Exploring Fitness

This article will share content curation sources that will help you become your audience’s go-to place for information.Content curation is like being your audience’s personal algorithm. Just as an algorithm curates a feed for every user — putting content they’d like front and center — you separate the wheat from the chaff and collate info your followers would want in an organized way.

But where do you even find content to curate? And given the popularity of content curation, how do you stand out and offer bits and pieces that no competitor has an eye on? This article will share content curation sources that will help you become your audience’s favorite, go-to place for information.

The fault with content curation tools

If you surf online for how to become an A+ content curator, you’ll find loads of content curation tools — like Flipboard, Feedly, Curata, Scoop.it, Upcontent, etc. The problem with using these software (and even RSS feeds) as content sources is that everyone’s using them for content discovery. So you’re not truly giving your audience any new info.

Relying on content curation tools alone also makes you more of a content aggregator than a content curator: The former just collects pieces of relevant information and presents them as is, while the latter adds their own inputs and insights into the mix of existing information. It’s the difference between a retweet and a quote tweet.

To actually be successful in content curation, you need two things:

1. The ability to spot trends from a vast web of information: Seeing new information pop up every day and sharing it is one thing; connecting the dots is another. Noticing patterns and picking up on novel ideas enables you to create high-quality content — the kind no one can compete with.

2. An eye for seeing what everyone else missed: Plenty of people use content curation tools to share “highlights” of relevant content. How are you any different? Using authentic and unique sources + keeping your senses open for what everyone’s just glazing through will help you become a thought leader in your niche.

Reading these things in a silo might make it sound like content curation is magic and you need witchcraft abilities to become a great curator. But that’s 100 percent not the case. The next section will share details of ten content sources that’ll help you build a content curation strategy that’s low-effort and actionable.

10 content curation sources

1: Industry-specific email newsletters

Niche industry email newsletters are a goldmine of information. Whichever area you belong in, I’ll bet there’s a handful of popular newsletters and some unpopular ones. For example, if you live and breathe the social media world, Annie Mae’s Social Media Tea and Rachel Karten’s Link in Bio are well-loved newsletters. (And might I say, Buffer’s weekly newsletter is also A+ for social media deets? 😉)

But there are also more niche newsletters like Lia Haberman’s ICYMI for influencer marketing information and The Publish Press’s newsletter if you’re into the creator economy.

Industry-specific newsletters will provide you with a plethora of shareable content that your audience will find useful. Your followers don’t have the time to read and distill multiple newsletters — so do the task for them. Find newsletters that interview people in your niche, share relevant news, and help you stay on top of trends.

How do you find these email newsletters? Google: [your niche] inurl:newsletter. For example, if your niche is cosmetics, you’ll Google “cosmetics inurl:newsletter” and a list of cosmetics newsletters will pop up.

I’d also recommend subscribing to newsletters you come across on social media, find in other newsletters (how meta), or are recommended as “related newsletters” by newsletter software like Substack.

Keep a separate email just for these newsletters (because they can overflow your inbox). Comb through them in the beginning. You can unsubscribe to those you don’t find useful in a few weeks. Keep updating this list to always get a steady source of information within your industry — that helps you curate and create relevant content.

2: Niche news outlets

Like newsletters, there’s no shortage of niche news outlets or big news publications (like TechCrunch or Morning Brew) reporting on niche topics. For ex