Five Tools That Will Solve Your Content Challenges

May 9, 2012

This week we’re at the Content Marketing Strategies Conference discovering tools for content development, curation and syndication. I’m excited to test and try all of them because my own organization suffers from the same challenges every company (big or small) does in taking this on as a serious marketing tactic:

      • Time
      • Resources
      • And, the need for more and more content to feed the machine

With the right tools and the right people you can get over these barriers, get organized and save a ton of time. Here’s a list of content marketing tools that I plan to review in the coming weeks. Maybe you can get a head start on me.

Curata

www.curata.com

Feed the beast without getting eaten alive. Curata solves the common problem of not having enough content or the resources to develop content by leveraging the power of curation. A well-balanced diet, they say, includes a mix of your own brand content (about 40%) plus third party content. The tool provides a way to identify quality content, curate topics important to your audience, and a vehicle to deliver it across multiple channels including email. No need to build a new website because it will hook right into WordPress or whatever platform you use. If you don’t have a site, they offer a microsite product. Personally, we recommend WordPress for housing any fresh content and blogs. You can try Curata free for 30 days and they openly publish their pricing online starting at $1,000 month. A reasonable fee when you consider the cost savings of an intern, your own time, or the return you’ll get in website traffic and audience. They will also help you stay in line with copyright laws and ethical attribution best practices. That is important when it comes to curation!

Demandbase

www.demandbase.com

For companies with the opposite problem, lots of content, Demandbas will serve up custom content to website visitors. This provides relevance to your visitor, in turn increasing conversion rates, and gives you the power to target specialized content to your target audiences based on their industry and other information you determine. Want all of your technology offers and articles to show up on the homepage to any technology companies with revenue over $10M? Want to know which companies are visiting your website? They can make it happen. You won’t even need to redesign your website or change platforms. This is ideal for sales/lead focused companies who have, or plan to have, a significant volume of website traffic and enough content to support segmentation. Also, check out Demandbase’s API products to enhance your lead data.

dlvr.it

dlvr.it

We already use dlvr.it for distributing our blog posts to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and we recommend it to all of our clients. It is highly customizable compared to other RSS tools because you can amend copy to posts per location (Twitter, Facebook) and it will even add hashtags to tweets based on your blog tags and categories. Plus, it has great analytics integrated to bit.ly click tracking. The RSS delivery tool is free, yes free, all the time no tricks. Love it!

What I have yet to try is dlvr.it’s Promoted Stories product which distributes content across a network of other websites for only $9 per article (e.g. one blog post). It’s basically an advertising platform for content and uses a mix of network display advertising and SEO valuable text link placement for longer term value. They are running a “try me” special through the end of May for $1. Visit http://stories.dlvr.it for more info. For you big brands, they also provide enterprise level products through their sister company Pheedo.

Kapost

kapost.com

Tired of managing your editorial calendar in Excel, managing a zillion platforms and chasing down content contributors? Problem solved. Kapost is an end-to-end collaboration and content creation tool that streamlines the process. It will help you create and deliver content on everything from Slideshare to YouTube or WordPress. It will allow you to task, receive, and review content from your authors. Brainstorm with your organization using the newsroom, all they have to do is submit ideas via email. You approve the idea, then you can add it to the interactive editorial calendar where you get a bird’s eye view of everything in the pipeline. Live articles can be distributed automatically paired with a custom blurb to Facebook, Twitter and Google+. When it comes to analytics this isn’t no flimsy website report, the dashboard will display views, most linked to, most “liked” and tweeted articles by category or author. They do not disclose pricing online but I can tell you it’s about a $1,000 entry point. Try the self-serve live working demo online to get the full feel of what it’s like to use the tool.

Scribd

www.scribd.com

If you’re looking for content to share, or a place to share yours regardless of format, Scribd offers one of the largest platforms online for self-publishing and curation. They’ve set out on a mission to democratize publishing and make it easy. And, it’s free!
As a marketer use Scribd to transform office documents like PDF, Word or PowerPoint into sharable web pages and organize them into topic based collections. You can opt to put a price tag on it and sell it for a nominal consignment fee. If you are looking to leverage other’s content, the curation tools will show off all the smart stuff you’re reading in the community, across the web or from your mobile device. Whichever way you do it, it’s a great strategy for establishing thought leadership in your industry. Companies primarily using Scribd include book publishers, media, government and entertainment.

