Category Archives: Ever-Green Features

AI-Created Newsletters: On The Cheap

Updated: Aug. 19, 2019(2,615 words)

Besides turning heads with machine-generated writing, artificial intelligence is offering new tools that enable virtually anyone to auto-generate a newsletter — with just a few keystrokes.

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Essentially, these tools automatically search-out and grab excerpts of interesting Web content for you, repackage them as original posts, and then auto-publish the results as an online newsletter or publication.

Many of the solutions also offer you the option to auto-publish the results as Tweets on Twitter — or as posts on Linkedin, Facebook and similar social media networks.

Plus, some of those solutions also enable you to auto-publish those same Tweets or posts to a ‘social media wall,’ which they add to your Web site or other digital property.

Editors already working with long-established Web authoring tools will appreciate that most of these curation packages interface seamlessly with popular content management systems like WordPress, Moveable Type Buffer and the like.

And many of the solutions developers have gone the extra mile to ensure their packages easily port to popular online newsletter creation and management services like Mailchimp.

As with many AI tools, editors and writers respond to AI-driven auto-curated newsletters with mixed emotions.

The new tools certainly do automate the sourcing, packaging and distribution of news and content. And they also free-up editors and writers to spend more time on original work they plan to create and integrate into such newsletters.

But AI-driven newsletters also engender a sense of unease: Many editors and writers wonder, ‘If so much of my job can be automated by AI-driven newsletters, what does that say about my job prospects long-term? Is it simply a matter of time before the lion’s share of online newsletters is completely automated — and my services as a writer or editor are no longer needed?’

In any event, while specific options differ by solution, all of the programs are keyword or keyphrase-driven. Simply keypunch-in a few keywords or keyphrases mirroring the kind of content you want and the solution takes over for you — continually gathering, curating and publishing content on your behalf.

Editors looking for a bit more editorial control can opt for a manual publishing option. Offered by most solutions, manual mode enables you to approve – or pick-and-choose – captured content before it goes live on your Web site or other digital property.

Manual publishing also enables you to mix-in some of your own text, imaging, video and the like, so the resulting newsletter or post feels more personal and more custom-made.

Of course, despite the convenience of auto-curated newsletters, repackaged article excerpts, Tweets, podcast alerts, short descriptions of video links and the like will probably never match the draw of original content.

And content editors and marketers obviously need to ensure that the content they’re republishing in summary form is limited to the kinds of excerpts or short summaries permitted by law.

Otherwise, they could run into copyright problems with the original creator or owner.

But even with those limitations, auto-curated newsletters offer editors and content marketers a welcome respite from the relentless demand for new stories, posts, images and other content that many refer to as ‘feeding the beast.”

Regarding that beast: According to a 2019 survey released by CMI, 81% of business-to-consumer marketers say they’re laser-focused on using content to attract visitors to their Web properties – and to keep them there for as long as possible.

Moreover, 57% say they’d spend more on content marketing – online newsletters, Twitter posts, podcasts, YouTube videos and the like – in 2019 that the year prior.

Their reasoning is driven by past success: Most marketers engaged in content marketing say they’re seeing real results from their efforts.

Specifically, a full 74% say the promotional bang they’re getting from content marketing is much better – or at least somewhat better – than the already encouraging results they saw in 2018.

Bottom line: Anyone producing online content on a regular basis for marketing or other purposes will save significant time and effort with an auto-curated newsletter.

For those looking for an overview of solutions, there are a raft of packages available. And while not all packages are driven by artificial intelligence, they’re all worthy of close monitoring.

Essentially, even those without AI still get the job done. And there’s a good chance conventional solutions may add artificial intelligence capabilities soon, simply to remain competitive.

Here’s a representative sampling of what’s out there:

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*Curata: Probably the best way to select an auto-curated newsletter / content system is to study AI-driven Curata and compare its approach with the others.

Essentially, Curata is an extremely high-end, industrial strength package and one of the early pioneers in the space.

You may not need all of its bells-and-whistles.

But taking Curata for a test-drive is a great way to take the measure of what the industry has to offer.

Like most content curation systems, Curata can be programmed to grab keyword-specific content for you from Web sites, blogs, social media and the like — and then serve-up its findings on easy-to-use dashboard.

You always have the option to have Curata auto-publish the content it brings back as your company newsletter, blog, Web site – or even as a post on social media.

