Growing an online business is often a frantic exercise in multitasking…

Especially if you’re trying to manage a Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram account.

What are you going to post or share today…this evening… tomorrow…?

Then there’s your website…

If you want to get your website ranked by search engines then it needs updating at least once a week.

And your email newsletter…

It’s a lot to think about, and content marketing is just ONE of the many things you need to grapple with alongside family, other work commitments, problem solving, product research.

That’s why you owe it to yourself to take advantage of every possible shortcut.

Here are our 9 favourite content curation shortcuts to help you find topical and relevant information to share on your social media, or in your blogs and emails.

1) Hootsuite

This clever little app allows you to automatically monitor social media for keywords related to your business or topic of interest.

That means you can get right onto the latest breaking news, reviews and tips on your social media networks.

Think of it like a robot researcher scanning for content while you’re doing other things.

2) Feedly

Content aggregation websites like Feedly helpfully groups news and information into themes, allowing you to search more easily. Just type in your area of interest and see what comes up.

It’ll show you the sites specialising in these topics, how many articles they publish each week and let you click through to see them.

Or for an even easier process, add (+) these to a content feed to create a news feed.

3) Alltop

Just type a keyword in the online magazine rack’s search box and it will return the top headlines on that subject from around the web.

For instance, ‘arthritis’ leads to an alternative medicine page, with all the top stories and hot topics collected for you.

4) Hashtagify

This is a great tool for unearthing hashtags that lead you to great content for your website, social media and email.  Enter in a topic in the search box in the top right of Hashtagify’s homepage. For instance, let’s stick with the topic ‘photography’.

You’ll now see hashtags of related keywords that usually appear by #photography, plus examples of the top tweets that use it on the right.

Now go and search for content linked to those hashtags by using a tool like this…

5) HashAtIt

This is a great tool for finding hashtags right across social media.

Use the search box to enter a term. For instance, ‘DIY’.
You can have the option to search across all social media, or select only Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.

6) Google Alerts

This is the easiest way to take advantage of the Internet’s most powerful search engine functionalities.

Choose a keyword to find relevant content. If it looks useful and interesting, then set up an alert for that topic and you’ll get all of the latest online updates delivered direct to your inbox.

7) News website RSS feeds

Almost every new website allows you to sign up for RSS feeds based on specific topics, meaning you’ll get emailed each new article on that specific topic as it’s published.

This saves you time as there’s no need to check sites individually.

For more of a techy explanation of RSS feeds, check out this summary: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS.

8) Topical websites

As well as the RSS feeds on general news sites, try those that are more specific to your area of business.

For instance, if your business is science-related, New Scientist’s website is the place to go.

Next find at least 5 to 10 websites that offer information, advice and news related to your interests or niche.

If possible, sign up to their RSS feeds, social media accounts and email newsletters.

Action Plan!

Now you know how to find the latest updates on a particular topic, explore the web and understand the popularity of hashtags, here’s what to do next…

• Once a week, use Google+ Explore to see what’s trending in your field.

• Use Hashtagify to see what other related tags to search for.

• Use HashAtIt to gather content on specific platforms, like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest.

• Gather up the latest results from your Feedly searches and see what Hootsuite has found for you.

• Now go back to Google+ and collect up the latest articles, videos, photos or whatever you find that’s interesting (20 or more should cover you for a week’s worth of social media shares, and should make for a couple of good blog posts).

Use a system to store and organise this content (evernote.com is a good start) and you should find you have more than enough to share on your networks across the week.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you’ve come across any other useful content gathering tools in the comments below.