4 Untapped Sources of High-Quality Content You Can Curate

If content curation is your job, then you know that timing is everything. There’s no quicker way to alienate your followers than to consistently serve up stale content. And, as you know, viral items on the Internet go bad much faster than a loaf of bread. For instance, if you’re just now finding out about The Dress, you’re much better off admitting you missed that one than posting about it now. We all saw it. We’re all sick of it. It’s blue and black, and there is no room for debate.

But being good at finding and curating content isn’t just about not missing out on every viral sensation. It’s also about consistently finding cool things that might otherwise fly under the radar. It’s about finding quality content while it’s relevant.

What is Quality Content?

Quality content is content that your audience finds interesting and supports your company or product in some way. Creating sales leads may be the most valuable way quality content can help your company, but there are other useful things it can do. Creating brand awareness and establishing yourself as a source of expert information are also great benefits of finding the perfect content. When you put this kind of valuable content in front of your audience at just the right time, that’s when the magic happens.

Where to Find Quality Content

Here are five sources of quality content that will not only keep you on top of what everyone else is talking about, they’ll also help you to start a conversation of your own:

1. Flipboard

It used to be that whenever you wanted to keep abreast of whatever was happening in your industry, you’d subscribe to a bunch of trade magazines. However, since we live in a world that is going increasingly paperless, it may be a better option to just create your own magazine — a digital one.

Flipboard allows you to do just that. It aggregates the quality content of your choice — everything from big newspapers to your social media feed — and presents it in a magazine-style app. This is a good content source to use if you already know where to get your content but just need an efficient way to do it.

2. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo’s top content search is perfect if you’re a little late to the party, but you still want to share a relevant article. Enter a search term, and Buzzsumo will present you with a list of articles on that topic sorted by the number of shares across every major social media platform so it’s easy to pick out the quality content from the duds.

Buzzsumo is free, but it also has an upgraded premium service that provides more in-depth and focused searches. The pro version will help you get more in depth with advanced search queries. You certainly don’t need the pro version to get good use out of Buzzsumo, though.

3. Medium

Think of Medium as kind of like Twitter — it was created by the founders of Twitter — without the character restrictions. It’s basically just a popular blogging platform, but it can be extremely useful for finding high quality content once you tap into the community that shares your interests.

If you want to find great content but don’t have time to add yet another social network to check every day, Medium’s digest emails will keep you informed on the topics of your choice. Plus, the more you use it, the better Medium’s curated content gets. In fact, Medium might be worth joining just for those emails alone. Personally, the Medium digest emails are one of the few newsletters that I almost always check out!

4. Reddit

Reddit bills itself as the “front page of the internet.” It can be a little intimidating, and it doesn’t have the most intuitive user-interface. But it’s absolutely essential to know how to use it if you want to know what’s about to go viral before anyone else does.

Many marketers are intimidated by or even afraid of Reddit. They don’t understand it. It’s true that you need to walk a fine line as a communicator on Reddit. The key to using Reddit well is to just jump into the community and start participating. Notice that I said “participating” – not spamming!

If you just want to use Reddit as a source of material rather than interacting with the community, that’s still possible; just find and subscribe to subreddits related to your industry and let the wisdom of the masses inform you about what is trending. Beyond Reddit, there are community news sites in specific industries that operate similarly. For example, in the design industry, community news is alive and well; there are tons of sources of design news to choose from! I highlighted a few in other industries in this post for Socialnomics.

Finding high-quality and reliable content on the web is a challenge, especially if it’s content that you intend to use to help promote your brand. Getting ahead is tricky, but these four relatively untapped sources of rising content will prove super valuable in the long run!

What are your favorite places to find good quality content to share? Tell me in the comments!

Article by Adrienne Erin (Guest Blogger)

Adrienne is a freelance designer, writer, and serial social media addict. You can read more of her work on her blog, Design Roast, or follow her on Twitter for thoughts on web design, social media, and the internet.