Millions of content pieces are pushed on the web every day. However, when it comes to content curation, not everything is relevant, not every source can be trusted and not every information relevant can be found so easily. In eCommerce content curation and management, it is important to work with the content is such a way that it is easy to read for the user, simple to follow and resourceful to the reader all along the time. Content curation is defined as the process of discovering, organizing and sharing information relevant to a particular topic or area of interest with an intention to add value. As per data provided by WordPress; there are over 409 million readers reading more than 20 billion pages on WordPress monthly. Also, According to recent data released by WordPress, users produce more than 70 million new posts and 77 million new comments each month. According to this data, almost 2.4 million posts are published every day on WordPress alone. Statistics shared by Statista showed that there were 488.1 million blogs on Tumblr in January 2020. If we take into account the content shared on social media as well, then the numbers will go much higher.
Every piece of content is, however, not relevant to us and that leaves us with one major challenge and the mammoth problem for marketers and business owners of content curation that is relevant to the audience, without spending substantial time in discovering sources, filtering content and collecting relevant information. Along with the problems, we are going to list the top 7 tools that solve content curation problems in 2020 that might impact eCommerce. This clearly portrays that while information is easily accessible, the overflow of information is surfacing, giving curation tools a new problem to fix.
Here is the list of some of the top problems that curation tools should solve in 2020.
Filtering
In an interview in 2008, Clay Shirky stated that, “There is no such thing as information overload, there’s only filter failure”. He identified the arising need for filtering in information flows to create an apt library of information ready for sharing. Google’s search algorithm, one of the versions of mechanical filtering was introduced to solve one such problem – to filter the content according to keywords searched by the user. With millions of content pieces published every day, Google search may not surface a good piece of relevant content written recently at the top. We need expert filtering that is human-centric and provides the human curator AI-powered capabilities.
Credibility
Access to content available online is a positive aspect of curation but there are a few major challenges that need to be addressed effectively to derive maximum value from curation. One of them is checking if the content is coming from a trusted source. Tools available to enable curators haven’t evolved equivalently but there are few of them that help us in saving a lot of time and effort by surfacing relevant content shared via trusted expert communities, which is something very time consuming otherwise.
Relevance
There is a lot of unstructured information available out there. You can find relevance in unstructured free form search but the relevance may not be of the same quality. We need a topical information search and relevance platform which can structure the information according to relevance.
Discovery/Updated Collection/Up to date collection/ Workflow
It is easier to keep all your content in one place to effectively curate and share information. We could spend all day using multiple platforms to sync up all sources or use one platform which helps you curate from multiple sources and keeps your content in one place. The ideal tool will be the one that curates according to your specific interest and is sufficiently fulfilling your professional goals.
Collaboration
One of the key things that organizations are looking for is collective learning. A curation tool with collaborative features can make learning very personal for your team. This is the best way to enhance collective intelligence and knowledge. The ever-increasing scale of information and the vitality of sources along with the trustworthiness can be some of the critical issues that are being solved by the content curation tools in 2020.
7 Tools to Solve Content Curation Problems in eCommerce in 2020
Cronycle
Cronycle helps you with your complete workflow from sources discovery, content curation, content organisation to publishing. Cronycle has a unique set of sources – RSS, Twitter, LinkedIn, Cronycle Topics (automatically curated feeds on 50k+ topics), Google Alerts, or even Newsletters. You can summarize articles from all these sources into a single platform. It shows related or suggested topics to help your search.
Once you subscribe to Cronycle’s Daily Digest you can receive top reads scanned from your feeds that you have within Cronycle. You can collaborate on feeds and boards. On boards you can add comments, tag to collaborate with the team and add a summary to the content to publish it from the board.
You can share your curation as newsletters, Cronycle feeds, on Zapier, RSS, WordPress, Social Media through Buffer & Hootsuite and Slack. When you search for a topic on Cronycle they show you the top influencers in that topic community and let you explore and map a topical area. Cronycle also has a content clipper available for both Chrome and Safari to save content to Boards from anywhere on the web.
Plans :-
- Essentials – $4
- Pro – $19
- Enterprise – Custom Quote
Feedly
Feedly is a content curation platform that allows you to organize content from your trusted sources – Websites/Blogs, RSS, Google Keyword Alerts, YouTube and Twitter for creating content feeds.
You can also share your curation with your team for collaboration or you can share it to LinkedIn, Buffer, IFTTT, Zapier and Hootsuite with a Pro account and Slack & Microsoft Teams with a Business account.
