3 Content Curation Tools That You Must Have

Ever since one of my clients, Moms Clean Air Force, was recognized as having 3 of the top 25 posts on facebook in 2014 for progressive organizations I’ve been asked how I did it.   Want the secret ?   Shhhhhhhhh…….

UNDERSTAND YOUR AUDIENCE AND GIVE THEM CONTENT THAT THEY WANT AND THEY WILL SHARE.

Simple.  Right?  Not really.

As most of my clients know, I’m a big believer that you must become extremely good at curation of OPC or “other people’s content” if you are going to be successful in today’s fast paced new media and social media landscape.

In fact, unless you are Disney, very few people will care about what you publish on a daily basis, particularly on social media channels.   Too many organizations simply re-post and share Press Releases, White Papers, “grip and grin” photos at events and basically anything and everything they want to tell the world about them.

Guess what.   No one, really, cares about you and your organization.

What they care about is themselves and how your organization makes them feel.

So, unless you are Disney and can produce amazing content that the world wants to see, read, and share, then you must become very very good at content curation and finding OPC that your audience wants to read, like, comment on and share.

Here are some of the tools that I must have.

1)  Google Trends – Visual tool

Google Trends

 

What:  Google trends shows you exactly what is “going viral” right now in the USA or any place on earth.   This screen shot is from the visualization tool that I love to review several times a day and is my screensaver.  Google trends alerts me to information that I may not be aware of and then I determine if it is useful for my clients.

Why it is useful:   I am able to stay on top of trends that are hot right now and then “newsjack” the trend to make it relevant to my client’s audience.    This is very helpful for major events like the World Cup or the Super Bowl.

2)  CrowdTangle ($)

CrowdTangle

 

What: CrowdTangle is a paid tool that searches any set of facebook pages (they also have YouTube, Instagram, etc) and lets you know what posts are “going viral” during a specific period of time.    In this case (screenshot), I’m able to see that the top post in the past 6 hours in the “environmental” category was posted by the Sierra Club and the second most popular post was by Moms Clean Air Force.

Why it is useful:   Multiple times a day I’m able to see which posts are overperforming.   If there is a content area that is applicable to my client(s) then I’m able to either A)  simply re-post the original post by another organization or B) take that concept and make it useful to my client’s audience specifically.

I can’t live without it.

3)  BuzzSumo ($)

BuzzSumo

 

What:  An incredible tool that shows you 1) what specific content is getting shared by 2) what publications 3) via what social media channels and 4) by whom.

Why it is useful:  Instead of going through 1000’s of article that were published on “climate” I know exactly which articles were the most popular, which publications published those articles and who wrote the articles.  I also know who shared the articles.

I use this everyday to determine what content gets shared across social media channels.   I use it also to determine what content to write about in the future.

These are some of my favorite tools.  Which ones can you not live without?