Content curation software decision

[Joel]

Does anyone here have experience with content curation?  It's something I'm seriously considering, and have found two software tools to help with that.  But having no experience with them, I'm hoping someone can help me decide which one to get. I know that ultimately it's up to me, what features attract me, etc. But I'm looking more for advice as to user friendliness, stability, and basically best results.

 

The two products I'm looking at are CurationSoft and Curation Traffic.

 

If anyone has used one or both, I'd appreciate your thoughts on them.

[Darren Olander]

I'm not sure why you would need software to curate content.. what advantage do they bring?

[Joel]

It's much faster to search for and find targeted content for my blogs.  It pulls in content from multiple sources all at once, displays it to me, and I can simply drag & drop snippets that I want to share with readers.  Curation is not the same as spinning (for those who aren't aware).  It's much like a museum curator, who finds the best pieces of art to display in his museum.  For blogs, I'm simply finding the best bits of relevant content, and putting it on my blog.  All properly credited, of course, and I do add my own thoughts and original info as well.  But curation software saves a lot of footwork for finding extra content.

[Steve Jones]

Hmmmm... something to think about!  I didn't realize that that was even out there. Thanks Comfy!

[Guest mrclean0325]

I looked into this a couple years ago when it was the "Next Big Thing" and there were several vendors selling curation software and systems.

 

They all sited "Huffington Post" and other huge sites with "curated" content. This was the key to the whole marketing speel, "These big sites are doing the same thing and raking in millions and so can you!"

 

The movement kinda died when people were getting sued for using other peoples content without their permission. I think it is now relegated to the "black hatters" who can evade the law a bit and don't care about copyright.

 

All the ones I was looking into have "For Sale" on their domains for quite awhile now. It is a great idea, but there is a lot more legally to it than just putting other peoples stuff on your site hoping to get more traffic.

 

Even if you think you are doing it "legally", most don't take the time to check with a real lawyer first to make sure it IS legal to do. The thought of it being "easier to ask forgiveness than ask permission" comes to mind. That thought fails to hold up in court though...it isn't a problem until you are caught.

 

The thing they didn't mention is these large sites have legal deals for licensing this content with the intellectual property owners. Even if there is no money traded, the legal licensing is the key that keeps you out of jail or the poor house from a lawsuit. They got permission first to put the content on their site. Then there is the thing too of "I am on Huffington Post! So what if they didn't have permission - I am famous now! Oh, I am suing you for 10 million since you stole my stuff, now I will be famous AND rich!"

 

It is one thing to put links to others peoples interesting content or small quotes with citing in your own original blog post than it is to publish "THE" content or even large snippets with comments on your site. The site with the original content may have provisions in their TOS like "no copying, reproducing, or distributing without explicit written permission" (most do to prevent someone from using their exclusive content) you could be violating their copyright and then be sued for copyright infringement. You have no defense at all if their content IS on your site and you have no legal document to prove you have permission to do so.

 

Some site owners are very anal about their stuff.

 

This was, again, something that sounded really good on the surface, but once you dug into it was not so appetizing. I try to not be sued or in trouble with the law. Just one of my quirks....I don't look good in orange...So my advice is to check with a real copyright lawyer to make sure you are not already in trouble with what you are doing.

 

You could also check the site you are curating content from and see if it has one of those "do not copy...blah...blah" in their TOS. If they do then it is an "OH, CRAP!!" moment.

[affilliate3percent]

I'm not sure why you would need software to curate content.. what advantage do they bring?

 Cur-ration Soft from my experience using the free trial is a very fast compiler of accurate niche content. In minutes I did what I could manually do in a couple hours and the output gave me clean code to add to a blog page or post in less than 10 minutes of opening the software with full editorial control. I haven't used the other tool but it would have to be a human editor for me to win much bigger favor. Darren like you I am leary of spending money on content automation but decided to play around with this one night and was surprised at how much it can cut time down on even finding related sources to put in the footer or mid roll of an article. Add a couple related post to Youtube Video descriptions and I am betting you soon see results there as well.

[affilliate3percent]

I looked into this a couple years ago when it was the "Next Big Thing" and there were several vendors selling curation software and systems.

 

They all sited "Huffington Post" and other huge sites with "curated" content. This was the key to the whole marketing speel, "These big sites are doing the same thing and raking in millions and so can you!"

 

The movement kinda died when people were getting sued for using other peoples content without their permission. I think it is now relegated to the "black hatters" who can evade the law a bit and don't care about copyright.

 

All the ones I was looking into have "For Sale" on their domains for quite awhile now. It is a great idea, but there is a lot more legally to it than just putting other peoples stuff on your site hoping to get more traffic.

 

Even if you think you are doing it "legally", most don't take the time to check with a real lawyer first to make sure it IS legal to do. The thought of it being "easier to ask forgiveness than ask permission" comes to mind. That thought fails to hold up in court though...it isn't a problem until you are caught.

