Top 5 Content Marketing Software for 2020
Everyone’s talking about content marketing, and you know how important it is. What you don’t know is how to get a handle on what your company is producing, who is doing it, when it’s going to be published, how you’re going to get it in front of your audience, and how you determine if it’s worth the time it takes to do all this. In addition, you’ve heard that organic reach is shrinking, and it’s more important than ever to create meaningful content.
Is it time to get content marketing software?
Maybe. The first thing to do is look at your content marketing cycle.
These are the seven basic steps, which we outline in our Content Marketing Strategy:
Goal Setting: Begin by defining your goals. For example, is your primary goal to get known in the marketplace? Or is it building relationships? Perhaps you want to generate sales? You might want all three, but which is your most important focus?
Strategy Planning: Strategy is simply how you are going to use your content to get this done. In order to come up with a workable strategy you need to think about your customer and what they want to know and where they go for information.
Scheduling: Your planning calendar is vital to good preparation and execution of your new strategy. Put your content ideas, channels, audience, objective and keywords to make it truly useful at a glance.
Creating: Now that you know what you want to accomplish, how you will do it and who your target audience is, it’s time to produce your content. Don’t be limited to just text, incorporate images, video and audio so you can reach a wider audience. Use your calendar to keep track if you have different people contributing, producing and approving your content. It’s also important to have brand guidelines, which I wrote about here, so everyone produces consistent material that maintains brand identity and equity.
Distributing: This great content needs to get in front of people. Where you publish depends on the kind of audience you have. Plan your social media channels and add your publishing schedule to your calendar for tracking purposes. Include any influencers with whom you might be working.
Engaging: When your audience consumes your content, you want them to do something. This could be a simple as a comment or as meaningful as a purchase. In any case, it’s important that you respond because each engagement is an opportunity to move the relationship forward. Not only can you convert interest into sales, you build a reputation as a company that cares about its customers and the word will spread.
Measuring: If you don’t measure your results, how will you know what is working and what isn’t? Being able to analyze the statistics is a benefit when you are creating your next content. You can see what people are attracted to, what they shared and what they acted on. If you have areas where there is little interest, you can eliminate those and concentrate on the stronger content. To tie things back into the first step, goals, measurement can tell you if you are achieving what you intended and provide ideas about how to get back on track if you’re not.
Are you consistently hitting all these steps? If you are but you are feeling a bit overwhelmed, hang on, because there’s good news and bad news.
The good news is that there are dozens of companies offering content marketing platforms to make this process easier, and more coming on board every week.
The bad news is that content marketing software is expensive.
If you are a startup or small organization with only a few campaigns, a small team and a limited budget, the investment is probably better spent elsewhere because until you are large enough to have the need for automating, the cost outweighs the benefits.
If you have a large company, need to manage content on many different channels, work with numerous internal and external content providers and market on a global scale in various countries, one of these companies I describe below (in alphabetical order) will likely have the solutions you need to become streamlined and efficient. As you read about them, you’ll see the similarities and the differences in what each emphasizes, summarized in their tagline. You’ll get a good overview of the tools you’ll want to look for when considering a content marketing software company. At the conclusion, I’ll list and link to a few others you can explore.
All of these companies make it possible for you to manage the creation of your content, handle the distribution and see meaningful analytics in order to improve the impact and success of your efforts.
Further Reading: 4 Best CMS Platforms for Startups and Small Businesses
Contently
“ Content that works. Great content needs world-class creative talent, and effective marketing needs smart technology. We have both.”
Some of the companies that work with Contently are General Electric, Google, Marriot, Ameritrade, Walmart, ING, NBC UNIVERSAL and American Express.
The top features of Contently include:
Content workflow that can accommodate hundreds of users and a multitude of approval steps.
A talent network of more than 50,000 journalists, designers and photographers.
Accounting management for freelancers, such as payments and taxes.
Strategists who can help you create a personal content roadmap and connect you with the people who fit your plan.
Ideas and pitches from writers who are in alignment with your vision and goals.
Relationship-building tools to help you know your audience and provide the content they are looking for.
WordPress, Tumblr and Hubspot integration using the publisher API, which will also integrate with other content management systems.
On the Contently website you can watch a demo and review case studies and work samples of existing clients. There is no pricing information on the site, you have to contact the company for information.
Curata
“Scale your content marketing to grow leads and revenue. The software platform for a predictable content supply chain”
Businesses that use Curata include: Cisco, Zerox, Alcatel-Lucent, Lenovo, IronMountain, Barclaycard, University of Minnesota and Genpact.
