pearltrees
Google Review Count: 271
Organize, explore and share everything you like. Save web pages, files, photos or notes and categorize them. Explore collections related to your interests and subscribe to their updates. Access your account anytime and share anything from your computer, mobile and tablet.
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: Maximize Social Business (Drive)
8) Curata
Google Review Count: 234
Find relevant content delivered to you automatically, all in one place, from hundreds of thousands of sources, using Curata’s self-learning engine. Organize, annotate and create content to engage your audience.
Sample review: “A content provider that emphasizes growing revenue and leads with strong, scalable content production. Curata features powerful analytics that measures performance and sales pipeline impact.” — SnapApp
Pricing: contact vendor for pricing
Showcase reviews: Marketing Insider Group (Curation), SnapApp
9) RebelMouse
Google Review Count: 226
Calling itself “the first digital publishing platform that is fully wired for social,” RebelMouse enables brands, media companies and individuals to create content that reaches and grows audiences across the social web. It distributes content across sites, social, apps and ads, and amplifies engagement with intelligent recommendations, social calls to action, and real-time trending alerts.
Sample review: “RebelMouse is a content curator tool that enables users to integrate content from social media networks, blogs and news websites. It caters to individuals as well as enterprises who have content marketing in their branding strategy.” — GetApp
Pricing: contract vendor for pricing
Showcase reviews: GetApp, Inspire To Thrive
10) Listly
Google Review Count: 212
A simple tool to create, share, curate, and collaborate on lists.
Sample review: “If you want to build a list that can easily be updated and voted on by your community use List.ly.” — RazorSocial
Pricing: free or $10 per month/$100 per year per user
Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger, Maximize Social Business (Drive), Online Marketing Institute, RazorSocial
11) TrapIt
Google Review Count: 180
UPDATE: TrapIt was acquired by ScribbleLive in May 2017. It’s not clear what happened to the product after that.
12) BagTheWeb
Google Review Count: 164
Curate online content by creating focused “bags” containing the best links on your favorite topics. A bag is a hybrid media container that allows you to organize the links you find most interesting into a cohesive unit, then share your bags.
Sample review: “Bagtheweb helps users curate Web content. For any topic, you can create a ‘bag’ to collect, publish, and share content from the Web.” — Maximize Social Business (Drive)
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: Maximize Social Business (Drive)
13) ContentGems
Google Review Count: 150
Find relevant content on any topic by applying filters to ContentGems’ database of sources or your own collection, then receive a dynamic stream of content. Share discovered content on social networks, in email newsletter, on websites, portals, or web apps.
Sample review: “You can get access to 200,000+ RSS feeds. Search by your selected keywords, and you’ll be able to scan through gobs of content.” — Marketing Insider Group (Curation)
Pricing: free, $99 or $199 per month
Showcase reviews: Marketing Insider Group (Curation)
14) Quuu
Google Review Count: 141
Automates sharing of curated content. Select relevant interest categories, then Quuu will automatically send “hand curated” content to your Buffer account for you to review, edit, and queue for posting.
Sample review: “Set up filters and ideas that relate to your niche. This tool will provide a constant stream of hand-picked content for you to scan and sort through.” — Marketing Insider Group (Curation)
Pricing: free or $10 per month
Showcase reviews: Marketing Insider Group (Curation), SnapApp
15) Nuzzel
Google Review Count: 139
Use Nuzzel to search for top news stories by topic, and discover the best news stories shared by your friends on Facebook and Twitter without being overwhelmed or missing anything.
Sample review: “As both a web and iOS app, this social-media tool helps you organize the stories shared by your Facebook and Twitter friends, aggregating the information into easy-to-read links and providing a way to add influencers that you can leverage for your own marketing needs. You can also go deeper by accessing the stories shared by friends of friends to develop a better understanding of your audience.” — Nuzzel
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: Entrepreneur, Robbie Richards
16) Pressly
Google Review Count: 82
UPDATE: Pressly was acquired and absorbed by Vision Critical in September, 2017. Another one bites the dust.
