Ten tools to find great content to share on social media

Sharing great content with your audience can be an effective way to deliver value and to establish yourself as a reliable resource. But what if you’re short on time and just don’t have an hour or two to browse the web for content?

Finding content is easy. Everyone creates and shares content online these days. But it’s finding interesting and relevant content to share on a regular basis that is the hard part. Unless you use the right tools.

Here’s a list of ten tools that you can use to find a consistent stream of awesome articles, videos, slide decks and other content that your audience might find interesting.

1. Subreddits

Reddit is a fantastic place to discover a wealth of valuable content on just about any topic you could imagine. What’s great about it is that this content is discovered and voted in by users, which helps give you an idea whether your audience will find it interesting as well.

Specialised subreddits focus on a single topic and can be an ideal place to monitor links you can use on your social media channels. For example, if you’re a chefs or a food blogger, you might find the R/Food subreddit useful for finding recipes, infographics and anything food-related.

You can go even deeper and browse content by topic, such as pizza, comfort food, seafood and more. You will find this option on the right side of the page:

2. Topsy

Topsy is an excellent social media tool to help you find popular stories around a chosen topic. You can even refine your search to only see links, tweets, photos, videos or people. The results page not only displays content based on your search term but it also shows you how many people are talking about it. This allows you to see how interesting that piece of content is, and whether it’s worth sharing it with your audience.

Here’s what shows up when we search for “healthy lunch recipes”:

What makes Topsy even better is that it also has two other tools – Social analytics and Social trends – that you can use to see which topics are trending. Take advantage of these tools to get some new ideas on your next piece of content.

3. Feedly

RSS feeds are a fantastic tool to manage RSS feeds from your favourite sites. But Feedly is at the top of our list thanks to its hashtag search. It works very simple: just type a word into the search bar at the top and choose the topics you’re interested in from the list suggested by Feedly. You’ll not only discover great new content that’s relevant to your industry but also a variety of places to subscribe so you’re kept up-to-date with new content.

4. Swayy

Swayy connects to social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to discover the topics and stories that are trending among your circles or being shared by your community.

Create an account via your Facebook or Twitter account, and you’ll be able to access content directly from your Swayy dashboard. You can also change your settings to receive a daily email with top stories so you don’t have to go to your account to see what’s new. Swayy gets a bonus for its built-in analytics tool that allows you to see stats on what you’re shared via Swayy.

5. Digg

When you visit the Digg website you’ll find a homepage filled with noteworthy stories. To find relevant content you can run a simple search on the site. But their newest tool – Digg Deeper – is much better at cutting through the clutter. It basically shows you the top stories from those you follow on social media right onto your Digg homepage.

Here what shows up on mine:

6. Medium

From the second you land on the Medium homepage you’ll find some great content. But if you want to dig deeper and find specific topics, either run a search or go into the collections built by Medium’s users. You’ll find different tags on the right side so just click on one to see what interesting content shows up for the tag “freelancing”:

You can click on related tags on the right to find even more content.

7. Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is a popular social media tool that many use to manage multiple Twitter accounts, but you can also use it to find great content that people share on this social network.

Within Tweetdeck you can create different columns for specific terms and keywords. For example, if you’re a food blogger, run a search for “healthy eating” and create a column dedicated to this topic. This column will include a list all the posts and tweets that fit in this category. So instead of going to Twitter to search for content on this topic, all you need to do is go to your Tweetdeck account, see what new content has been shared and pick the most interesting ones to retweet.

8. Noosfeer

Another great tool for content discovery, Noosfeer helps you find interesting links based on your search terms. Start by adding your favourite topics and the tool will then suggest relevant articles and videos you might find interesting.

9. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo shows you the most shared content on the web. To use it, simply enter a keyword, a topic or a competitor and the tool will shows you a list of posts ranked by the amount of social shares. This comes in handy when you want to discover which topics or articles might get more engagement from your audience.

You can filter results by date, language, country, or by the type of content (articles, infographics, interviews, videos). Keep in mind however that after only a few searches you’ll be prompted to upgrade to a paid plan.

10. Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a fantastic tool for setting up alerts for specific keywords or terms, and having the latest, most relevant content delivered directly into your inbox. The tool monitors everything – news, blogs, video, discussions, books, and it’s completely free.

To use it, add your term(s) into the search box query, then choose what type of results you’d like to receive (news, blogs, video, etc) and how often you’d like to receive emails.

What other tools do you use to find neat stories and content to share on social media? Share them with us below.