With a name like Curata, you know that curation of content is going to be a major feature of the software, and they don’t disappoint. You can annotate and contextualize the curated content to customize it to your business. Here are some of the highlights of the Curata software:
Discover content with the Content Curation Software, which learns your preferences and delivers content that best suits your needs.
Organizes and pre-populates the curated post so all you have to do is publish and promote.
Build a content supply pipeline to provide continual quality content.
Analyze the marketing and sales results from your content.
Streamline the production process with workflow management.
You can get a live demo, but to find out the cost you need to contact the company.
Kapost
“B2B marketing operating system powering world class content and driving business success.”
A few of the companies that work with Kapost are LInkedin, at&t, IBM, Rockwell Automation, Delphi and Lenovo. Kapost lists four main areas they address:
Alignment. Facilitates collaboration with planning calendars so you know what stages the content development is at and who is working on what aspect to eliminate overlap and gaps.
Execution. Create the content, manage deadlines and allow comments with visibility inside Kapost instead of scattered through various emails.
Distribution. Organize information based on different fields and deliver it to sales in a timely manner and useful format. Integrates with 50 marketing tools such as Marketo and Salesforce. Social buttons within Kapost makes it easy to instantly share content. Custom content filters in the catalog allows you to organize by content type, persona and region, and displays a preview for quick selection.
Analyzation. Using revenue metrics and conversions, you can rank content and see what’s working at a glance. See what content is most valued by your buyers with data on reach and traffic. Planning tools allow you to see where the process is slowing down so you can become more efficient.
The full package is $3,500 a month, although Content Gallery and Content Planner services start at $800 each.
NewsCred
“Create content people love. NewsCred powers content marketing for the world’s best brands.”
Organizations that use NewsCred include Pepsi, Visa, Jockey, ConAgra Foods, Sailthru and Capgemini. Some of NewsCred's features are:
The shared calendar can be organized by topic, event, audience or goal, and assets can be shared from a single repository.
Licensed content is available from over 5,000 publications in five languages.
A freelance network of contributors can create blog posts, videos and content, with the details of contracting paperwork and payments handled by NewsCred.
Partnerships for legally licensed stock images exist with over 30M suppliers and NewsCred provides editing tools to brand and customize images.
Workflows can be tailored to your company’s content marketing process needs.
Project management tools track the content and helps you identify and correct bottlenecks and areas of concern.
Social publishing tools are located on one platform which has a calendar and can be shared with the team, making it easy to schedule and publish content across a variety of channels.
Analytics on social channels help you further fine-tune your content.
You can review the case studies and try a demo. Services start at $4,000 a month.
Percolate
“The system of record for marketing. Manage all your marketing across every channel.”
Percolate is used by more than 800 brands, some of which are Dove, Loews, MasterCard, Timberland, Chobani, Amtrack, Freshpet, Levi’s and Kind. Their features include:
Marketing calendar coordinates marketing activities with people, locations, channels and topics.
Brief templates to keep everyone on track and connected on campaigns, events and content.
Workspace flows that allow you to manage and meet deadlines, make assignments, track tasks, follow up, locate and retrieve assets and share information.
Mobile-friendly access on devices to keep everyone in the loop while on the go.
Percolate Mobile allows for capturing photos and videos and sharing them in real time.
Integration of your content with a variety of channels so you can publish from one location.
Performance analytics that tell you how your marketing is doing with reports and data. With the Operational Analytics, you can review metrics on the entire process and identify what is working and what is not. There are also statistics on how your customers feel about your content, how often they share it and what the reach is, so you can adjust your content creation accordingly.
You can see case studies and get a demo, but there is no pricing information without filling out a contact form.
Here are a few other companies that provide content marketing software solutions:
If you start with the six steps listed above and start growing to the point where you need large-scale support, you can feel confident that there are solutions out there with content marketing platforms that will fit your needs and help you be more productive.
You may also need to get a Content Management System (CMS) especially one that integrates with your Content Marketing Software. Please review our extensive guide on CMS Platforms for startups and small businesses to learn about the top content management systems and which one is right for you.
If you’re already there, pulling your hair out wondering how to make things more efficient, you have an excellent selection of companies from which to choose. However you may not have the time to learn new software and would like a team of expert content marketers to take the content marketing headache away from you. If so, Verge Marketing Agency could really help you get content marketing right so you start seeing results. Check out all of the content marketing services we provide.