But you may want to use its auto-curation tools to eyeball what it’s offering — and then publishing only what you prefer.

With Curata’s manual curation feature, you also have the option to mix-in your own text and images to give your publication a more custom feel.

The system is designed to publish seamlessly to all the popular content management systems, including WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, TextPattern, Moveable Type, Buffer, Hubspot and Marketo.

And it also seamlessly publishes to social media networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

For content sources, Curata relies on more than 100,000 news and other Web sites, which it has identified as reliable over the years – including sites with or without RSS feeds.

Plus, you can add your own preferred content sources to the mix to ensure Curata publishes precisely what you’re going for.

The system also weeds-out links to duplicate content, as well as links to content it considers stale.

The beauty of Curata’s search feature is that it relies on artificial intelligence to ideally grow ever-smarter over time about the kind content you consider most useful.

It does this by monitoring the specific news and social media posts you actually choose to publish from all the offerings it brings back. Then it tweaks its search rules to ferret-out content that most closely resembles your choices.

With each content choice you make, the AI tweaking process repeats. Theoretically, this relentless refinement feature ultimately produces a search system in which Curata’s choices — and your choices — become one.

As might be expected from a high-end solution, Curata also auto-categorizes and auto-tags every piece of content it brings back to you for easy auto-sorting.

And the solution includes a tool that advises you on how to comply with copyright laws. That comes in handy when you’re thinking of publishing summaries or excerpts of copyrighted work.

For a great overview of how Curata works, check-out its 20-minute demo video. It’s genuinely informative and should get your wheels churning on how you can use Curata to auto-curate content.

For pricing, contact Curata directly.

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*PublishThis: Another early pioneer in auto-curation, PublishThis works similarly to Curata. It too brings back keyword-specific content, which it will auto-publish for you — or store in a library to await your final, manual curation.

Like Curata, PublishThis ports seamlessly to virtually all the popular content management systems, email newsletter systems and social media networks.

Currently, you’re able to give PublishThis a free test-drive. Pricing starts at $99/month.

*Scoop.it: Another industry veteran, Scoop.it also uses keywords to bring back trending content, summaries of which can be auto-published or ported seamlessly to virtually all popular content management systems, e-newsletter publishing systems and social media.

As with most other established systems, you can mix-in your own text and images.

Scoop.it also auto-integrates Google Analytics into its system. That enables you to closely monitor how readers are interacting with the content on your Web site, blog or on social media.

Scoop.it offers a free version, with pricing starting at $14.99/monthly.

*Instapaper: Billing itself as a simple tool for capturing Web content, Instapaper allows you to publish auto-curated content on the Web in a pre-designed newspaper format.

You’re also able to output to your own Web site, blog, social media, or a newsletter publishing platform like Mailchimp.

A nice bonus: The solution also comes with a subscription widget. Plug that into your Web site and you can charge for your content.

For pricing, Instapaper offers a free version, with beefed-up alternatives starting at $9/month.

*Shareist: Targeted to content editors who discover a great deal of curatable content while surfing the Web, Shareist comes equipped a number of ways to grab Web content to store in its library for future use.

Very popular is its browser extension, which quickly adds to Google Chrome.

Simply install the extension and you’ll be able to auto-save any content you come across while surfing the Web to Shareist’s library.

Shareist also enables you to import content that you’re already saving with auto-bookmarking tool Pocket.

Plus, you can email content to the Shareist library, too.

Need more options? Shareist also enables you to import .CSV files you use to keep track of your content — featuring variables to describe your content such as text, URL, title, description, image URL, tags, etc.

Shareist features manual publishing. So you’ll be able to pick-and-choose the content it finds for your newsletter or post before it publishes.

And you’ll also have the option to mixed-in any text, images, video or other content that you’ve created before you publish.

Shareist offers a free version, as well as a Pro version at $9/month.

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*Wordpress Plugin MyCurator: WordPress users looking for a solution to integrate seamlessly with their WordPress Web site or blog will want to check-out this system.

Like other solutions, MyCurator uses keywords to search the Web for specific content, which it brings into its library. With a single click, you’re able to import truncated versions of that content into your WordPress Editor – complete with a text summary, image and link.

The system also features built-in artificial intelligence, which is designed to ‘learn’ which content you consider to be most useful. Subsequently, it returns the kind of content that most interests you in future searches.

