Curating content is a great way to position you and your business as the go-to expert in a certain industry by sharing the best-of-the-best content with your readers.

If you’re just using Google right now and struggling to find top content, never fear! There are plenty of tools out there to help you collect relevant and interesting content to share.

Without further ado, here are The Top 10 Content Curation Tools You Should Be Using:

Pocket: Pocket is a great tool to start getting in the habit of curating content. Store interesting articles, videos and images in one place.

Pro tip: Install the Pocket browser extension to easily save content on the web.

Post Planner: Discover data-driven shareable content suggestions for social media and watch your engagement grow.

Feedly: Aggregate and browse feeds from your favorite sources on mobile or desktop within a beautifully simple user interface.

Digg Reader: A great minimal RSS reader to help you stay up-to-the-minute on the latest content from some of the top sources.

Twitter Lists: Curate subsets of users that you follow on Twitter related to specific topics. This is a great way to cut through the clutter and find the Tweets that really matter. Learn how to set up a list here.

Pro Tip: Check out these already curated 101 Best Twitter Lists to Follow by PostPlanner.

Content Gems: Quickly find and share the most valuable content in one easy-to-use platform. This one gets bonus points for such a beautifully designed site!

Flipboard: Flipboard is my personal favorite content curation tool. It allows you to create your own personalized magazine with all the topics you care about (and none that you don’t.) Flipboard is a fantastic tool for finding and organizing  content – but be warned, you may spend hours on Flipboard without even realizing it!

Learnist: Use a format similar to Pinterest with boards to search content from industry leaders by topic. Learnist is very user-friendly and full of brilliant content on endless topics.

Evernote: Easily clip web articles, add your own notes and communicate with your team in real-time using this comprehensive workspace tool.

Readability: Similar to Pocket and Evernote, Readability gives you the means to collect and save interesting content from the web in an organized way. It also cleans up articles to present them in a more readable, simple format – making your life easier as you’re browsing content.

Pro Tip: Check out the “Top Reads” section to see the most read content that hour, day or week.

Over to You!

If you haven’t experimented with content curation yet, there’s no better time than now to get started. Curating relevant content is one of the best ways to build trust and become the go-to expert for your audience. Regardless of the size of your team, I hope you’ll find one of the above tools to work for you.

Would you add any tools to this list? What tools have worked best for your content curation?

This post was originally written by Christina Sullivan for the Heyo Blog.

Votigo Overview from jim risner on Vimeo.

Nothing generates more leads and more engagement than cross-channel social promotions and engagement apps. Votigo’s easy-to-use and highly customizable platform allows brands and agencies of all sizes to create contests, sweepstakes, landing pages, and engagement campaigns quickly and affordably. All promotions can published to your Facebook Page, Website, Microsite, and Mobile. Integrate with Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. No coding skills required!

For larger brands and agencies looking for custom solutions Votigo offers full services including design, development, rules, winner admin, moderation, and prize fulfillment.

With over 20 different Campaign templates and over 14 supported languages Votigo provides solutions for Small Businesses to Global Enterprises.

Come join the thousands of companies already using Votigo to generate leads and engagement.

I know it seems so far away, but NOW is the time to start planning your upcoming Halloween Promotion.

Few holidays have such a strong visual component as Halloween, making it the perfect opportunity for brands to engage their fans with a UGC Photo Contest or Video Contest. Leverage #hashtag submissions via Instagram and Twitter as well as allowing contestants to upload photos or videos from their computer, smartphones, and Facebook.  Consider if your brand would benefit from a fun holiday promotion (Halloween Costume contest). Do your customers participate in Halloween? Do your fans like to dress-up?  If you answered yes to either of these questions your company can benefit from UGC Photo & Video Contests!

Get creative and consider how your business is relevant to the ghoulish season. Maybe you have a seasonal product that you’d like to promote for Halloween, or maybe a simple online costume contest would get your customers engaged. A UGC Contest can even provide you with visuals to use in future marketing efforts…so if you’d like to have some fun photos for a Halloween campaign next year, get those fan photos from a contest this year.

Need help getting started? Check out our Resource Center.

Running an online UGC contest can help you engage fans and allow them to interact with your company, brand, and/or product.  It is always important to use techniques that will encourage your fans to stay engaged with the contest even after they enter.  One way to do this is to allow fans to vote on entries.  For most businesses this is a great idea because people are prompted to spread their entry to get more friends to vote, creating a viral effect. Voting can promote more word-of-mouth marketing for your brand because entrants will spread the word to gather votes. This will in turn create more awareness of the promotion and your brand or product.  Voting also gives the incentive for fans to continue to visit the promotion page and acts as another step in the online UGC contest.  It is a fun way for fans to take an active role in the outcome of the contest.
When considering if your contest should be 100% decided by public vote, it is important to understand what this means for the contest and to be prepared to hand over control of the outcome to your fans.  Another way to incorporate public voting in your contest while still maintaining some control over the outcome is to create a round of voting to narrow down the entries that are in the running to win. After allowing this period of voting you can then create a panel of judges who will decide the winner.  This will still encourage fans to stay engaged and to share their entries virally, while also allowing your brand to maintain some control.

Some businesses may prefer not to allow fans to vote and instead rely on complete brand control.  This means that your brand or business will be in charge of the entire voting process.  A fun way to do this while keeping your fans interested is to incorporate a panel of expert judges that appeal to your target audience.  This will give your fans the incentive to stay tuned to the contest and to continue to visit the promotion site.

Each option above provides a great way for entrants to stay interested in your contest. It depends on what your particular brand goals are  concerning the promotion and it is important to consider which strategy will fit best with your company.

For more information on UGC Voting Contests and fun ways to keep customers engaged contact us today!