They have recently built LEO, an AI research assistant (available for Pro+ and Business account) who can help you declutter the feeds by prioritizing content using keywords, trends and topics specified by you. Prioritized articles have a green priority label, highlighting why the article was prioritized for you. You can also create team newsletters & team feeds and boards with business accounts.
Plans :-
- Pro – $6
- Pro+ – $12
- Business – $18
Flipboard allows you to create mini magazines with links to your favorite news stories, blog posts, or websites. You can make these magazines public to share your curation with everyone who follows your content or you can share it on social media. You can also add your own links to your Flipboard magazine.
When you search for a topic on Flipboard, it gives you a list of content that you can either save to your magazine or share it directly on social media.
Plan :-
- Free
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is one of the most popular content marketing research tools that updates you with trending topics, Questions, and content in them. For each content in your feed, BuzzSumo shows you the trending score and Engagement. You can create a project and start saving the content you find relevant to your search. You can share your feed to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, Buffer, Hootsuite, Pocket or you can copy the URL of the feed.
BuzzSumo keeps you updated with the latest trends by sending a notification every time a new content in your industry is published. There is a content research tab that helps your research and interact with people sharing your content and search for trending topics.
You can easily search for the most active Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Author influencers around your subject or topic. In Buzzsumo, you can search for a domain or keyword and you will see multiple resources within seconds that are relevant to specified terms or articles published on that domain.
Plans :-
- Pro – $99
- Plus – $179
- Large – $299
- Enterprise – $499+
Pocket gives you an easy space to discover all your content whenever you are starting with your curation efforts. Pocket allows you to tag articles so that they can be easily grouped according to relevant topics or themes. It also includes strong search functionality which can help you to easily locate articles in your Pocket account.
There is an in-built pocket inbox where you can see items shared by a friend. With Pocket you can access your content offline, so you can build your own library that you access anywhere, anytime. You get a chrome and safari extension so that you can save any article, image or video to your curation on Pocket.
Plans :-
- Annual Membership – $44.99
- Monthly Membership – $4.99
Scoop.It
Scoop.it is one of the powerful tools to solve curation problems. It helps you curate from millions of web pages and organise content into relevant topics. Scoop.It allows you to search for content according to keyword and offers additional topics based on the content being shared in that topic. You can share curated content directly to your social channels, and embed everything you find on your page. This tool makes it easy to filter, edit, and share relevant content. Scoop.It offers insights and a ROI measuring tool that helps you extract maximum value from your curated content.
Plans :-
- Pro – $14.99
- Plus – $67
- Enterprise – Customized pricing
Paper.li
With Paper.li you can curate newspapers based on topics of interest.
It will create a ‘Newspaper’ for you every day with pictures, videos and articles based on your chosen topic. Paper.li will help you share the daily newspaper on your Twitter account automatically. Each daily newspaper also allows the user to make comments on the content and items selected by the system can be manually removed from the overview. You can also add #hashtags to track, Twitter lists of other pages, blog feeds, trending hashtags. Through this content curation tool, you can also send your collected content easily through social media, or email newsletters.
Plans :-
- Starter – $4.99
- Pro – $12.99
Quuu
Quuu is a hand-curated content suggestion platform that analyses your social media posts and platforms & recommends content that you can share with an integrated scheduler like Buffer, Hootsuite, Hubspot or Socialbee.
You can join or create a Quuu pod that allows you to create and share content with other Quuu users to send to their social networks. Quuu Teams allow you to share your account with other people who need to get access to your connected schedulers, profiles and suggestions. You can set Quuu to autopilot and it will automatically schedule Tweets or Social Media posts for you with recommended content. You can preview Pinterest as a visual search engine in addition to an online pinboard.
Plans :-
- Pro Plan – $8.33/month (paid annually) or $19/month
- Business Plan – $40.83/month (paid annually) or $50/month
Choosing the right tool to solve your curation problems
Before you select the right tool for you, it’s important to understand the problem you are facing with curation. If you are using the content curation tool for your personal requirements then some of the free plans should suffice your needs. But if you are a business and looking for collective intelligence and knowledge management, then content curation will play a larger role and you would require a more powerful software that caters to all your requirements. Content curation is an important part of every business regardless of the size of the role or team and all the curation tools should be critically analyzed before it becomes an indispensable resource for you and your team.
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