Let’s say you have a library chock full of great content — from blog posts, eBooks and infographics to video content and one-pagers. That’s good and all, but that high-quality content won’t be of much value if your existing and potential customers can’t find or access your assets.
Ensuring audiences can quickly access content is a core objective of any content discovery method, and it’s the first step toward surfacing truly relevant content for every reader.
A resource library on your site is one good way to publicize your content, but it’s hardly the only step content marketers should take to share their original content far and wide. Relying solely on manual discovery via your navigation or sitemap risks leaving large gaps in visibility.
In this article, we’re going to take a closer look at content discovery — specifically, what tools and content discovery platforms you can use to get your content in front of readers’ eyes. The options range from free social sites to paid native advertising services, so let’s get into it.
What Is Content Discovery?
“Content discovery” pretty much explains itself: It’s the process by which customers and online users find and engage with your content. At its best, the content discovery process blends automated discovery technology with purposeful, manual discovery checkpoints, ensuring every asset is surfaced at the right moment.
Some of us may be voracious content hounds who go actively looking for great content, while others among us may be more passive and let driven content recommendations come to them.
As content creators, we should be fully aware of how the target audience discovers content. This is Step 1 to engagement; this knowledge is essential to content marketing success. It forms the backbone of any holistic discovery framework.
One way to address this diversity in content discovery habits is to create consumer personas that outline how each may encounter a content asset. For instance, your high-intent corporate buyer may be actively looking for content through a search engine, while others may stumble upon assets when using social media.
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What Is a Content Discovery Platform?
In short, a content discovery platform is a tool expressly built for displaying your content in front of the right audience, often through highly relevant, driven content recommendations that feel native to the browsing experience.
Whereas content discovery may be more informal when conducted through social media marketing, leveraging a content discovery platform can help drive traffic and increase engagement by automating custom scan checks that match users with the most relevant content.
You might have seen these content discovery engines in action before without even noticing. Ever reached the end of a news article and then been presented with tiles of “Recommended for you” content? That’s the work of a discovery tool that takes the shape of native advertising.
It’s a bit like Netflix, which changed the content game with its machine learning–influenced recommendations. These platforms host oodles of content and depend on user activity data and your own content metadata to display the most relevant assets to any internet user within your target audience.
The upshot of using a content discovery platform? You can avoid pop-up ads and other intrusive means of advertising your original content. Instead, the platform introduces automated discovery that feels organic and aligns with the modern user’s expectations.
6 Top Content Discovery Tools
Content marketers have a range of options when it comes to improving their content discovery strategy, from free social media sites to paid placement through a content discovery platform. Together, these solutions can form a discovery framework stack that covers every stage of the journey. Here are some of the best tools at your disposal:
1. Facebook
This powerhouse social site is perhaps the No. 1 destination for many consumers passively looking for content. Social media marketing is fundamental to any modern marketing strategy, and utilizing Facebook to reach your audience is a no-brainer.
Posting your original content to your brand page and even sharing it in Facebook groups can bring your content front and center. Facebook’s ever-evolving features ensure users see posts with the highest potential relevance.
2. X (Formerly Known as Twitter)
Like Facebook, Twitter is a social media platform that’s used daily by hundreds of millions of people. That scale makes it impossible to ignore as a content discovery tool. Of course, you’ll want to be cognizant of what content to showcase on Twitter, as video content and short-form blogs may be more enticing for readers who are constantly refreshing their feed.
Including strategic hashtags and succinct manual discovery headers — plus optimizing image size for fast loading — can make your Tweets even more discoverable.
3. Taboola
Taboola is a paid content discovery platform that will place your original content next to editorial pieces from established, respected publishers. “Location, location, location” isn’t just a real estate axiom, but one that applies to content creation, too.
As a paid service, Taboola can leverage its machine learning capabilities, custom scan checks and native advertising format to get your content more clicks, views and meaningful engagements.
4. YouTube
Video is a high-performing content type that’s becoming more important to modern content marketing. If you have brand assets like employee interviews, customer testimonials or other videos, be sure to upload them to YouTube.
In fact, YouTube recently made content discovery easier than ever on its platform after introducing a hashtag function similar to Twitter. Pair those hashtags with well-optimized metadata to stand out even more in search results.
5. Outbrain
Similar to Taboola, Outbrain can help brands and content marketers get their assets in front of a huge audience. With publisher agreements including CNN, The Washington Post and Condé Nast, among others, Outbrain offers its customers a scale they likely can’t achieve on their own.
Using its native advertising services can help boost your original content, tap into automated discovery and resonate with your target audience through highly relevant placements.
6. Reddit
You either hate Reddit or you love it. But if you’re a content marketer, you should have plenty of reasons to love this site. Given the diversity of r/verticals, you have a prime audience ready to engage with the content you post to the groups Reddit users subscribe to.
Plus, any given post has the potential to become a trending item, further enlarging your audience and boosting your content discovery KPIs. Creators like Bryan from IconEra, who runs his own gaming forum, often use Reddit not just for engagement but also to identify trending topics that resonate with niche communities.
Content Curation Tips for Enhancing Discoverability
Content discovery — as simple as it may be for online users — can be difficult for content marketers to perfect. To help improve your content creation and curation efforts, here are some tips you can use to enhance your efforts, drive metrics and make an impression on customers:
- Do some content discovery of your own: To be relevant and insightful, you need to know what topics and trends your own customers are reading or talking about. There are several tools you can use, like BuzzSumo, that can clue you into hot topics. Writing about trends can increase the discoverability of your content, especially if it’s on a subject that users are very interested in.
- Don’t forget your metadata: Metadata is the hidden backbone of your content. Without it, your efforts are surely made much harder. Plus, content discovery platforms like Taboola and Outbrain require metadata to power their matching and placement services.
- Track your campaigns: To justify paying for a discovery platform, you’ll need the numbers to back it up. Conversely, if your content-sharing efforts are lagging, it might indicate an opportunity to generate ROI through leveraging a content discovery platform.
- Optimize for technical discovery methods: Search-savvy users sometimes rely on advanced operators. By structuring your site well and keeping an organized file list, you make it easier for crawlers to discover content that answers their questions.
- Balance automation with manual refinement: Automated discovery engines are powerful, but pairing them with a disciplined manual discovery framework ensures nothing slips through the cracks and that every piece remains relevant content for your audience.
The Last Word on Content Discovery
Content discovery is an ongoing process and function of a greater content marketing strategy. It requires constant fine-tuning and updating to ensure your new content is current, relevant and valuable to users.
Whether you’re using sophisticated tools to discover content automatically or engaging in periodic manual discovery to spot gaps, the key is consistency and data-driven iteration.
In all scenarios, the Brafton team can help architect a discovery framework aligned with your goals.
Editor’s Note: Updated November 2025