I’ve run into two big problems with content curation.

1) I have way too many Google Alerts going off. I am subscribed to way too many blogs. My email is filled with so much information that it’s slightly overwhelming. I can’t help it! There’s so much out there that I don’t want to miss.

2) I have writers block. All of this information is spewing at me from all ends of the internet, but when I try to find a topic to write about, it seems like I’ve already done this and that before.

How do I save time sorting through my emails and searching on the web for news that matters to me and my organization? Personalized Content Aggregators. There are a ton of ways to find news online and there are more and more platforms that focus on personalizing your news stream based on interests. So, after spending hours searching for the best, I’ve found five that, from hence forth, will make my search and content curating life much easier.

Trapit finds news based on your interests. Type a topic into its search bar and you’ll get a visually beautiful list of articles, videos, etc. related to your topic. You can view individual topics by creating “traps” or categories of interest. Trapit is great for a nonprofit because you can sign in with the organization’s Twitter or Facebook account, so anyone on the team can be inspired and in-the-know about what’s going on in your cause’s area of interest.

Feedly gives you options on how you want your content displayed: title only, mosaic, “magazine” style, etc. The search is one of the best I’ve found. AND it gives you really spot-on suggestions on who else to add to your lists. The only problem is, I haven’t figured out if/how to have a login that allows multiple users to access it. Also, it’s been having problems with Safari, so if that’s your web browser of choice, I’d look to another one on the list.

Prismatic gives you one long stream of articles based on your selected interests. The cool thing about Prismatic is that you can connect it to your Twitter, Facebook, or Google Reader, and it will give you suggestions based on those accounts. Also, make sure you click the little collection of circles to the right of “Suggestions.” It displays your topics in individual, colorful circles that move around and vary in size based on your most popular topics. It’s fun to play with!

wavii creates a newsfeed of articles that you are likely to be interested in based on your Facebook activity. You can choose to Follow those topics or click “Refresh” for a new list of interests. When you’re using the search bar, make sure you’re specific. Say you type in “nonprofit.” There will be no results. However, if you type in the name of a specific nonprofit, it’ll most often show up.

StumbleUpon is different than the other platforms because it doesn’t give you mainly news related articles. It’s more of a discovery tool that shows you websites based on your interests. There’s no list of different articles to choose from, because it brings you directly to a webpage. I think, out of all content curators, StumbleUpon brings me to the most unique articles, videos, etc. that I would probably never find otherwise. It’s also more socially oriented, because you can follow other accounts that have similar interests to you. The only setback is that it seems to be used by individuals rather than organizations. That doesn’t mean it can’t inspire blog ideas, though!

So, if you’re looking to eliminate the time you waste using search engines to find news or don’t want to sift through your millions of emails from blogs and Google alerts, let a content curator do it for you!

Tags: blogs, content curation, google alerts, information overload, news aggregator, social media

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2012 at 4:21 pm and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.