How to Pick the Best Content Curation Tools

Content curation benefits your entire organization, not just your learners. According to well-renowned IDC research highlighted by Anders Pink, typical knowledge workers spend about 25% of their time either searching for information or analyzing it. So, well-executed content curation, which sorts high-quality and relevant content, is a great way to get knowledge workers back to … well, working. How to select the best content curation tools available? Read on.

Link Each Curation Tool and Resource to a Business Goal or Objective
Your content curation tools and resources should only aggregate and filter learning content that serves a purpose that will benefit your overall organization. So, you’ll need to ensure they’re distributing learning content that can be tied to your organization’s needs, goals, and objectives. For instance, you’ll want a tool that links your sales associates to resources and curated learning content that will help them be more effective sales associates, which will lead to higher profit generation for your organization. Or, you may want to curate content from reputable sources that will allow your leadership trainees to further develop their communication skills. Essentially, you’ll want to make sure that each curation tool and resource is selected because it can be linked to a clear business goal or objective.
Review Metrics and Petition Feedback from Users and Learners
To ensure you always have the best content curation tools, you’ll need to continually make sure people are actually using them and that they like using them. See how many employees share curated content in message boards, as well as how many complaints you receive regarding content access and quality. Is it difficult for learners to access and use the curation tools you’ve selected? Is curated content easy to use and embedded in e-learning courses and modules? Do your learners or instructors find the learning content they’re accessing via your curation tools lacking in quality, too advanced, or irrelevant to their needs? You should petition all users’ feedback often so you know you’re not investing time and money supporting curation tools that are not being used or aren’t useful.
 
Evaluate Continual Costs and ROI
Some content curation tools are automatically included in your selected learning management system (LMS). However, you’ll need to ask your current LMS vendor what type of content curation integrations or plug-ins it offers. You may have to find other content curation tools that could cost money based on what types of sources and integrations your learners need. Be sure to continually evaluate the usefulness of these tools and that they’re yielding a much higher return on investment than what you’re spending in acquiring or managing them. These tools should not require a lot of time to maintain and should lead to things like higher assessment scores in training courses and increased employee engagement and productivity rates.
 
Keep the tips above in mind to ensure your organization is selecting the best content curation tools possible.