There’s not enough time. Never was. Never will be. If that applies to all things, then you definitely should not be spending any time on content that’s not the best. Your content discovery skills should work in your best interest!
To that end, I’ll teach you how to approach content discovery in a way that yields only the most desirable results.
But first…
What is Content Discovery?
It’s hard to exactly explain a term that carries its own explanation in itself. What do we mean when we say content discovery? We mean the process, in which anyone finds out something interesting and new (the content) on the Internet.
It applies for end consumers, when they’re going through their day online, as well as marketers, who are searching for valuable content that might bring in more audience engagement. In short, it’s that magical moment where for a brief second you stop scrolling and get that dopamine burst from finding an image, text or video that speaks to you.
Why Is It Important To Discover The Best Content On The Web?
Content is king. It’s king, because it’s the engine without which there be no Internet. It’s also a source of value and value can mean something different to different people:
- For companies it’s creating content that engages their target audience and generates sales leads or direct sales numbers.
- For customers, it’s informational content that solves problems or instructs them on some important aspect of their life.
- For professionals, it’s staying up to date with current affairs or gathering data for research.
You sink or you swim when it comes to content discovery. No matter how much time one spends online there’s no chance to see everything being published, so it becomes essential to get to the best content as far as possible.
What are Some of The Tools You Can Use?
With as much digital freedom as we have, it can be a bit daunting to even think where you need to go in order to mine content. The short list below points you towards the richest resources as well as the right tools to get the job done.
Content discovery is all about patience just like prospectors used to sieve for gold dust for long hours before they’d located a large gold deposit in the wilderness.
Reddit means many things to many people. The forum slash social media platform is a place for storytelling, confessions, judgment, memes as well as knowledge. Regardless of where your deep interests lie there’s bound to be a subreddit just for your liking such as r/birdswitharms (it is just what it says, pictures of birds with human hands drawn on them). It’s no wonder Reddit has been named “the front page of the internet.”
It’s incredible the volume of wisdom, knowledge and expertise people are willing to share, which makes for a perfect source on content whether it’s for personal development or professional gains. Reddit requires a little bit of effort in order to get into it, but has much to bestow those who fully immerse themselves.
Social Media
Social media remains the gateway to content discovery for many and although quite chaotic (and arguably toxic), Twitter remains one of the first places to track breaking news. It’s the engine by which news stories are spread like wildfire and depending on what hashtags you use, there’s plenty to learn and discover. Whereas Reddit is slow, but substantial, Twitter works at an incredible pace and generates fresh content every single hour.
Aside from world news and the trending list, you can keep an eye out for people with very specific knowledge like the history of fashion or the finer points of microbiology. With patience and a love of lists, Twitter can yield lots of content.
Bloggers and Influencers
Rather than cast your web wide, you can narrow your focus to a singular point of view. Each field has its loudest voices. Sometimes they’re loud for all the wrong reasons. Yet others… are followed and supported for the simple reason they have something important to say.
Seek out the influencers, the bloggers, the journalists, the scholars and the experts who are not just sharing their own opinions, but point you to other sources of information. It can interviews. It can be important threads, or news items, or video content.
RSS Feed Reader
RSS feed readers make a world of difference when it comes to content discovery. They’re versatile and play well with others, so you can automate and integrate with other platforms as you see fit. The best thing is that they’ve outgrown their humble beginnings as only able to read blogs or news sites, but instead encompass just about every type of feed there is. Yes, even the search results of job sites!
Inoreader has quite the successful discovery mode, which opens you up to topics and sources you would never have come across as easily. Another bonus of this RSS reader is the ability to search through its database and even filter through duplicate headlines. Complement your application with the browser extension to capture even more content as you go through your day.
There are three key strengths to RSS feed readers – a chronological dashboard, automation and the incredibly flexible filtering and organizational powers.
Google Alert
Another way to have information come to you rather than the other way around is to turn to the Old Faithful, Google Alert! Google Alerts have been helping publicists since its introduction and are not going anywhere any time soon.
What’s so remarkable about Google Alerts is the simplicity of the tool. No learning curve and you are free to customize your query any way you like to deliver the best possible results. Basically, every time Google Alert comes across the keywords you’ve set you receive an email with a link. It only stops working until you say so and makes background data collection a breeze!