When you visit the website while you’re logged into Facebook watch out! You might be surprised by it automatically recognizing you without ever have registered for an account. For some creepy, for people like me it’s a “wow” moment that just made it so easy to jump in and participate.

If you’ve used any of these tools and have an opinion to share please leave us a note. We’ll let you know how our discovery goes and we find anything else cool to try keep you updated as the conference continues through tomorrow.

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12 Comments

  • Reply Gary May 9, 2012 at 4:17 pm

    Love Kapost. It’s a hefty price to pay monthly, but if your content marketing strategy is complex, with a lot of content published from a lot of different authors, then it is absolutely worthwhile.

    I hadn’t heard of DemandBase…sounds like something to take a look at. Thanks for the heads up Melonie

  • Reply NevilleTexas May 18, 2012 at 7:59 am

    Hi Melonie,

    Your post above, furthered by thought process on delivering content on mobile devices and platforms.

    I also thought you might want to know how I found your website. Prior to finding your website [Brands With Fans], I did a Google Search using [kapost pricing] without quotes + a time parameter of [Past month]. Your article content, [5 Tools That Will Solve Your Content Challenges], was the fifth listing on SERP. In addition, Google Search queried for additional keywords [Did you mean: compost pricing, post pricing, carpet pricing, keystone pricing].

    -Neville

    • Reply @Melonie May 18, 2012 at 8:35 am

      Well, I’m glad we’re not ranking for “compost pricing”! Thanks for that info I’m always interested in hearing how we get discovered. I am using WordPress plus All In One SEO plugin for search optimization.

  • Reply NevilleTexas May 19, 2012 at 12:47 am

    Sent you a linkedin invite.

    What are you using for your mobile site plugin per “?wpmp_switcher=desktop#.T7dPRtzOxpc”

    Thanks,

    -Neville

  • Reply @Melonie May 19, 2012 at 10:03 am

    We use WordPress mobile pack http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mobile-pack/

  • Reply Rob May 23, 2012 at 6:08 am

    You noted that Kapost is a “$1,000 entry point”…is that a monthly fee, or the setup cost? If it’s just the setup cost, what’s the monthly fee? I’m assuming that the $1000 figure is the lowest price, depending on size of the organization/installation.

  • Reply Phil Hill September 13, 2012 at 8:45 am

    these products carry pretty hefty price tags (and curata doesn’t publish it’s pricing on it’s website anymore). they a have broad and powerful feature list and for the most part they are enterprise products (they have enterprise usability design as well)

    for the smaller business / entrepreneur you have who wants to curate and publish quickly to email or social media you have:

    http://flashissue.com (disclosure; my biz)
    xydo (still a bit pricey but within reach)
    scribit (kind of hard to set up but has good content)

    phil

    • Reply @Melonie September 13, 2012 at 9:41 am

      Phil, I agree they are expensive. For the enterprise user there could be an efficiency and potential ROI avantage. Not so much in reach for the average user. I’ll check these out and thanks for the recommendations.

  • Reply Brandon January 31, 2013 at 1:14 pm

    Try http://www.hyprcast.com for curation. There is a free and a paid model. You will need an invite code. Use my name (Brandon) for the invite code.

  • Reply Content curation apps: What's out there? | RED ROKK RED ROKK June 19, 2013 at 7:01 am

    […] help jumpstart your content curation or help make the business case to your boss. A hefty price tag starting at $1,000/month targets a professional […]

  • Reply Randy May 13, 2014 at 9:16 am

    Just wanted to point out that Curata’s pricing does not start at $1,000 per month. Curata’s pricing starts at $349 per month and could go as high as $1,000 per month if you purchased all of the Enterprise level Modules. Many companies get started with Curata for far less than $1k/mo. 🙂 Thanks.

  • Reply Alex Bisset June 23, 2014 at 3:29 pm

    Hi Melonie- If you have some time, you should check out Opentopic’s content marketing platform (http://opentopic.com/content-marketing-platform/). They offer an all-in-one content marketing solution for content discovery, content curation, content distribution and content analytics, similar to that of Curata.

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