When it comes to online marketing, most people know that providing high quality content for their website visitors is one of the most crucial steps in the process. Although consistently coming up with new content can be quite challenging, it is possible to do so. Here are 5 ideas to get you started on your content curation journey the next time you need to provide content for your site.

Sign up for Google Alerts

This is one of the easiest ways to come up with fresh new content. Setting up Google Alerts will enable you to receive email alerts when an article or blog post is compiled that discusses a topic that you are interested in. Alerts arrive in your inbox, so all you need to do is open the email, read through the snippets and decide which ones are most appropriate. Clicking the links provided will take you to the site where the articles were first posted, and from there, you can usually pick up a few great ideas for content of your own.

Scan Social Media

If you use social media regularly to attract website traffic, chances are that competitors in your niche are doing so as well. Heading over, liking their pages and opting to receive notifications from them will enable you to see when they post new content online. Once their content has been posted, you will be able to read it and in most cases, pick up a few ideas for new posts for your own website or blog.

Magazine Articles

Most people scan the covers of magazines while they are out shopping or even reading them online. In many cases, there will be article headlines that can be customized to suit almost any niche or category. For example, an article entitled “5 Ways to Save Electricity” could be tweaked to read along the lines of “5 Ways to customize your Smartphone’s App Screen.”

Take Notes

Many people find that great ideas for content may come to them at some of the most unexpected times. For example, while they are in the shower, reading a book or even out shopping. As a result, it is recommended that you keep a notebook and pen on hand to jot down ideas that come to mind on the spur of the moment. If pen and paper writing is not for you, there are numerous note-taking smartphone apps that can do the job for you.

Consider Stumbleupon.com

Another excellent content curation method is to pay regular visits to stumbleupon.com, because hundreds of thousands of links to great articles are shared here each day. Although you may not find exact matches for your industry or niche, chances are that something else you read there may spark an idea for new article.

The next time you feel stuck for content ideas, why not consider using a few of the above mentioned sources to help kick start the idea process? In most cases, you will be able to come up with quite a few ideas in a relatively short period of time.

Other sources

This next list is a list of miscellaneous content tools. Our friend Ken Lyons from measuredSEM put this list together. Good stuff right here!

• http://www.juxtapost.com/
• https://www.pinterest.com/
• https://contentgems.com/start
• http://feedly.com/i/welcome
• https://about.flipboard.com/
• http://bundlr.com/
• https://iflow.com/
• https://newsle.com/
• http://www.kuratur.com/
• http://www.zemanta.com/
• http://www.pearltrees.com/
• http://www.zite.com/
• http://www.bundlepost.com/
• http://triberr.com/
• https://www.spundge.com/
• http://paper.li/
• http://www.thinglink.com/
• http://www.scoop.it/
• http://list.ly/
• http://enterprise.waywire.com/
• http://www.postplanner.com/
• http://trap.it/
• http://www.curata.com/
• http://kapost.com/
• http://www.aboutecho.com/