Content Curation World

Evaluating which content curation tool to use may not be such an easy task. As you probably know there are literally hundreds of content curation tools out there, and many seem to be just clones of each other, leaving the novice curator in doubt as to what are the real differences between each one.

A good starting point to select anything is to know well what you are looking for and what you need it for, as your needs and objectives will shape the features and traits that your ideal tool will need to have.

In this article I have tried to simplify this job for you by listing 21 different things you may need your content curation tool to do, that you can use to check and compare the curation tools you have pre-identified. 

For each selection criteria I have also added a few specific questions that should help you make even more sense of what you need to look for.

Full article: http://www.masternewmedia.org/content-curation-tools-selection-criteria-to-evaluate/ 

See also: Content curation tools supermap

Flipboard, as you probably already know, is a great app (available on iOS and Android) which not only allows you to read and keep yourself updated on your favorite topics in a fresh and highly visual experience, but, since recently, it also offers you the ability to become a "curator" of whatever topic you are into.

Your job is simply to pick great stuff you stumble upon and to save it into the appropriate magazine you have created. It's not conceptually much different than clicking a Facebook "like" button and adding your comment, but we the added option of generating in the meanwhile a beautifully laid out digital magazine.

The secret here, to do something that it is of some value, it is to choose on a very specific "theme/topic" and to get picky about what you choose to publish in your magazine(s).

In this useful article Sue Waters collects and curates some of the best tips, video tutorials and techniques to make the best of your Flipboard curation experience in a step-by-step guide.

Useful. Resourceful. Media-rich. 8/10

Full guide: http://theedublogger.com/2013/06/12/flipboard/

Even though Google has become very good at understanding and providing relevant results for many popular queries, many search users are getting lazy and taking those results as currency. 

John Ball writes on Search Engine Land: "People don’t think, analyze, or really even understand how search works anymore. They just assume it will work and they’ll get the results they need. 

This is a very real trend, and likely to continue."

And he goes on: "For example, consider Google Now — no searching required, just results you’re likely to need and can further refine. Also, consider Google Glass. Glass doesn’t even support advanced searching — it’s all short, to-the-point answers, likely based on the Knowledge Graph, which is rapidly expanding."

If you are a journalist, researcher or content curator, you are likely uninterested in such auto-selected results and prefer to dig, explore more and vet before drawing a conclusion.

To go beyond the surface of Google forcedly limited search spectrum, it is of great help to be able to use Google search modifiers. These are manual commands that you can insert in your search queries and that allow you to ask to Google to bring you the results you want in the way you want it.

If you are not familiar with these or have not been using them in a while, I do suggest to scan through them again as they can be real life-savers in many a situation. 

Very useful for any good journalist, researcher or curator.

Useful. Good examples. 8/10

Full article: http://searchengineland.com/top-10-search-modifiers-why-they-matter-what-they-are-how-to-use-them-173343 

Ian Cleary on Social Media Examiner has published a useful guide on how to use Feedly, Newsle and Scoop.it to find and discover great relevant content to curate and share with your industry readers.

The guide has been written for the content marketing type, looking specifically for solutions that allow to find interesting content more easily and to spend less time doing this.

Useful. Pragmatical. Broadly illustrated. 8/10

Full guide: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/3-tools-to-find-great-content-to-share/