The struggle to consistently post engaging, novel, and brand-safe content across channels is neverending for digital marketers and e-commerce managers. Which is where content curation tools come in handy.

Because creating every piece of content from scratch isn’t always a feasible option, especially if you’re working with limited time and budget. Even if one of your teammates is an eight-armed octopus, easy access to plenty of authentic, fresh, and relatable branded content isn’t the reality for most companies.

What is a content curation tool?

A content curation tool is an application that makes it easier for your brand to find and share relevant, authentic content.

Content curation — sharing content from other sources on your own channels — is an ideal solution for this conundrum. But this strategy goes beyond just reposting great content. It involves finding, organizing, and sharing the best and most appropriate bits in a way that adds value to your brand narrative and engages your audience.

Best content curation tools to refine your digital e-commerce strategy

Let’s look at 12 of the best content curation tools that will help you get the job done successfully — in no particular order.

1. Feedly

• Specialty: Trend monitoring and industry insights
• Top features: AI-driven content curation and powerful organizational tools for feeds and boards
• Pricing: Pro: $6/month and Pro+: $8.25/month. Enterprise plans are available upon request

Feedly offers an AI-powered platform that filters and prioritizes content from a diverse range of online sources, including blogs, news sites, YouTube channels, and more. The tool adapts to your content curation preferences over time, so the more you use it, the more tailored your content feed becomes. This level of personalization allows you to stay ahead of trends and keep a finger on the pulse of what’s relevant to your audience.

With customizable news feeds and the ability to organize content into collections, Feedly becomes a centralized hub for all your curated content, that you can then pull from to add your own perspective.

2. ContentGems

• Specialty: Automated content curation and distribution
• Top features: Intelligent content filtering based on interests and keywords and integration with social media for easy sharing
• Pricing: A free version is available. Other plans include Pro: $10/month, Premium: $99/month, and API: $299/month

Much like other content curation tools, ContentGems uses keywords, social signals, and other filters to help you find relevant content. The tool’s standout feature is Workflows — with ContentGems, you can create customized workflows that let you share your favorite pieces of curated content with your audience, whether that’s through your social networks or an email newsletter. 

Adding your brand’s personal twist (an opinion, a clever twist, or relevant insights) is a key step in content curation. ContentGems knows this, and the Workflows feature allows you to include whatever context you wish to the content prior to sharing.

3. Flipboard

• Specialty: Engaging visual content aggregation and personalization
• Top features: Custom magazine-style layouts for content, smart content discovery with personalized recommendations, and social sharing capabilities
• Pricing: Free

Flipboard stands out for its unique magazine-style interface, which allows you to create personalized “magazines” or collections of articles, photos, and videos. This visually engaging format makes it easy for you to navigate and discover content that resonates with your audience and aligns with your brand voice. Plus, it’s completely free!

With Flipboard, you can follow topics, influencers, or even specific publications, ensuring you have a diverse and comprehensive stream of content at your disposal. This content can also serve as inspiration for marketing campaigns, social media content, and even product development, making Flipboard a versatile tool in the arsenal of any e-commerce manager and digital marketer.

4. Scoop.it

• Specialty: Efficient content discovery and knowledge sharing
• Top features: Robust content suggestion engine based on your selected topics, easy integration with social media and blogging platforms, and analytics to track engagement
• Pricing: A free version with limited features is available. Pro: $14.99/month and Plus: $67/month. Enterprise plans are available upon request

Scoop.it provides a platform where you can find relevant content across the web, organize, and share it with ease. You start by creating topic-specific pages, where the different types of content (articles, images, and videos) will live. 

Scoop.it’s advanced content suggestion engine then scours the internet for content based on these chosen topics, delivering a curated selection of high-quality content. The tool also lets you share knowledge internally, so all team members can contribute to amplifying the amount of curated content available to share on your marketing channels.

5. Buzzsumo

• Specialty: Real-time insights into what content types and topics generate the most engagement
• Top features: Tools for finding key influencers in your industry and alerts for brand mentions or keywords
• Pricing: Content Creation: $199/month, PR&Comms: $299/month, Suite: $499/month and Enterprise: $999/month

Ensuring that your content curation strikes a chord with your audience is key — a tool like Buzzsumo is an ally in this regard. It allows you to search for the most shared and engaging content on social media platforms based on keywords, hashtags, topics, or domains, providing a clear view of what’s trending and what’s not. Based on these insights, you can prioritize which content from your curated library to share according to its relevance and virality potential. 

Working with influencers is another content marketing strategy for e-commerce businesses to acquire content from a non-branded source and keep their social media feeds fresh. In addition to trends, Buzzsumo also helps you find the best influencers to work with by identifying the most active and engaging accounts relevant to your brand.  

