We all know how hard it can be for Part Time Marketers to find the time to do everything necessary to build a successful business online.
We also know that keeping abreast of the latest and greatest content in your niche is especially important.
Enter the Content Curator.
What are Content Curators?
Curators are defined as people who acquire, manage, and oversee a collection of objects. Museum curators make decisions regarding the acquisition of artifacts and organize them into collections for visitors to admire. Similarly. zoo curators do the same for their zoo patrons.
Content curators are people who scour the various informational sources on the Internet to find the best quality content in a certain niche.
For example, a social media content curator will put together and make available to others a “best of the best” list of content related to social media.
Make no mistake – content curators are major influencers. Their decisions as to what is important and of high quality and what is not go a long way towards the level of importance a particular piece of content is given, how much it's read and certainly how much it's shared via social media.
Finding a content curator that you trust to find the most worthy information in your niche can be a tricky business. Anyone can claim to be a curator.
Lucky for you, I'll be revealing 3 content curators that I've found especially useful and trustworthy later in this post.
Why Do You Need Content Curators?
As Part Time Marketers, you can't do it all yourself.
You just can't.
After all, TIME is your most precious resource!
You need help and content curators are (or should be) your new best friend.
Think about it.
You can send hours and hours trying to sift through all the latest content in your specific niche, looking for the best quality content to read and learn from.
After all, content is king right?
Well, quality content is anyway.
Content curators do the work for you. They can save you countless hours or reading sub-quality content just to find the good stuff.
Now, I'm not saying that you should use content creators as your sole source of finding key content in your niche, but it's a great start, isn't it?
How Can Find Content Curators You Can Trust?
Content curation only works if you trust the person who is doing the curating. You need to know that the content curator is a person of integrity and one that goes the extra mile to find the best content possible.
To some extent, finding great content curators is a matter of “search and find.” You have to keep networking and finding new people online until you find great content curators you trust.
Lucky for you, I've found 3 who I will share with you today.
3 Top Content Curators To Share With You
Through my travels online and networking with various individuals, I've found 3 people that are not just quality bloggers but also top notch content curators.
1. Kristi Hines of Kikolani.com – her weekly series, Fetching Fridays covers the top five posts in blogging, design, making money online, personal development, search optimization, and social media.
2. LJ Ernest of SimpleProductivityBlog.com – each Tuesday, LJ publishes Open Loops, a weekly curation of content in the productivity and time management niche.
3. Kim Casteberry of Just-Ask-Kim.com – although she doesn't publish a formal list of content that she recommends each week, I rely on Kim to keep me up to date on the newest and most important content and tools in the technology niche as it relates to blogging and internet marketing.
This is a list of fantastic content creators to get you started. I trust these savvy marketers to weed through all the content in online marketing/blogging/productivity each week and provide me with “the best of the best.”
And unbelievably, it's all free! 🙂
This is a starting point for you. Now it's time for you to go out and find the top content curators in your own niche.
Your Turn
Have you found content creators that you use as trusted advisors in your own business?
Who are the big influencers in your niche?
Leave a comment and join in the discussion?
32 replies to "Content Curators: The New Best Friend For Part Time Marketers"
Great post Bob! I already subscribe to Kim’s blog, and now have subscribed to the other 2 you recommended.
Hey Cori! Great to see you here.
Glad I could help you connect with these other great resources. And check out Copyblogger.com — they just started doing a weekly content curation post as well.
Hope you are doing well, my friend!
Thanks for the content curator links and info. Yes, Kristi is a great source! Thanks, Bob.
I love Kristi! She is an awesome blogger who has taught many a great deal, including us, right Doug?
Do you use any other content curators in your business, Doug? Would love to compile a more complete list for everyone.
By the way, I found one more content curator which I will add to the post. The writers over at Copyblogger.com are now doing a once-a-week content curation post. It’s worth checking out.
I never looked at it that way, but you’re right on all accounts. Kristi is an excellent choice and her posts go out of the way to give you everything. She doesn’t leave anything out worth mentioning and her blog is extremely inspiring.
My choices for content curators are:
– Brankica – Her perspective on many topics is refreshing and she always tells it straight.
– Adrienne Smith – Adrienne, has a way of explaining things that anyone can understand. She goes out of her way to make sure you clearly got it and she always shares her experiences. That’s priceless.
– Copyblogger – What can you say about this site, other than genius. They put a spin on every article they write and it’s always straight to the point.
These are great choices, Sonia. I follow Brankica and know Adrienne well… both are top notch bloggers and marketers. And you’re right about Copyblogger. I just found out that they now publish a weekly content curation post on their blog. Thanks for reminding me to share it.
Thanks for sharing your story here, Sonia. Great to see you again.
well, why i am not surprised when i see the name of Kristi and Kim here 🙂
ive been following and keep visiting their blogs every weekend for more than 3 months. I would recommend them, too. Thank you very much, Bob.
They are great connectors, right Alex? I’ve been working with both Kim and Kristi on a collaborative project and they are both great people.
By the way, I found one more curator source since I wrote this article. Copyblogger is now doing a weekly content curation post. Have you seen it yet? Here is the link to the latest post: http://www.copyblogger.com/7-marketing-links-worth-clicking/
Enjoy!
Great post! Content curators are a big help for any internet marketer. When I was featured on http://www.kikolani.com, traffic towards my site increased. I give a bow for these people who give time on researching high quality content over the internet. . .
