• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Social Media Examiner

Your Guide to the Marketing Jungle

  • 🔥 Free Newsletter
  • 🎙️ Podcasts
    • Social Media Marketing Podcast
    • AI Explored Podcast
    • Social Media Marketing Talk Show
    • Our YouTube Channel
  • 🌟 AI Society
  • 🗓️ Marketing Conference
  • đź‘‹ About Us
    • Marketing Events
  • Search
  • Embrace AI & MarketingGet Ongoing Training & SupportBEGIN YOUR JOURNEY NOW

    How to Speed Up Your Content Curation Process

    by Caroline McCullough / February 12, 2014

    social media how to Do you want to share helpful content, but don’t know where to find it?

    Are you looking for tools to speed up your content curation process?

    In this article I'll show you how to find and share relevant content in a snap.

    Why Content Curation?

    If you want to be the go-to expert in your niche, you need to provide more value than the other guys. Content curation—sharing relevant articles from several sources—is an important way to provide that value to your clients, fans and readers.

    Modern marketing has changed significantly. It’s less about promotion and more about helping your ideal clients make informed decisions. Buyers expect to be fed relevant and helpful information.

    Good content curation pinpoints potential clients’ needs, wants, desires and problems, then offers answers and solutions. Sharing other people’s content is a great way to quickly become the recognized expert in your field.

    It can take a lot of time to find and evaluate content that’s good enough to share. What if you could save that time and use it to be more productive? Keep reading because I’m going to show you my favorite content curation tools—Feedly and If This Then That (IFTTT)—and explain how to use them together to make content curation much easier.

    #1: Use Feedly to Find Articles

    Feedly is an awesome tool for finding timely articles on topics you want to share. On Feedly, you can find content and organize it by categories.

    categorize content on feedly
    Feedly is a terrific tool for categorizing content you may want to share with your audience.

    It’s pretty easy to get started with Feedly. Just follow these steps:

    1. Go to Feedly and set up an account (it just connects to your Gmail).
    2. Use the search box to find topics you’re interested in. Feedly returns a list of websites or blogs that have the kind of content you’re looking for.
    3. Click on a site you want to follow. The right side of the page shows you the top stories from that site so you can see if you really want to follow it.
    4. If the site is what you’re looking for, click the Follow button. The Add a New Source sidebar slides out.
    5. Give the website a category (you can create your own) and click Add.

    I use Feedly to categorize content for my own social platforms, as well as my clients’ platforms.

    #2: Use IFTTT (If This Then That) to Collect Feedly Articles

    IFTTT (If This Then That) is one of the most useful tools I’ve come across on the web. It shaves hours off of research time by automating simple tasks.

    In order to automate tasks, you create what’s called a recipe. For example, now that you’re set up on Feedly, you can create a recipe that sends new articles to a Google spreadsheet—without you doing a thing!

    Discover Proven Marketing Strategies and Tips

    Want to go even deeper with your marketing? Check out the Social Media Marketing Podcast! Publishing weekly since 2012, the Social Media Marketing Podcast helps you navigate the constantly changing marketing jungle, with expert interviews from marketing pros.

    But don’t let the name fool you. This show is about a lot more than just social media marketing. With over 600 episodes and millions of downloads each year, this show has been a trusted source for marketers for well over a decade.

    CHECK OUT THE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING PODCAST NOW

    To create a recipe, go to IFTTT and sign in or create an account.

    ifttt recipe
    Create a recipe to send your Feedly finds to a spreadsheet on Google Drive.

    Here’s how to create a recipe that sends Feedly articles to a Google Drive spreadsheet:

    AI Business Society

    Ready to Unlock AI Marketing Breakthroughs?

    If you’re like most of us, you are trying to figure out how to use AI in your marketing. Here's the solution: The AI Business Society—a new AI marketing community from your friends at Social Media Examiner.

    The AI Business Society is the place to discover how to apply AI in your work. When you join, you'll boost your productivity, unlock your creativity, and make connections with other marketers on a similar journey.