6. Quuu

• Specialty: Personalized content suggestions
• Top features: Curated content library of personalized suggestions and seamless integration with social media platforms
• Pricing: Pro plan: $5/month and Business plan: $15.83/month. Agency plans are available upon request

Quuu’s shining star is its AI assistant, Robin. Trained by the human team that once hand-curated content for Quuu’s users, Robin searches the web every day to send you relevant news articles, podcast episodes, blog posts, and more. 

It seamlessly integrates with popular social media marketing platforms like Buffer, Hootsuite, and Hubspot, and you can choose what to share to your social media accounts manually or allow the auto-pilot to post for you.

7. Curated

• Specialty: Streamlined and user-friendly newsletter creation
• Top features: Quick capture of interesting content to add to your newsletters 
• Pricing: Price varies based on the number of newsletter subscribers — consult the pricing page for a complete breakdown of the cost

Running low on ideas to spice up your email newsletters? Curated’s got you covered. This curation platform was built specifically to streamline the process of creating, curating, and sending newsletters. 

With the Curated Chrome extension, you can easily collect and organize articles from various sources that you think your audience will find valuable. When it’s time to assemble your newsletter (using Curated’s library of templates), you can choose the best links, add them to the newsletter, and include summaries or comments about the content you’re sharing that add your brand’s perspective to the mix. 

8. Huzzaz

• Specialty: Video curation and enhanced video sharing experience
• Top features: Embeddable video collections for websites and customizable video gallery layouts
• Pricing: A free version is available, and the Pro version is $9/month

In the visually-driven world of e-commerce, video is king. Huzzaz is a tool designed for video content curation, allowing you to create video collections that can be shared and embedded on different platforms, including your website and social media channels.

With Huzzaz, you can curate video content from sources like YouTube and Vimeo, and use customizable video galleries to showcase products, tutorials, customer testimonials, and other video content in an organized and visually appealing way.

9. Content Studio

• Specialty: Unified content marketing and social media management
• Top features: Advanced content discovery tools and workflow automation for planning and publishing content
• Pricing: Starter: $25/month, Pro: $49/month, and Agency: $99/month

Content Studio is an all-in-one social media management platform, but one of its standout features is content curation. The tool lets you set up a library of curated content that can be filled out automatically, by following popular topics of interest, or manually, by filtering content based on keywords, domains, and other factors. 

This content curation software shows you how each piece of content is performing, and you can then automatically distribute your favorite and most successful pieces across social media channels, directly from the platform.  

10. Buffer

• Specialty: Streamlined social media posting and analytics
• Top features: Ability to schedule and share content across multiple platforms and detailed analytics for tracking content performance
• Pricing: A free version is available. Other plans include Essentials: $6/month for one channel, Team: $12/month for one channel, and Agency: $120/month for 10 channels

Successful content curation isn’t just about finding and sharing the right content. It also involves efficiently managing it across platforms. Buffer is an excellent answer to this need, as it offers an all-in-one solution for scheduling, publishing, and analyzing social media content.

Keeping track of what to post, when to post, and measuring the impact of both curated and original content can be overwhelming. Buffer streamlines this complexity with a single platform from which you can manage all your social media profiles and activities.

11. Pinterest

• Specialty: Inspirational image discovery and bookmarking
• Top features: Powerful visual search engine and curated boards for key themes
• Pricing: Free

Pinterest is a one-stop shop for users everywhere to find and curate inspirational visual content. It’s a user-friendly way to create and share collections of images, videos, and GIFs, known as pins, that can be organized into thematic boards.

Pinterest’s guided search feature makes it a breeze for you to find content that is aligned with your brand themes, guidelines, and aesthetics. And since pins usually link to the original website, the platform also functions as a gateway to find other fresh content sources that are relevant to your brand and target audience. 

12. Bazaarvoice

• Specialty: Collecting and amplifying user-generated content (UGC) to build brand trust and authenticity
• Top features: Creator Partnerships, ReviewSource, Sampling, Retail Syndication
• Pricing: See pricing page 

User-generated content (reviews, photos, videos, or any content created by your audience) isn’t just a fantastic source of engaging content for your marketing channels — it’s the backbone of consumer trust. The Bazaarvoice platform offers a multitude of solutions, but collecting and amplifying UGC is at the core of what we do — you can watch a demo here.

Bazaarvoice specializes in collecting the most engaging and brand-safe UGC on your behalf, and then distributing it across your marketing channels to boost visibility and make the content work harder. 

Through our Influenster community, and partnerships with nano, micro, and mid-tier content creators, Bazaarvoice also helps you generate fresh and relevant UGC, so you have a steady stream of authentic content to populate your social media channels and website.

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Your customers are the most valuable content curation tools

Out of all the engaging and brand-relevant content swimming around the internet, none is as powerful as the voice of the customer. If you want to keep your marketing channels fed through a constant source of authentic content that also impacts your bottom line, authentic UGC is the way forward.

Tap into the power of UGC and put your customers to work. To get started, read our e-bookDownload our e-book and learn how to build a digital content supply chain with user-generated content at its core.