17) elink.io
Google Review Count: 78
An all-in-one content curation tool that lets you collect virtually any type of content, from rich media (video, SlideShare, etc.), RSS feeds and web content to documents, customize your layout, and share your curated content via an email newsletter (integrates with popular EMS providers), web page, or real-time website embed.
Sample review: “elink (is an) all-in-one content curation tool. Combine web links and share them in three beautiful ways. Customize the look and feel of your content with beautiful pre-built layouts. Use elink Chrome Extension to capture content on the web in seconds.” — You Brand Inc.
Pricing: free or $12 per month; contact vendor for enterprise pricing
Showcase reviews: You Brand Inc.
18) Tint
Google Review Count: 70
Aggregate content from sources across the web. Integrate user-generated content (UGC) into websites, microsites, ad units, digital screens, projector walls, and elsewhere. Collect and curate content from 15 different channels to involve customers and brand advocates.
Sample review: “What…sets Tint apart?…Social Media Walls for Events! You can use Tint on a TV monitor to display the event’s official Facebook feed, the speaker’s Twitter feed, a sponsor’s Instagram photos, or even tweets/photos your attendees are sharing via hashtags that you specify.” — Inspire to Thrive
Pricing: $500 or $1,000 per year; enterprise pricing by quote
Showcase reviews: Inspire To Thrive
19) Ctrlq RSS Search
Google Review Count: 20
Instant RSS Search is a Google powered feed engine to help you discover RSS feeds around your favorite topics. Customize queries to find popular blogs and news sites covering specific topics, all RSS feeds from a particular publisher, feeds by topic, or Twitter accounts within an organization.
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: Wrike
20) historius
Google Review Count: 8
Save any web page from any browser with a single click. Store a cached version of the page for offline use or permanent archiving. Find saved pages using full-text search, and share your saved file archive with anyone.
Sample review: “You bookmarked a great article a couple of months ago, and now you need to find it again – but which one was it? If you’re not the type who bothers with tags or descriptions then it may take some time to find out. But that’s where Historio.us comes in. This lightweight and simple tool bookmarks a page using its bookmarklet (no bulky extensions here), and then allows full text searching of your bookmark collection, any time you like.” — TechRadar
Pricing: free, $3 per month, or $20 per year
Showcase reviews: TechRadar
21) Feed My Inbox
Google Review Count: 6
A very simple tool that lets you subscribe to any number of RSS feeds as emails. Just paste in a feed URL, enter your email address, and choose your preferred sending frequency.
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: Siasat
More Tools
Wakelet
Google Review Count: 119
Wakelet takes the concept of social bookmarking—think Folkd, Diigo, or even Scoop.it—to a whole new level. Create, organize, and reorganize at any time collections of links. Personalize collections with your own images and layout. Collaborate with team members, keep collections private, or embed them. This is a helpful tool for content planning and research as well as many other purposes.
Pricing: free
ShareIt
Google Review Count: 114
Search for the most-shared content on social media in any topic area with the last 24 hours, then reshare on your social networks directly or schedule posts across your social media accounts using Social Pilot. Find relevant Twitter accounts based on keywords, and filter content by relevance and time.
Pricing: free
Eyebase
Google Review Count: 56
A sophisticated digital asset management (DAM) system that imports and syncs assets as easily as Dropbox; auto-tags assets using artificial intelligence (AI); uses multi-lingual tags so you can tag an asset in one language and search for it in another; simplifies collaboration; offers intelligent video search; and integrates with other systems including WordPress, Salesforce, and Adobe applications.
Pricing: starts at $500
Martin Social
Google Review Count: N/A (in beta)
It may be premature to call this a “best” tool, but it has interesting potential. Martin uses AI technology (powered by IBM Watson) to analyze your Facebook business page feed and suggest third-party content to post, curating content from more than 100,00 news, video, and company sources.
