Curation Tools – Do you need one?

May not really be curation, but who cares

“Content curation” is all the rage. The currently popular practice of link aggregation, if we go strictly by definition, some will argue that it’s not curation. Traditional curators have some archival or preservative character to their work, while this fad is more about sharing information with like-minded people in the face of the huge glut of possible sources (and their output) all over the internet.  In other words, so-called content curation is a way to attract people with interests that match the stuff that’s being shared by the editor or “curator”. (Of course, the “stuff” can be from lots of sources other than the curator. Or not.)

Wow! That was way to heady. Let’s try this again…

Collections of links

The point is that it’s fun to collect links and share them — probably on social media or your blog, but the sky’s the limit. It’s a great way to connect with people who have similar interests. (I know that’s one of the ways that I’ve enjoyed using curation. I’ve met such great folks! Yeah, like you, for example.) This is one of the things that makes curation an awesome resource for artists and musicians: you can attract people who are interested in either collaboration, buying your product, or both. In my opinion, the answer to the headline is “yes” for musicians and other artists: you do need a curation tool to help you have this presence and to save you time with the process.

There are way too many sources of information (social media, blogs, news sites, publishers, entrepreneurs, etc.) for any one person to deal with, but there are plenty of people who want to share it with you. Trouble is, who has time to go through all this stuff? Nobody. That’s where curation tools come into play. The point of them is to make it easier to pull the links together.

Curation Tools That I Like (or not)

I’ve messed around with a few curation tools. Here’s an infographic run-down on some that I do or don’t like. (Below the infographic are pointers to other posts about two other tools: Storify and Flipboard.) I’ve included ScoopIt!, Pinterest, RebelMouse, and Paper.li.

I recommend that you check out RebelMouse if you haven’t already. This slick tool pulls in the links that you’re already feeding to your social media presence (Twitter, FaceBook, Instagram, Flickr, LinkedIn, and Google Plus), so you don’t have to “curate” twice.

Here’s a live sample of the one for muz4now:

Another content curation tool growing in popularity is Flipboard. Whatever you do: enjoy yourself and lean towards creating community with these tools. And please tell your experiences, corrections and questions below in the comments!

Playful blessings,
Stan