Strong online research skills are vital for any writer, but most writers stick to the basic tools: search engines. Popular and easier isn’t always better. There are quite a few websites and databases that aren’t quite as well-known as Google or Bing, but provide more specialized ways to help your company.
Curating and Organizing Content
Content curation software allows you to look through relevant content that is already sorted and organized for you. These pieces of information range from links to experts in your field, to a list of articles that will could be useful for your audience.
Curata is a reputable content curation tool that focuses on providing relevant material based on your target audience. Each account gets a customizable microsite, where the evolving algorithm of Curata’s search system continually analyzes your needs to provide the most useful and up-to-date content.
Storify’s slogan is, “Make the web tell a story”, and that’s exactly what it does. It provides a way to import and manage content from all types of media into a timeline, which helps you maintain organization. The application finds relevant content from social media, search engines, and YouTube, as well as other content on their own site.
Analyzing Data
Content analytics is catching on as a popular method to decide on the best direction to go in and the best topics for your content. Analytics software shows how much content is out there, how it is used, and the best way to use it.
Google Trends is probably the most well-known of the bunch, but most don’t know how to utilize it for their business. It is a free tool that gives you graphical data about the popularity of any keyword or subject you type in. In addition to showing you what if/when your topic is most popular, it also provides the most recent trending stories.
Simple Reach tracks the social action on any content you publish, as well as similar content others have published. You get to see the insights and measure social behavior, which can help when deciding on the best direction for future content.
Atomic Reach is similar to Simple Reach, with the added benefit of measuring the quality of the content in its own search engine. It also promotes the sharing of content and provides insight on the success of your content.
Parse.ly is a clever play on the word “parse”, which is exactly what this software does. It takes articles or posts from your site and analyzes them to compare within specific categories. Like Google Trends, Parse.ly shows what is trending online at any given time. Their trend data is more detailed and focused.
Retrieving Information
Infoplease offers a wealth of facts, data, and information on any subject, with multimedia features. It is a highly-respected Wikipedia alternative, with accurate information gathered from academic sources, though the entries are not usually as extensive as Wikipedia’s are.
These research aids help add a unique, streamlined quality to your content. More than that, these tools allow you to save time, increase content output, and maximize content marketing.