 

The thing they didn't mention is these large sites have legal deals for licensing this content with the intellectual property owners. Even if there is no money traded, the legal licensing is the key that keeps you out of jail or the poor house from a lawsuit. They got permission first to put the content on their site. Then there is the thing too of "I am on Huffington Post! So what if they didn't have permission - I am famous now! Oh, I am suing you for 10 million since you stole my stuff, now I will be famous AND rich!"

 

It is one thing to put links to others peoples interesting content or small quotes with citing in your own original blog post than it is to publish "THE" content or even large snippets with comments on your site. The site with the original content may have provisions in their TOS like "no copying, reproducing, or distributing without explicit written permission" (most do to prevent someone from using their exclusive content) you could be violating their copyright and then be sued for copyright infringement. You have no defense at all if their content IS on your site and you have no legal document to prove you have permission to do so.

 

Some site owners are very anal about their stuff.

 

This was, again, something that sounded really good on the surface, but once you dug into it was not so appetizing. I try to not be sued or in trouble with the law. Just one of my quirks....I don't look good in orange...So my advice is to check with a real copyright lawyer to make sure you are not already in trouble with what you are doing.

 

You could also check the site you are curating content from and see if it has one of those "do not copy...blah...blah" in their TOS. If they do then it is an "OH, CRAP!!" moment.

Actually nearly every major content marketing and social media firm uses content curating. It's bigger than ever and here is why.

 

The thing that got so many in trouble early on was that software jacked the whole article, did not post a link or credit to the original site, often tried to run it through the spinner, so the new webmaster looked like they created the original piece. Modern software allows full accreditation, you can add and remove content providers if one ask you to stop posting but you can avoid that entirely by using sites that clearly allow limited syndication of their content.

 

On the legal side, if a site has a social media share button they are giving consent by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling to sharing headline and summary of their content or other content they have electronically set to show in exchange for the distribution of the content. This applies to anyone viewing the content as anyone could hit the button and serve the same content on numerous websites even by re-sharing an original share. When concerns about profiteering were brought up it was noted that a site that displayed the full content supported by ads as a stand alone page was an example of profiteering and could be construed as a for profit use requiring permission and/or restitution to the content creator but a rich snippet among other related post is social media at work not a deliberate act to profit from the works of a single author or single copyrighted piece of content.

 

I understand your concern and you will still find people with no knowledge of SEO who think having their work shared on other sites is a bad thing will ask to be removed from your site. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DCMA you do have to remove such items on a request by request basis the fact is these authors are destroying their potential for traffic and reputation growth. Syndicated content brings related content inbound links from authority sites, and typically traffic with it long before it boost your website rankings. In the mean time what is shared on minor blogs flows up the food chain so that what is on Joe Blogger one day is on Huffington Post a week later. You can't get better branding than letting people syndicate your work.

 

Every major blog, Reddit, Mashable, ShoeMoney, Yahoo News, Salon, etc.. Uses properly curated content.

 

Every social media site is born and lives or dies based on shared content seldom with permission of the owners.

 

Every major news media outlet uses articles from smaller publications without direct usage request if the publication allows in their copyright statem,ent accredited links back and they always link to these publications as sources and often send their reader to the source site to read anything beyond a 1/4 to 1/2 page excerpt. Example, Yahoo News with Salon, or USA Today with Entrepreneur or Parade.

 

The big thing is you have to say where the content came from and share only what they make syndicated which in the case of these software is the amount of excerpt in the RSS Feed of the site or the shared media via their social presence.

[btcworks]

Content Samurai is an incredible web-based tool that takes the text from an article or blog post, and through the power of Artificial Intelligence turns it into a stunning video, in just a few clicks!

 

Their premium software usually sells for $97/month (and to be honest, for the time it saves you making videos - it’s worth TEN times that!).

 

But strictly for the next 5 DAYS ONLY they’re running a special VIP Christmas Promotion where if you purchase through the link below, you can grab Content Samurai for just $29/mo. That’s 70% off!

 

http://www.contentsamurai.com/c/mharrisr-content-samurai-christmas-sale-2017

[weblord]

i write when im inspired and motivated which I am on a daily basis. i motivate myself to do things.

Does anyone here have experience with content curation?  It's something I'm seriously considering, and have found two software tools to help with that.  But having no experience with them, I'm hoping someone can help me decide which one to get. I know that ultimately it's up to me, what features attract me, etc. But I'm looking more for advice as to user friendliness, stability, and basically best results.

 

The two products I'm looking at are CurationSoft and Curation Traffic.

 

If anyone has used one or both, I'd appreciate your thoughts on them.

[weblord]

this is totally new to me. if i were to do this on shrawk, this could be easier, but requires a lot of research as well