Plus, you can use MyCurator’s ‘Get it’ bookmarking tool to instantly save content you find while surfing the Web.

MyCurator also offers some handy training videos, which you can use to get up-and-running on the system very quickly.

MyCurator’s free version enables you to curate content for a single topic. Users looking to generate multiple topic streams can upgrade to Pro versions, starting at $15/month.

*AX Semantics’ Collaborative Content Curation System: Instead of using an off-the-shelf content management system, AI-generated writing toolmaker AX Semantics decided to pull together tools from two other companies to create its own auto-curation system.

As such, the system is not ‘for sale.’ Instead, it’s a clever alternative for curation management, which happens to use AX Semantics AI-generated writing tool to auto-create the descriptive text for the content that the system finds.

The result: A continually updated news stream, which you can add to any Web site, blog or social media account.

The AI-driven news stream solution works by:

*Continually searching the Web for news using keywords programmed into Feedly

*Auto-adding teaser text to the stories, using AX Semantic’s AI-generated writing software

*Auto-posting the teaser text — along with a link to the original news story — to company blogs

*Relying on Zapier to coordinate the flow of content between Feedly, AX Semantics’ solution and your Web property

Lisa Weidmann, online marketing manager, AX Semantics, says three of every four articles on AX Semantics’ Web site are now produced using the configuration.

That provides much more content, much more copy for search engines to notice — and ultimately, many more unique visits to the Web site each day, according to Weidmann.

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*CrowdyNews : CrowdyNews takes an alternative approach to auto-content curation by creating a social media newsfeed, which runs next to articles you’ve published on your Web site or blog.

It uses keywords in a slightly different way than most solutions, bringing back content from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tumbler and Flicker, based on the topics of original articles that you’ve already published on your Web site or other digital property.

Essentially, CrowdyNews enables you to create real-time, updated news streams on any topic for your Web site or blog, ensuring that your site always monitors the pulse of news that’s trending.

Like many solutions, CrowdyNews uses artificial intelligence to ‘get smarter’ over time about the kind of content that works best for your site.

Plus, special CrowdyNews filters censor profanity from social media and other sources – as well as any posts that refer to your competitors.

For pricing, contact the company.

*Flockler: Similar to CrowdyNews, Flockler lifts posts from social media and then repackages it as a ‘social media wall’ on your Web site, blog or other digital property.

You can hide inappropriate posts that Flockler finds.

Plus, you can mix-in your own text and images to give its social media wall a more custom feel.

You’ll also find easy integration with Google Analytics. And publishers without their own Web site will still be able to use the solution with an option that allows them to publish on the Flockler platform.

Probably one of the more creative implementations of Flocker can be found at Planet Fitness. The company uses Flocker in its community domain to mix-in photos of Planet Fitness users with the original content it creates.

The result: A very slick, very tasty production, which essentially uses the power of word-of-mouth to reinforce Planet Fitness’ authenticity.

You can take Flockler for a free trial run, with subsequent pricing at 49 Euros / month.

Tailwind: This is a unique curation tool that is specifically designed to help users of Pinterest and Instagram drive more traffic to their digital properties on those social networks.

While Tailwinds auto-suggests new content for your Pinterest or Instagram presence based on the kind of content you’re already publishing, much of its power resides in its performance analytics.

For example: With Tailwind, you can come-up with new ideas for content by monitoring what people are posting.

Plus, you can pinpoint the keywords users of Pinterest and / or Instagram are relying on to find your company on either social network.

Tailwind also enables you to identify the kinds of trending images and influential conversations users are having that relate most to the product or service you’re selling.

And the system’s solutions metrics enable you to see how your presence on Pinterest and / or Instagram stacks-up against your competitors.

Need to drill down to analyze your digital presence by category, the display boards you create, keyword and / or hashtag? No problem, Tailwind has that covered.

Looking to track your growth on either Pinterest or Instagram based on your followers, the boards you create, the images you re-pin, or user likes or comments? Tailwind nails that, too.

You can also use Tailwind to single-out your Pinterest display boards that are performing best for you. Plus, you can schedule posts at the moments your audience is likely to be most receptive.

Essentially: this is a curation tool that deserves a test-drive from anyone looking for a way to continually generate new content on either service – and precisely measure the results.

Tailwind offers a free trial. For pricing, contact the company.

Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.