Wow, I’ve never been closer to Content Shock.

Every day I read, skim, share, and recommend dozens if not hundreds of articles — from Medium, LinkedIn, blogs, and media outlets. Some I find on twitter, others through content discovery tools, but it’s becoming more and more difficult to stay sane throughout this constant barrage.

So I’ve listed ways to discover and curate fresh (or eternally fresh) content below, and I’ll leave it to you to mix and match however you want. The key is to create a healthy system that works and that keeps you sane throughout the process. Still working on mine.

(To see the previews better, click and they’ll open in a new tab.)

#1: BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is indispensable.

The tool shows you influencers in a specific field/on a specific topic and shows you the content that’s been most shared in the last 24 hours, week, month, or year. I use it to discover fresh content by searching keywords like managament, startups, and future of work, but if you don’t pay for the Pro option, it only shows the top 10 results.

You can also use BuzzSumo to see what got shared the most in your industry and identify patterns, so that you can create more awesome content.

#2: Buffer

I considered Buffer’s auto-suggestions after reading my friend Kiki Schirr’s article about it. She’s right that they’re super-clever and targeted. However, if you’re not careful, you’ll end up echoing everyone else’s tweets, and your followers will think you’re another spammer. Nichole Elizabeth Demere advises to:

Counteract it with a lot of original tweets as well.

Besides, it’s worth considering to schedule some of these to come out while you sleep. In my case, those will be the tweets my American friends see in their evening. You can even schedule re-tweets!

P.S. And hey, if you really like buffer’s suggestions and don’t want to sound like an echo chamber, you can always edit the tweets after you add them. 😉

#3: Twitter Lists

Do NOT use some clever tool that automatically lists people who use specific hashtags or keywords. The only thing that does is annoy people.

Instead, take a few seconds to add people — slow and steady — to lists you’ve curated over time, and when you have about 100 people in them (and none of them is too spammy), you have a balanced feed of that particular topic. So when I’m in the mood for design content, I go to my ux twitter list.

And this is just one of the many uses of twitter lists.

P.S. I think Medium is trying to be some sort of expanded alternative to twitter because it’s getting “more connected”. I usually manage to find pretty good stuff in my home feed, so you can try that instead of twitter lists.

#4: Content Curations

True, there are a lot of tools and sites that curate the best content — whether by people or some kind of algorithm. Personally, I’ve only come about two useful sources so far: Quibb and foundcy. See foundcy ->

Even though I’m not allowed on Quibb (too VIP), I’ve gleaned a lot of useful links from the email newsletters. As for foundcy, it’s just a small segregator of who reads what.

When it comes to content curations, I like real-time, people curated stuff. The rest is just too impersonal and outdated, really.

I also recommend communities like Inbound, where people upload awesome articles and start discussions around them. There’s a of value in that.

#5: Collect the Best

I think it was Kiki Schirr again who advised me to collect the best articles. It makes sense, but with so many articles coming out daily I hadn’t considered it before. After all there will be new content, right? Wrong, new doesn’t mean better. Now that I’ve considered it, I started using raindrop.io to store the most useful all-time applicable content, for later sharing.

In my experience, Trello is not the best for such curations. I don’t like Excel either. Guess I’ll have to ask Anuj Adhiya what he uses (because he knows everything everywhere). For now, randrop.io will suffice because it’s easy to use, kind of pretty and colorful, and most importantly, does the job.

What tools do you use to collect useful content? 

P.S. Some people use Pocket, but it gets so messy in there. I wouldn’t recommend it myself.

#6: Start a Group

If you don’t trust auto-suggestions like the ones buffer provides (after all they’re not really real-time), you can gather a group of really good curators on your favorite platform, and share what they found. Kind of lazy, but if you do it right, everyone will benefit from everyone else’s suggestions.

It can be a group on LinkedIn or you can use LinkyDink (which is how Product Hunt started FYI), and you can even use Slack! Whichever you choose, you’ll have access to the best of the best, every single day.

Wouldn’t that be something!

#7: Search on Product Hunt

Product Hunt is my go-to when I want to find something, whether it is a tool or a clever hack. Just go to the home page and use the search option. Use keywords like “news” and “content” and “curation”.

And hey, you can even create a collection on PH that we can all use!

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That’s all I have for you. If you have any other suggestions, I’d be so happy to give them a try.

We must all strive to learn and improve, and share what works with others, so we keep the helpful circle going. 😀