The Best Content Curation & Ideation Tools for 2017 [Video]

I’m going to share with you four different content curation tools that I’m currently using. I try a bunch, but we’re not going to talk about the ones I don’t like, I’m just going to show you the ones that I’m currently using and enjoying.

1. Anders Pink

First up is Anders Pink, which is an awesome name for a tool. It’s very simple to use – just put in your Twitter feeds and it’ll pull data from your network.
To get started, I’ve entered in some topics, and you can search anything you’re into, like ‘content marketing’, ‘SEO’ or ‘search engine optimization’ for me. You could enter in anything you want and the tool will adapt to that, so it should work for any niche. You can see that top from the network, this is where my friends on Twitter are sharing these articles the most. It gives you insights into what your audience wants, but it also gives you things that you could share out to your followers, as well as ideas for future content ideation too.

One thing that really sets them apart is their briefings. In the video, you can see, I’ve set up a briefing and I’m getting some really good content suggestions around SEO.

To do this, just hit ‘Create Briefing’ – you can add in domains and RSS, but I usually just do this from topics.  

For best results, you need to filter out the non-relevant matches, and you can block totally irrelevant sites. I tend to block the biggest sites in my industry – the reason being that I’m trying to avoid groupthink and unearth some unique perspective or things that I can share with my audience that they’ve probably not seen.

In my case, I would block moz.com – not because I don’t like them, they have amazing content, it’s just that they’re an industry leader, and I’m already going to see them in my feed, and I’m going to assume that most of my followers will see a lot of their content as well. By blocking some of these sites that I actually like, I can get better diversity of content, and unearth some chips. Like Matthew Woodward – he has a great blog, but you’re not going to see that as much in your feed as you’re going to see the leaders.

It’s a little counter-intuitive first, but I think you’ll get the concept, blocking the big names so you can unearth those hidden gems. Try out Anders Pink, I think you’re going to love it – it’s quickly becoming one of my favorite tools.

2. Nuzzel

Nuzzel is very simple to use as well – you just enter in your Twitter feed and you can select the time frame for which you want to see trending content from your audience. 

For example, if I want to see the last eight hours, what’s popular with most of my friends. You can see here, Danny Sullivan stepping down from Search Engine Land – he’s awesome and has been a pillar of the community. Best wishes to him going forward. 
There’s also another feature here that I really like, and that’s your Friend’s Feeds.

If they’re on Nuzzel, you can click through and see what’s popular amongst their audience. So using this example, I can click on Danny Sullivan’s Nuzzel profile and go through and see what Danny has been sharing, what he’s really into, and the response he’s seeing.

If you’re doing influence or outreach and you’re trying to see what someone’s into, this is a great way to really drill down to not just your whole niche, but a specific influencer or what they are into. Check out Nuzzel, it’s phenomenal, you’ll really like it.

3. Refind

The next one is called Refind. It’s similar, in the sense that it gives you a lot of discoveries and things like that from your network, but it has a few different features.

First of all, it’s invite only – if you go to refind.com, it’s going to say, “Hey, do you want to join the waitlist?” If you’re a member of Product Hunt, you can get in for free, or if you just pretend that you’re a member of Product Hunt and put in this ?ref=producthunt, you’ll see that you can just join as long as you have a Twitter account. Put that in and you can get Refind right now without having to be on the waitlist. You’re welcome.

Once you get in, it’s pretty good. You can follow specific people from your network that you want to connect with and see what they’re sharing. It’s really good, in particular, for narrowing down on what influencers and seeing what they’re into, and it kind of surfaces that content.

The other thing they have is a Chrome extension – as you’re going about your day and you hit a new tab, you can access all the relevant information easily.

4. Zest

Lastly, this one is only going to appeal to marketers. The others are very customized to your industry, but Zest – if you’re into marketing – is very cool.

The reason why is that this is content curation that’s manually curated. Yes, you heard that right – they have a team that literally sifts through all the click bait and all the crap, so that you get the good stuff.

What you can do is they have tons of different types of marketing categories – any kind of marketing that you are into. “Oh, I am into SaaS or sales or here, I have SEO.” You can see the ones I’ve picked: CRO, Conversion Marine Optimization, Content, SEO and Tools.

This is human-sourced content and reviewed, it’s about as cool as you can get. You can also suggest links to them, which is nice. You can submit some of the stuff and they have some good filters. For example, if I just wanted video, I’m looking for some video content to share or again, video content that’s working really well, I can find that.

This is a really, really cool – and it’s free. You don’t have to do any workarounds to go log in. Really, really phenomenal that you can access that free of charge.

Conclusion

These are the tools that I’m using. Like I said, there are tons that I’ve used and they didn’t work or I didn’t like them. If you have some ideas, leave them in the comments. If there’s a tool I didn’t mention that you love and you’re finding helpful, let me know.