Pricing: free (while in beta)
Showcase Reviews
ArCompany
BuzzBlogger
Catherine Pham/SlideShare
Entrepreneur
Express Writers
GetApp
Gizmodo
Inspire To Thrive
Kissmetrics
Marketing Insider Group (Curation)
Marketing Insider Group (Startup)
Maximize Social Business (Drive)
Maximize Social Business (Grow)
Online Marketing Institute
Perception System
PR Daily
RazorSocial
Re/code
Rebekah Radice
Robbie Richards
Shift Communications
Siasat
SnapApp
Social Media Today
StoreYa Blog
TechRadar
Wrike
You Brand Inc.
This was the 28th post in the Best Online Business Tools series.
#1: Best Online Business Tools Series Kicks Off Today
#2: The 12 Best Competitive Intelligence and Benchmarking Tools
#3: The Nine Best Facebook Marketing Tools
#4: The 14 Best Content Planning and Research Tools
#5: The 23 Best Content Ideation Tools
#6: The 24 Best Online Writing Tools and Apps
#7: The Six Best Google+ Marketing Tools
#8: The Four Best Online Education Tools For Business Pros
#9: The 14 Best Marketing Automation Tools
#10: The 17 Best Keyword Research Tools for SEO and SEM
#11: The Seven Best File Sharing Tools
#12: The Five Best Infographic Creation Tools and Services
#13: The 28 Best Influencer Marketing Tools
#14: The Five Best Pinterest and Instagram Marketing Tools
#15: The 24 Best Visual Content Creation Tools
#16: The Six Best Online HR, Payroll, and Employee Scheduling Tools
#17: The 20 Best SEO Rank Tracker Tools
#18: The Six Best Screen Capture Tools
#19: The 15 Best Special-Purpose SEO Tools
#20: The Four Best Online Survey Tools
#21: The 26 Best All-in-One SEO Tool Suites
#22: The 32 Best Twitter Marketing Tools
#23: The 29 Best Web Analytics Tools
#24: The 24 Best Email Marketing Tools
#25: The 28 Best Web Design Tools
#26: The 29 Best Social Media Monitoring Tools
#27: The 17 Best Project Management Tools
#28: The 21 Best Content Curation Tools
Strongly recommend that you revise this column to include Scoop.it, one of the leaders in this space.
Hey Tom,
You have pretty much mentioned all the content curation tools. Infact i was not aware of some of the tools above… Like Pearltrees, historius.. to mention ..
But i am bit curious about google review count . How to find that for any particular web tool or product..?
Also could you give me your feedback on Elink.io as content curation tool. Cause i have been using that for 2 months now.. and since you have not mentioned above….? So what’s your feedback on it….
This collections does not seem to have been created by a person competent in the field of content curation and no verification seems to have been carried out on the tools listed.
For example: Mysyndicaat listed here does not operate since several years.
Trap.it has pivoted over 2 years ago to a different model.
Rebelmouse has no free option.
Several of the tools listed are simply content discovery, bookmarking or read-it-later tools with no facilities to actually curate and publicly share content.
The author of the article, Tom Pick, does not have a reachable bio on this article/site, and by looking at his LinkedIN profile it is possible to see that he has multiple credentials and experiences in the field of digital marketing, but not specifically in the one of content curation. I would be very hesitant to use and refer to a list of “top tools” for a specific activity made by a person who does not typically use these tools and who has leveraged other non-vetted public info to publish this list.
Great catch Joe. I’ve used Scoop.it and agree it’s a nice tool. Scoop.it was actually included in an earlier post in this series, The 23 Best Content Ideation Tools. It could have fit into this bucket just as well, but I tried to find the best category for each tool.
Hi Akshay, thanks for stopping by! To answer your questions: Google review count is literally a manual search on Google for the number of reviews written about each product. It’s a surrogate measure for popularity. Not perfect, but it provides some idea of each tool’s standing, and since there’s no way to compare attributes like number of customers, users, or revenue, this seems like a reasonable basis for sorting. Second, Elink.io looks interesting. I will definitely check that out.
