Content Curation Via 7 WordPress Plugins – Free and Paid

The Many Faces of Content Curation

We have all curated content throughout our lives.

• As students, we conducted research on specific topics as we wrote essays and papers. We took information from other sources and put it into our own words.
• As content marketers who write blog posts and other articles. We conduct research to get data to support the points we are making. When we use that data, we are curating content.
• And we also read the posts and articles that other have written on a topic and use some of those ideas as start points for our own content.
• We may re-post on our own blog or social media channel a post that someone else has written (with attribution of course).
• We dig up old blog posts, update and re-write them, thus curating our own content

By now, you have the basic idea – when we use the ideas, thoughts, and data that others or we ourselves have published, and produce an original piece of custom writing from those things, we are curating content.  Or, we re-publish great content directly and provide attribution. The challenge becomes finding content to curate, especially if you are maintaining a blog or posting on several social media sites.

There are several WordPress plugins for content curation – free and paid. Here are some options you have.

Fee-Based Plugins

1. Curation Traffic

This tool is for curating the great content that others have written and that you want to share on social media or your blog. The Bookmarklet feature is probably the most used. Once you locate an article, you go into “one-click” mode. Here is what happens:

• The headline is automatically pulled in
• You are provided with images that are in the content and select the one(s) that you like the most.
• Attribution is created automatically – original source is given credit.
• There is an auto-summary feature that will provide a summary or you can go through and choose the paragraphs you want to include.
• You can publish immediately, save it as a draft, or schedule a publication date

2. RSS Aggregator Plugin

Hence, this tool lets you import, merge, and the post RSS feeds on your site. You can select multiple websites for feeds and then arrange them in an order you have determined. It has a Bookmarklet feature or you can use the add-on of “Feed to Post,” to post directly from the feed. Here are the features:

• Supply a name to each feed
• You can limit the age of stored items, so that they are automatically deleted.
• You can set a number of feed items you want from each source
• You can also locate feed sources if you do not have the exact URL

3. My Curator

Whether you are looking to re-post others’ content directly or use the content of others to create your own great original posts, this tool is a great option.

• Based upon your parameters, it will seek, find and classify articles based on relevance
• You can customize the sources you want to use
• Articles come in all day long – choose the ones you want to keep and dump the others.
• With a click you can choose images and paragraphs from the original content that you will want to use as you create your own post
• There’s a bookmarklet feature that includes curation of text or video content, and that video content can be easily imbedded into your post.
• Notebooks let you save multiple pieces of content on a specific topic so that you can go back and use them as you craft your own original piece – it’s sort of like Evernote for WordPress.

There is a great training video, and you’ll be a master at using this plugin in no time.

4. Curation Suite

When a plugin advertises itself as your “complete solution,” it may be a bit suspect. However, in the case of Curation Suite, this may indeed be the case. This a full-featured content curation tool beginning with finding content based upon your defined niche, curating it for you, creating a copy, and publishing it wherever you want. You can edit the content or let this tool do it for you. You will spend $147 up front, but it may be well worth the price. There is a training video which you should watch before you make your decision, but you will see how simple this tool is to use.

Free Curation Tools

If you are just getting started with content curation and posting, these free tools are more simplistic and will let you “get your feet wet” at no cost. They are pretty good, actually, especially if you want to write our own content but use ideas of others.

1. PressForward

While, this tool is popular with freelancers. It locates content based upon a niche, brings it in, and allows the writer to review it. It will import RSS feeds too. Freelancers can then use all of this content as they create their own original pieces for their clients. The big benefit? It saves research time by delivering the most relevant and popular content.

2. Editorial Assistant by Zemanta

However, this plugin is definitely for those who wish to write their own content, using the latest and best content and research as their guides. The plugin will locate and deliver the latest and most popular content on a topic, including images imbedded in that content. Freelancers can then craft their own original pieces and use those images that are best suited (one-click importation of images and attributions).

3. Listly

This plugin is very “niche-specific,” but if content writers want to create lists of things for their readers, it is a great option. For a free tool, it has great features and options. Here are just a few:

• A variety of layouts to make your lists more engaging
• You can add a voting feature
• You can embed the lists directly into your posts
• Reader can share the entire list or just portions of it
• Your list post is responsive automatically – desktop-to-mobile with no work on your part.

Conclusion

But, we are all looking for ways to ease the pressure of creating and publishing content. One of the most tedious tasks is to find the right articles and other content out there that we can use to make our own blog and social media posts more engaging and compelling. Using these WordPress plugins eases that pain and, best of all, saves time.