Think of curated content the way you do a Works Cited section of a term paper. You use it to add relevance and to reinforce your argument. In marketing terms, that argument is that you are aware of the types of content that appeal to your audience.

Responsible selection of curated content shows that you understand your audience. And when people believe that you understand them, it goes a long way toward building trust.

A key difference, however, between content curation and a Works Cited section is that, quite often, the curated content comprises a significant slice of the content presented. In many cases, the content is presented with a short, original commentary.

How well does that work?

Well, look at the Huffington Post. They have practically elevated the concept of content curation to an art form. And they have discovered the fine balance between curation and branding. You’d barely know that they get a vast amount of their content from outside sources. It’s because they go to a tremendous effort to present the content in a way in which it practically becomes their own....

I once spent a week speaking at three different conferences that focused on one of the favorite themes of events around the world: how to have great ideas.

Often it seems that there are only two things the world tells you about ideas: you should have more of them and they should be more creative.

We dedicate entire conferences to better ideas and read best-selling books to inspire more of them. Yet over time, the sad truth is that the only thing most of us do better than coming up with ideas is routinely squandering them, with bad or no execution.

Why do we fail to execute well on our best ideas so often? More importantly, what would it take to change that pattern?...

Curated content. Most marketers are familiar with the practice of sharing other people’s content on social networks. There are other curated content formats

Content curation is all about mining the internet for material that can be shared on your social networks. It’s about finding great content and presenting it to your social media followers in a way that’s organized and meaningful.

The thing is, you’re probably not thinking strategically when you’re scrolling through your phone and posting from bed in the morning.
Content curation strategy is what makes the difference between mediocre and exceptional content curation in business.

Strategy is a must when it comes to content marketing, which includes content curation....

Imagine, if you will, a world in which Richard Seaver or Robert Gottlieb had stomped their feet and huffed and puffed every time John Leonard forgot to give them their proper "hat tip." Or rather, as I joked on Twitter over the weekend about the new "Curator's Code," if Goethe had lived long enough to chide Mann for writing about Faust and giving a "ᔥ" to Marlowe but forgetting to give a "↬" to Goethe.

It's funny to think about! But only for a minute, since after that it all just becomes too depressing for words, because what we talk about when we talk about curation first of all sure ain't curation and secondly isn't even all that special. But mostly it's depressing because it's a conversation that happens at the expense of original content itself.

First, let's just get clear on the terminology here: "Curation" is an act performed by people with PhDs in art history; the business in which we're all engaged when we're tossing links around on the Internet is simple "sharing." And some of us are very good at that! (At least if we accept "very good" to mean "has a large audience.")

But we should not delude ourselves for a moment into bestowing any special significance on this, because when we do this thing that so many of us like to call "curation" we're not providing any sort of ontology or semantic continuity beyond that of our own whimsy or taste or desire. "Interesting things" or "smart things" are not rubrics that make the collection and dissemination of data that happens on the Internet anything closer to a curatorial act; these categories are ultimately still reducible to "things I find appealing," and regardless of how special one might feel about the highly cultivated state of his or her tastes there is no threshold of how many other people are eager to be on the receiving end of whatever it is we're sharing that somehow magically transforms this act into curation—that is, at least, unless we're also comfortable with arguing that "curation" is the act in which Buzzfeed is engaged. Or The Huffington Post. Or the top contributor on those weightlifting comment boards....

Content curation is a great idea, but it’s really quite tedious to have to do it manually. You have to go out and find content you’d be interested in curating. Then you have to copy the link and paste it into each of your social networks. You have to schedule the post for an appropriate time, and you have to add your own spin to it, and you have to make sure it generates the right kind of preview or website card. Repeat for every link you want to share, ad nauseum, and you’re getting the idea.

Thankfully, content curation is not a new idea, or a new industry. That means there are many businesses out there who have created products to help you. These content curation tools are designed specifically to curate content as smoothly as possible across your entire social media presence. Here are the best ones I recommend....

Simply put, content curation is the process of sifting through huge amounts of digital content, gathering all the best bits and repackaging them in an organized and significant way. For the record, “repackaging” does not mean attempting to claim the content of others. Full credit must always be given where it’s due.

Yet by cherry-picking select pieces of juicy, existing content and re-sharing it in a format that is compatible with your company’s unique marketing strategy, you’ll be able to capitalize off the expertise of others in order to provide your own business with credibility as an industry thought leader.

How Do You Use Content Curation?

Now that you know the answer to, “What is content curation?”, there are plenty of ways small business owners are able to fit it snugly into their marketing efforts. And once you’ve found the web’s top sources of dynamic, industry-specific content, you can set up RSS feeds and push notifications to ensure you’re always up-to-date on all the freshest material.

Many components of content marketing are controllable and predictable. But you know what isn't? Your audience's response. Surprises are the one thing you can count on.

So, what can you do when a piece of content you've created simply doesn't produce the right results?

Based on our experience, there's a lot you can do. In fact, with most content, the post-publishing optimization process can improve an article's performance significantly.

More and more, marketers and social media managers are looking to technology for content curation tools to help them uncover great content, share it quickly, be more productive, and get detailed analytics surrounding what content works and what doesn’t.

There’s no question that there are plenty of content curation software options for marketers, making it difficult to find the perfect fit. Some of these content curation tools have a focus on the enterprise and some are built for small businesses and startups.

Here’s a look at 16 of the best content curation tools available