We think of the practice of
‘content activation.’ That means using the right content in the right
way to drive the right action. I know, a lot of ‘rights’ in that sentence. And,
of course, ‘right’ is a purely subjective measure. But it’s more than just
content marketing. It’s a more comprehensive planning model from defining the
right narratives for a brand all the way through optimizing the content you did
create against a goal.
Content activation suggests purpose. We are, at the end of
the day, all trying to drive some type of behavior from people. We are
designing complete systems for brands and partners are key. There is clearly a
lot of interesting investment out there in companies that offer some value to
brands as publishers (see chart from Venturebeat and StrategyEye).
I wanted to highlight three that have some strong value
depending on what you need to get done.
NewsCred
Sourcing quality content is a chore. While we all believe
there is a ton of terrific content available across the Web, if you are a brand
who wants to apply content to driving thought leadership, discoverability, lead
generation via great content, you need great content. NewsCred’s strength is
sourcing (and licensing) millions of articles from the likes of the New York
Times all the way to China Economic Review and the Financial Times. Quality
stuff.
When to use them:
If you have proved the value of content marketing to your
brand and business goals to leadership and want to deploy high quality articles
on a relevant topic for your brand and customers, NewsCred would be a great
partner to source that quality.
If you are a financial services company with strong B2B business, you might
have a purpose to building a stream of terrific finance content on risk
management. That might be your play to deliver more value to your business
customers, maintain high discoverability in Google and even enable a sales
force or group of agents to build direct relationships with business customers.
Take a look:
NewsCred offers content across 9 verticals including
FinanceWire.
Check out AIG’s CyberEdge ipad app which delivers the latest
content on data security powered by NewsCred
Percolate
Percolate wants to be the default end-to-end platform for
brands committed to content marketing. They have a process at the front end
that relates a bit to Facebook Publishing Garage or our own Story Development
Workshop geared towards finding out what the brand out to be talking about. James
Gross, founder, frames it as building the interest graph for a brand. We call it
establishing the story platform. Public relations veterans call it a message
platform. Clearly these are not all the same thing yet they all do start to
define what is that native topical territory for a brand.
Here’s how James Gross, founder puts it:
“Percolate is helping solve the most fundamental question
brands have in social: What should I talk about? The system takes away the
blank boxes of software by recommending relevant content for the brand to
create.”
They provide a software platform to then follow those ideas
and topics all the way through content creation, publishing and analytics. They have a deal with Getty Images and have
the library as well as an image editor available right there to keep the Community/Content
Director in the groove.
When to use them:
If you don’t have a communications or brand leader adept at
defining what the brand can mean and what it’s core narratives out to be,
Percolate can provide a starting point. When you want to add operational
efficiency to your content marketing to trim down publishing times, Percolate
may the right platform.
Take a look:
Take a glance at their Case Studies page. It’s not much more
than screen grabs but it is suggestive.
Check out the MasterCard Future of Payments Stream inside their newsroom
(“Engagement Bureau”). Not sure they have the display quite figured out but you
will see Percolate in action.
Skyword
Like most of the
technology partners in this space, Skyword is not strictly technology. Yes,
they talk about ‘platform’ and complete solutions. Still one of their key
strengths is in managing a network of writers (and a growing number of visual
content creators). If you want to solicit content from a growing network of
qualified writers and manage the process of content submission, Skyword can be
pretty helpful. It’s kind of like Visual.ly in that regard. The curated network
of content creators is their secret sauce.
When to use them:
Once you feel confident that content marketing – the
creation and publishing of content to drive people to some behavior – is
valuable, Skyword can help scale your efforts by providing a source for great
content.
Take a look:
Check out their page “for Brands” with its downloadable pdf
Check out this case study from IBM Midmarket which outlines
the benefits of the content creator network