Hello Robin, thanks for stopping by! I’m a fan of your work, and have cited you in the past here, such as in this post from back in 2010: https://webbiquity.com/business-blogging/how-to-launch-a-successful-blog-in-12-weeks-lessons-from-webbiquity/
I understand your concerns and am happy to address them, but I must say – I’m baffled by your hostile tone. It’s not as though we’re discussing U.S. politics here!
So, in order:
1) “This collections does not seem to have been created by a person competent in the field of content curation.” First, I’ve written large numbers of curation posts here on Webbiquity, so many that for a while I getting almost too closely identified with that style of content. Here’s one example: https://webbiquity.com/marketing-strategy/19-remarkable-guides-on-business-strategy-leadership-and-motivation/
Second, I’ve written about it, been interviewed about, and even participated in a Twitter chat with SEO expert Ann Smarty about it: http://viralcontentbee.com/index.php/pr-and-content-marketing-twitter-chat-with-tompick/
And third, I’m co-founder (along with Tony Karrer) of two content curation sites, B2B Marketing Zone and Social Media Informer.
So I think I’m competent.
2) The initial list of tools to include was based on researching more than 100 tool review blog post from bloggers like Micheal Brenner, Ian Cleary, Rebekah Radice, and Robbie Richards. Each tool website was verified in the process of writing the post. As to your specific examples:
– Mysundicaat may no longer be operating, but it would hard to detect that. Not only the website but the signup page (http://mysyndicaat.kipcast.com/mysynd/subscribe) are still live.
– The home page of TrapIt has a large badge that says “Best Content Curation Platform.” Screenshot: https://webbiquity.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/TrapIt-home.jpg
– You are correct about Rebelmouse, that was a mistake on my part, thank you for bringing that to my attention. I’ve now fixed it.
– Agree to disagree? Some of the top bloggers included those sites under “content curation” so I did as well. I chose an expansive definition of the term.
3) My bio and blog description can be found on the About page here. That also links to my LinkedIn bio for those curious to learn more.
4) These are “top tools” as defined by a) being included in multiple expert tool reviews as explained above, and b) the total number of reviews they’ve appeared in per Google. It’s not a perfect methodology, but also not unreasonable. And no one should make decisions based on any single blog post. I would always encourage people to read other reviews as well as checking sites like G2 Crowd and Capterra.
I hope that addresses your concerns, Robin. Thanks for the comment and I hope you remain a reader of Webbiquity!
Hello Tom,
I am sorry for not having recognized a passionate fan. My bad.
I also apologize for my tone. I am just very passionate and I excuse myself if my tone appeared inappropriate.
Let me comment on your points:
1) I respect your point of view, but as you say you are a fan of mine, I think you should take comment seriously. That is the impression you gave me by reading your content.
2) In my opinion if you want to be perceived as a reliable, credible and authoritative author, you need to do your own research. You can’t rely on the lists made by others who in turn have done so. This is what curation is all about: vetting, verifying and bringing to the reader, as your title suggest, only the best.
MySyndicaat may have a page up, but is closed since 7 years. It takes little to find out. If not just by looking at the copyright year at the bottom of the page. Once again it is indicated from the title of this article that these are supposed to be the best curation tools, so, as a reader, I expect you check what you suggest to me. More so, if you genuinely declare to be a “competent” one.
Trapit does not offer anymore the curation service it got listed on the list you have consulted.
Try it out and see for yourself.
3) I have clicked several times on your name that appears clickable on every article on this site, but I could not get to it. My apologies.
4) To me your methodology is flawed from the very roots as you are tapping into lists made by non-experts who did not themselves have the time to go, test and try them out.
I am sorry Tom, but I cannot compliment you for this kind of approach. I came here to learn and discover something, but found none of this. It is unfortunate that other people who have much less experience than me would have to waste their time following advice and tools that are not updated, verified or reliable.
Whether you tap into other’s people research or not, I assume that any credible author must take personal responsibility for what he publishes and for the value (and reactions) it brings to his readers.
I think you can positively revise and improve this article by actually interviewing curation practitioners if you want to rely on other expert opinions, or you can go out and check, one-by-one what you are suggesting before publishing it with such a title.