They definitely do make our lives easier, right Kevin. Congrats on guest posting over at Kristi’s blog. I also found a similar spike in new traffic when I guest posted there. Kudos to Kristi and the following she’s generated!
Yes Bob content is king and when you have a productive schedule and a full time job, it is important to tap into the resources such as content curators and stay in the loop of what is popular on the net. Awesome information …I will check out these suggestions … Thanks
James A. Buckley
Good deal, James… glad you found it useful. As Part Time Entrepreneurs, we need resources at our disposal that get us right to where we want to go. We don’t have time to hunt around to find worthy articles. That’s why I love these content curators and other time-saving tools like Google Alerts.
Have you used Google Alerts, James?
Bob,
That is some great information. I am a part timer in this business and I find myself struggling to keep up with all of my self imposed goals. These resources you provided will help for sure.
Thank You
Tom
I found one more that you might find useful Tom… check it out — http://www.copyblogger.com/7-marketing-links-worth-clicking/
Enjoy!
Great list Bob and I agree, when you want to locate information in your niche, locate the people who are sharing the content they believe you’ll benefit the most from.
I can’t even imagine doing this part-time. Heck, it’s hard enough for me to keep up with everything doing this full-time. I get so involved in some projects that I can’t believe where the time went. But it’s great to have contacts that share important content for the sake of learning and great ideas for future posts.
I’m not familiar with LJ but am with the ladies. So I know you have definitely chosen some great curators for this post.
Thanks Bob, as always, great information and oh so helpful.
Enjoy your weekend.
~Adrienne
Hi Adrienne… always a pleasure to see you over here.
It CAN be challenging time wise,for sure. But you quickly learn that you need to “cut to the chase” and focus on what really matters. It’s a kind of forced productivity — do it or die! (your business, I mean!)
Thanks for stopping by, Adrienne.
Hi Bob,
thanks for sharing. Interesting. There is nothing that doesn’t exist (difficult translation of a German saying)…content curators.
While I feel lucky that I have never run out of content ideas, I can see that these people can be of great help for bloggers who have that problem.
I definitely second you on the people you highlight here.
Be blessed
Oliver
Hey Oliver, great to see you here again, my friend.
Content curators are saviors for me, in that they do the leg work for me in finding some of the best of the best content in my niche. That’s not to say that this takes me “off the hook,” but rather it just helps me focus my efforts.
Hope you are having a great first month of 2012!
Hello Bob. Interesting discussion on Content Curators. I think the concept is intriguing and intend to check out the three resources you point out. Thanks again.
Ellie
Glad you found it useful, Ellie. Content curators can be a great resource in our business, in that it leaves us more time to do important, income producing tasks.
Let me know what you think of these 3 great people!
The 3 people mention are really the best on their field, I am an avid follower of Miss Kim and I love all of her work
Hey Herbert! Its been a while, my friend. Great to see you here again.
I love Kim. She is among the best at what she does, and she offers help to anyone who asks. She has saved me many times!
Indeed Sir Bob, Kim is really helpful.
As a health blogger, there are all kinds of services that provide health content. I guess they would be considered “curators.” However, I can curate my own health information from pubmed.gov by regularly searching up to date research articles. I have a search RSS feed so that the articles come right to me every week or so. Many are not well covered in the press, so I am able to get exclusive coverage of them. But, it does take some time… It would be neat if there was a service that could read and summarize them for me!
Hey Kristen… I love PubMed. Being in the science field, I have used this resource often to keep me up to date on the latest findings in my field.
But you’re right — it takes time and it would be great if there was a content curator who would summarize they very best and send it to our email boxes, right? Hmmm, a business idea, I think! 🙂
Thanks for your comment, Kristen… great to see you here.
Thank you for this very informative post. I have heard this content curators for a while but I admit I don’t have big idea about it.
Glad this post could help you out, Jodie.
hello Bob,
thanks for this share. it is really interesting, but the truth is that we really dont have time sometimes, looks like the days go too fast, and time is a big factor for everyone. i am not using CC, but i will think about this. thanks for the tips.
Hi again Eleonor.. great to see you. Hope you had a great New Years celebration!
Definitely check to see if there are any content curators in your niche. They will save you a ton of time.
Let us know what you find!
Hi Bob,
I do not use CC but found Kristi’s blog to be outstanding.
Tremendous resource of information across many niches. I dig in once a week to get up to date on more than one area.
The key is to trust the source. Confidence goes a long way in selecting and choosing content you deem worthy for you, and your audience.
Time…yep…even full time internet marketers find it flying by at a breakneck pace. I look at the past 8 months of my travelling as a blur. Some of it is travel, some of it is being more on purpose then ever. Either way, leveraging is an invaluable tool in the arsenal of any home based entrepreneur.
Thanks for sharing your insight Bob.
Enjoy the day!
Ryan
What a novel idea–content curators. I just always look around using Google Search with several different keywords and I usually find plenty to learn from. That’s neat that there are people around who do that for others. Thanks, Bob.
Hi Bob,
Thanks for the insightful post! Yeah, time is a big factor for everyone, both the full timer and the part timer. I was shooting several videos for my primary company today and could not believe how time flies. I was thinking of posting today but alas I could not.
So the mere facts that you could offer these three sites is a great relief.
Thanks
Tosin
btw, compliments of the season to you. I’m not sure we’ve communicated this year 🙂