Are you getting more serious about stepping up your social media game for your business or personal brand and don’t know exactly what to start posting (beyond your own content)? Or, are you ever at a loss for finding great content to read or share with your online community?
Here are five places where you can always find great content:
1. Flipboard
Flipboard acts as both a content discovery app and a content aggregator (much like one of my favorites, Feedly), making it easy for you to read the news and content you’re most interested in and share it right from the app (compatible with Android, Windows, and iOS devices). With more than 34,000 topics to follow and a beautiful mazaginelike, intuitive interface, Flipboard is rich in content for you to discover, read, and share.
2. Reddit
Reddit is one of my personal favorites, primarily because it’s all user-generated content. Folks around the world are constantly curating content and sharing it with the rest of the online community.
Speaking of community, Reddit has an insanely robust one, which is why it calls itself the “front page of the internet.” The site has 174 million users who constantly add the most interesting, most diverse mix of content in countless categories and “subreddits.”
I’ve learned so much from exploring Reddit. Careful, though, or you’ll find yourself spending hours in this content-rich platform (I’ve done it too many times to count)!
3. NPR
One of the most respected names in news, NPR is a constant, go-to source for the latest news in a variety of subject areas in national and world news. Whether through articles or podcasts, you’ll always learn something new about something, without all the partisan bias and media slant that so often accompanies the news from other news sources.
NPR was initially known for its syndication across 900 public radio stations, but in more recent years the news source has grown its digital platform to become of the leading news providers on the Web. And since it’s always great to keep up with the latest goings-on in the world, NPR is a solid source to seek great, interesting content.
4. TED
Since video content is becoming increasingly important to integrate into any content strategy, I highly recommend TED as one of the places from which  you should you should curate. TED Talks offer so much rich, engaging content. TED has an impressive body of video content from all kinds of topics including activism and technology. They offer a wonderful balance of depth, breadth, and brevity. Each TED Talk is no more than 18 minutes long, and presenters come from all across the globe. With more than 1,900 videos, this content certainly contains “ideas worth spreading”…and sharing.
5. Facebook’s Trending sidebar
Love, hate, or consider yourself indifferent to all of Facebook’s recent changes, I’ve got to admit that for a content marketer and curator, the Trending sidebar is really a godsend. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been browsing through the newsfeed, glanced to the right, and caught wind of the latest breaking news.
Another wonderful thing about the Trending sidebar is that the topics are personalized—tailored specifically to one’s interests (largely based on friends, pages “liked,” and overall popular posts across Facebook), allowing me to spend less time sifting through them and more time clicking through. Before Facebook rolled out its Trending sidebar, I used Twitter almost exclusively for my breaking news. Now I use them both.
One other important thing to remember is that social media and online communities are incredibly human: They are ever evolving and multi-dimensional. Content you share does not always have to center around the product, services, or content you offer or create exclusively.
For example, if your content, product, and service offerings are about entrepreneurship, don’t forget to share other things that could relate to or add value to another area of your target audience’s lives, like healthy eating tips (which could aid in keeping energy levels up, directly affecting productivity). Keep this in mind when searching for content to share with members of your online community.
Wherever you decide to visit to read and share content, the most important part is to curate. Your online community will thank you for it, and you may even connect with other content producers because of it.
Let’s hear from you: where do you find the best content?
Courtney Herring is the founder of The Champ Media Agency and a consulting entreproducer dedicated to helping time-starved entrepreneurs create effective content strategy to nurture inspired and engaged online communities. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.