Hi Robin – no worries. To your points:
1) I do respect your opinions, I do take them seriously, and I appreciate the time you’ve taken to now post two very detailed comments here. I’m just not quite sure what to do with all your suggestions.
2) It’s my opinion it’s fine to create this list based on a large number of posts from experts like Ian Cleary and Michael Brenner; would you not agree they are experts? What’s important is to be upfront about my methodology, which I believe I have done. To say “I’ve thoroughly tested each of these tools, and my list is based on that testing!” would be untrue. There are several I’ve used, and several I haven’t. So I am supplementing my personal experience with the experience of other experts whom I trust, and presenting the information clearly on that basis.
I’ve deleted MySyndicaat at your suggestion (thank you). As for Trapit, my review accurately reflects the content of their website. If that information is not accurate, the issue is with Trapit, not my post.
3) You found a glitch I thought I’d fixed, again, thank you! I’m looking into why the link from my name is not properly redirecting. Should have it corrected soon.
4) Again, we just (respectfully, I hope) disagree. The methodology – or pretty much any methodology for that matter – is fine as long as it is clearly disclosed. Readers can make their own judgments. And I clearly cite all of my sources; I’m not sure you who are suggesting is a “non expert” among that list? I do plan to write more detailed reviews of selected tools (not all) as time permits. Those will be based on direct testing, and clearly labeled as such.
Robin, you’ve done some amazing work over the years, and again I respect your opinions and appreciate the time you’ve taken to provide feedback here. But this is the 28th post in this series. I’ve received a few suggestions regarding tools that didn’t pop up in my initial research, but other than that the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I’m happy to take personal responsibility for that. 🙂
Thank you Tom for your kind and courteous feedback.
It looks like we have very deep standards of ethics and operation.
Here’s my feedback:
1) The best thing you can do, in my view, is to further revise and correct the approach you are using and the info you share, including your titles. As they are, they discredit your ability and competence in this field to people like me.
2) This is your opinion. Credible authors and experts do not do this. They do first-hand research. The people you mention are possibly expert marketers, I don’t know, but they do not appear on my radar as experts on content curation tools and practices.
(It’s my opinion it’s fine to create this list based on a large number of posts from experts like Ian Cleary and Michael Brenner; would you not agree they are experts? What’s important is to be upfront about my methodology, which I believe I have done. To say “I’ve thoroughly tested each of these tools, and my list is based on that testing!” would be untrue. There are several I’ve used, and several I haven’t. So I am supplementing my personal experience with the experience of other experts whom I trust, and presenting the information clearly on that basis.)
3) Thank you Tom.
(You found a glitch I thought I’d fixed, again, thank you! I’m looking into why the link from my name is not properly redirecting. Should have it corrected soon.)
4) Your methodology is very debatable, and as far as I can tell is not ever disclosed in the intro to this article. In there you write: “The 20+ tools showcased here enable you to automatically find, source, search, store, organize, annotate, and/or share content from a wide range of publishers and social sources.” There’s no mention of any methodology, names or sources that you have tapped into to pull this together. I find this misleading. Readers can make their own judgements if they are given the opportunity to know, not if they have to guess what is not written here.
(Again, we just (respectfully, I hope) disagree. The methodology – or pretty much any methodology for that matter – is fine as long as it is clearly disclosed. Readers can make their own judgments. And I clearly cite all of my sources; I’m not sure you who are suggesting is a “non expert” among that list? I do plan to write more detailed reviews of selected tools (not all) as time permits. Those will be based on direct testing, and clearly labeled as such.)
I value your feedback Robin, and we do indeed share “very deep standards of ethics and operations.” Given infinite time and resources, I’d love to have tested each and every one of the 700+ tools outlined in this series. But under the constraints the universe presents, curating the opinions of 100+ experts seems a credible alternative, particularly given full disclosure of the methodology (detailed in the introductory post in this series: https://webbiquity.com/cool-web-tools/best-online-business-tools-series-kicks-off-today/).