Free Tools, Priceless Rewards! (4) – Social Engagement and Real-time Content Curation Made Simple…

Social media tools are all over the place in response to the much-needed social tweaking that social media users are hungry for. In our “Free Tools, Priceless Rewards!” post series, we will be reviewing the best collection of social media tools in order to help you enhance your social influence and generate massive traffic to your site/blog. Let’s get started!

Turn Your Gmail into a Social Hub With Gist…

Gist is a fantastic all-in-one social engagement tool that allows you to search less and engage more.

Until recently, the thought of being able to assemble all your contacts from all social media sites in one place seemed out of reach, but Gist begs to differ:

Your contacts are everywhere. They are in email, social networks, on your mobile phone and many other sources. Gist brings your contacts into one place to give you a full view of your network making it easy to find anyone, anytime. – Gist.com

Gist covers a whopping 20 million blogs, 60,000+ news sources in addition to content feeds from popular social media sites (Facebook and Twitter are on top of the list).

Gist is available for Gmail (Firefox and Google Chrome are supported), Outlook Exchange, Android, iPhone and Salesforce.com.

Thanks to Gist, you can automatically get the latest tweets, blog posts, Facebook status, you name it of your contacts from one central location.

But the fun doesn’t end here! You have full access to your network profiles and contact information. The information is updated automatically but you still have the option to ask for profile updates directly.

The Gist Dashboard allows you to share content and post updates into popular social networking sites and through email. It couldn’t get easier than that!

With all the endless social media options out there, the need for an all-in-one social media central location became so evident. Thanks Gist!

Introducing Qrait – The Real-time Content Curation Platform

Content curation is the only savior I could think of from the e-information overload! Some solutions have been devised to make it possible but the beauty of Qrait is the real-time curation feature.

In addition, Qrait distinguishes between real-time filtering and real-time curation:
Real-time filtering isn’t curation, it’s filtering. Qrait lets you combine real-time filtering and your own personal touch to create something of value that people trust. – Qrait.com

Qrait supports “oEmbed” content embedding technology which is widely used by many social media sites and Twitter Apps.

All you need is to give Qrait any URL and it will handle everything on your behalf. It also allows you to embed your curated content molecule(s) into your site/blog using iframe and javascript. Fantastic!

Speaking of content curation, Facebook lists are very helpful in allowing you to filter your news feeds for a specific list. Check out our Facebook Lists Tutorial: How to Use Facebook Lists For Content Curation and Privacy Control for more information.

What’s your take on today’s tools? Have you tried any of them before? What other tools you think we should review in future posts? Your valuable contribution is much appreciated.