    I'M READY TO BECOME AN AI-POWERED MARKETER
    1. On your dashboard, click Create a Recipe.
    2. On the next page, click “this” (you’ll see what I mean when you’re there).
    3. Scroll through the Trigger Channels until you find Feedly, then click it and activate it.
    4. On the Choose a Trigger page, click the New Article from the Category option.
    5. Use the menu to choose which article category you want to send to the spreadsheet, then click Create Trigger.
    6. Click “that” (again, you’ll see what I mean when you’re there).
    7. Scroll through the options until you find Google Drive, then click it and activate it.
    8. On the Choose an Action page, click the Add Row to Spreadsheet option.
    9. On the Complete Action Fields page, name your spreadsheet and leave everything else the same.
    10. Click Create Action, then click Create Recipe.

    Instead of scanning news sources every day, you can simply download the spreadsheet about once a week and work your way through it, looking for helpful, relevant content to share.

    The beauty of creating the spreadsheet on Google Drive is that you can access it anywhere. If you’re out of the office and have a few moments to spare, you can go through the spreadsheet on your tablet.

    ifttt recipe
    The downloaded articles are ready for reviewing on Google spreadsheet.

    #3: Choose and Curate Content

    Use the spreadsheet to choose which articles are most relevant to your audience. Once you whittle down the articles to ones that are share-worthy, I suggest writing a status update you can schedule on Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn. (I usually write the status update in the Title cell to keep track of it.)

    You’ll notice I didn’t mention Facebook in that list. That’s because:

    • It’s generally better to use Facebook’s Scheduling tool so your posts are more prominent in the news feed.
    • When you use content management apps like HootSuite to share content on Facebook, sometimes the images don’t show.

    The extra effort to schedule via Facebook’s tool is well worth it.

    When sharing content, it’s important to keep a few guidelines in mind. This checklist on the Content Marketing Institute’s website provides 10 helpful steps to help you share content ethically.

    Conclusion

    Using Feedly and IFTTT together makes it so easy to track content, choose the best articles and share them with your clients and fans. The combined strength of these apps makes curation a piece of cake.

    What do you think? Where do you find content to curate? What apps do you use to make sharing content easier? Please leave your thoughts and comments below.

    Images from iStockPhoto.
    AI EXPLORED

    Curious About How to Use AI?

    Our newest show, AI Explored, might be just what you're looking for. It's for marketers, creators, and entrepreneurs who want to understand how to use AI in their business.

    It's hosted by Michael Stelzner and explores this exciting new frontier in easy-to-understand terms.

    Pull up your favorite podcast app and search for AI Explored. Or click the button below for more information.

    I WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT AI

    Tags: Social Media Strategy, Social Media Tools

    About the authorCaroline McCullough

    Caroline McCullough is the creator of The Great Blog Challenge, a multi-award-winning content marketing strategist, copywriter, presenter and author of Your Brilliant Un-Career: Women, Entrepreneurship and Making the Leap.
    Other posts by Caroline McCullough »

    Get Social Media Examiner’s Future Articles in Your Inbox!

    Get our latest articles delivered to your email inbox and get the FREE Social Media Marketing Industry Report (43 pages, 50+ charts)!

    Industry Report Cover

    Worth Exploring:

    Facebook

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Instagram

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    YouTube

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Linkedin

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    AI

    Next Frontier Explore More →

    Social Media Marketing Industry Report

    Get Free Report →

    Social Marketing Trends

    The data you've been missing!

    Need a new plan? Discover how marketers plan to change their social activities in the 17th annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report. It reveals what marketers have planned for their social activities, content marketing, and more! Get this free report now and never miss another great article from us. Join more than 385,000 marketers!

    Simply click the button below to get the free report:

    Footer

    Your Guide to the Marketing Jungle
    Copyright © 2025 Social Media Examiner®
    All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy.

    Helpful Links

    • About us
    • Our content via email
    • Our podcasts
    • Our YouTube channel
    • Our live show
    • Our social media marketing industry report
    • Our generative AI marketing industry report
    • Sponsorship opportunities
    • RSS