New Ways to Play in Social Media’s Content Sandbox

Is it me, or does it seem that new tools for excavating and creating online content are more plentiful than the countless varieties of M&M’s available in stores? It’s challenging to keep up with the digital ebb and flow, but you do need to experiment before dismissing a new platform as too trendy, too eclectic, and not at all for you.

Sometimes you just want to find and share good content. Other times you’re in search of innovative tools that help you create original content. It’s a daunting task to separate the truly useful tools from the mostly amusing ones. As someone who uses the Internet daily for more than spiritual sustenance, I’m willing to give it a try. How about you?

(Please note: I sourced this post by starting with a saved Google Alert (social media), which led me to some interesting articles by Social Media Examiner and Forbes online. See, Google Alerts do kick-start blogging ideas…)

BuzzSumo Provides Search Capabilities Akin to an Endless Popularity Contest: This site’s name is just so d@mn appealing, although it has nothing to do with sumo wrestling. According to Social Media Examiner, you use BuzzSumo as a keyword-research tool to determine the online content shared most often and to identify the “virtual ninjas” who are key influencers.

The filters available for slicing and dicing your searches are impressive in their usefulness. “Filter by Type” includes articles, infographics, guest posts, giveaways, interviews, and videos. While BuzzSumo offers its subscribers a tiered-pricing plan, there’s also a free option (minus exporting capabilities and reports) for single users with a lean analytics budget.

You Don’t Get Lost in eMaze–You Present with It: For those of you already familiar with SlideShare, eMaze is another way of injecting visual content (i.e., presentations and slideshows) into your social-media rants and raves. The people running the platform consider it to be the “next generation” in rich-media content creation.

Many eMaze templates are available to you for customization of online, cloud-based presentations. This platform seems to perform like PowerPoint on Red Bull! And if you’re not sure how to construct an educational, inspirational or entertaining presentation, eMaze’s Get Inspired feature (scroll down) offers lots and lots of examples.

The reasonably priced plans (the most expensive option is $9.90 a month) offer several advantages over the free eMaze account. (Special pricing is available for students and educators.) For those of you who prefer a soupçon of reading material with your visuals, check out eMaze’s blog.

Differentiate Between Your Online Wants and Needs via Theneeds: If finding a better way to organize your blogging and social-media brainstorming efforts ranks high on your list of things to accomplish, you just might need Theneeds. “In a nutshell, Theneeds scours the web so you don’t have to, constantly learning about your interests, and bringing you only the web you love.”

Use your profession or industry as a benchmark to source news, articles, videos, social/blog posts, and more. This platform claims it will save you much search time and help you create content that corresponds to your target audience’s needs and interests.

One really cool feature of Theneeds: It uses artificial intelligence technology to improve relevancy of your search results as you increase your site usage.

Do yourself a favor and check out this site’s home page, with its trippy, flippy search squares, right now. Yes, it’s a free resource–go!

Portent Prophetically Predicts Your Next Article or Blog Post: Look no further than Portent’s Content Idea Generator for a resource that doubles as an online word-prompt brainstorming tool. Instead of an austere whiteboard awaiting your dry-erase moments of brilliance, this page stares you in the eye old-school style, a digital blackboard anticipating your squeaky-chalk scribblings.

Once you fill in the Subject box (per Portent’s smart-alecky instructions), the site generates a potential article or blog-post headline for you to then populate with content. The more interesting the words or phrase you key in, the more unconventional your writing prompt will be. Naturally, I couldn’t resist baiting the tool with a bit of snark…

Here’s what Portent suggested as my headline when I typed “military boarding school for opinionated children” into the Subject box: “How Military Boarding School for Children Can Make You Sick.” (Really?)

And when I entered the phrase “scratching a mosquito bite,” the Content Idea Generator yielded this virtual seed: “19 Unexpected Ways Scratching a Mosquito Bite Can Give You Better Hair.” (Really.)

Sulia Helps You Refine Searches on Topics Mattering Most to You: Sulia (rhymes with Julia, I think) is a subject-based social-media platform. It’s a place to find and view content about topics important to you in a way more organized and filtered than the usual suspects (like your LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter streams).

Additionally, if you’re a subject matter expert who creates content, you can apply to work directly with Sulia regarding online publishing opportunities via the appropriate channel(s).

According to Forbes online, “Sulia is a content platform like a communal blog, but it allows users to categorize their content and search based on user-tailored ‘suggested posts’ and posts that are trending within the community.”

Once accepted as a publisher on Sulia, your readership may be smaller, but you’ll probably have more success with a narrowed audience regarding social-media affection and sharing. This platform is very new, so play (and ask others) before you make any deals with the company.

Bubblews Is Not Your Grandfather’s Guest-Blogging Site: Don’t ask me how to pronounce this website’s name–I have yet to figure it out! Bubblews appears to be a guest-blogging/article-posting site that aspires to reward contributors by sharing its ad revenue with them.

Your (future) percentage/share of the website’s advertising revenue is determined by how much social love (i.e., views, likes, comments) your posts attract. I don’t know any bloggers who have started posting regularly yet to Bubblews, but I’ll wager some of you are now curious to give it a whirl.

Before you commit to a Bubblews account, be sure to read the rules posted at the site’s Learning Center. You’ve been warned…

Are you already familiar with one or some of these content-creation-or-search websites and tools? If so, which would you unconditionally recommend to my readership? If you haven’t yet dabbled with any of these relatively new digital baubles, which one tantalizes you the most? Why is that?

Me, I’m digging Portent’s free-wheeling Content Idea Generator, but I’m intrigued by the possibilities of a “for profit” blogging community like Bubblews.

For additional information regarding these new avenues of online-content exploration, here are links to the Forbes and Social Media Examiner articles that motivated me to write this blog post. Happy trails to you all, dear readers!

Lori Shapiro is the owner of By All Writes LLC, a business-to-business (B2B) writing, editing, and research company in Marlton, New Jersey. She revels in shielding her clients from the pain of writing their own print and web marketing or educational copy. Please call Lori Shapiro at 856-810-9764 or email By All Writes LLC at lori@byallwrites.biz  for a no-obligation project quote today!