We are constantly looking at software and services that add
real value in any part of our content activation model. There are new startups
everyday. People will ask you, “have you heard of XYZ…” Half of the time you’ve
not only heard of them but 5 people in your organization have already met them
and scratched their heads about why or how to apply them to the business. The
other half of the time, no matter how good you are, you just haven’t heard of
them.
I shared about three interesting content partners with
different sources of content in a previous post. Three more caught my eye as very interesting.
Rather than content sources, these providers either offer
good workflow or some distinctive publishing capability.
Kapost
Businesses that sincerely want to tune-up their content
marketing capabilities while keeping it simple should look at Kapost. They provide a cloud based content workflow
that a business person can easily understand. From soliciting content ideas
from across a group to the actual publishing, distribution and analysis, Kapost
looks pretty good.
When to use them:
If your organization has committed to a content marketing
program featuring owned content sourced from multiple people and distributed
across owned and shared (e.g. blogs, Web sites, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc…) and have been
managing workflow via email and Excel spreadsheets, it may be time to check out
KaPost.
While not a B2B resource per se, their platform does make
sense for B2B players who use content marketing explicitly towards driving
demand and leads.
Take a look:
My favorite little interactive on their site is the ROI
calculator. It’s built into the ‘business case’ page. Fill in your revenue target
and 3-4 other estimates and the widget calculates how the “Content Marketing
Machine” can enhance your goals. Not sure this is more than sales-y fairy dust but I
appreciate that at least one technology company is thinking about how to
communicate the business value of what they do.
Kontera
These guys also promise a ‘soup-to-nuts’ approach the
defining content, publishing and tracking. They have an analytics front end
that crunches a ton of data (insert big, abstract number here) to reveal story
opportunities. It reminds me a bit of the promise behind Percolate’s ability to
help identify the stories brands ought to be creating content about. We have
our own version of that in a platform that analyzes search data in real time to
make recommendations on story ideas.
The heart of Kontera for me is about creating and publishing
native advertising. Presumably, their platform converts content into
advertising formats and delivers them across networks that allow for native
advertising (content rich and relevant advertising).
When to use them:
If your organization 'gets' paid, owned, earned media or is
even more confident in paid media, Kontera or a system like theirs might be a
good way to go. Here’s how they describe that part of their service:
“Kontera’s Content Marketing platform has pervasive reach
across Mobile, Social, and Display. With
activation on more than 15,000 exclusive publishers, the majority of the
comScore top 1,000 sites, and the top social destinations, with all content
analyzed and correlated down to the specific page and conversation level.”
If you are the media guy or gal or you believe in POEM in a
big way a system like Kontera’s that can deliver content as advertising might
be useful.
Take a look:
Their marketers' page features a good summary. It highlights
the emphasis on the front-end analytics and the publishing via paid, owned,
earned.
Idio
Refreshingly, these guys are focused on sales relationships.
How can a salesperson maintain a valuable, content-centered relationships with
customers and prospects. They promise useful analytics on content and
prospects. Here’s how they put it:
“The heart of idio is the decision engine that analyses
content (content analytics) and customer interactions to expose meaning. For
example, semantically analysing an article so that the correct descriptors are
stored as metadata, so that the article is understood with multiple topics
rather than just a title.”
A little geeky but sensible. Ultimately, they offer a way to
publish highly personalized content for a sales interaction fueled by this
relevance engine.
When to use them:
If you use content marketing to enable sales or,
specifically, sales teams of any kind and those folks are ready for a more
sophisticated approach to managing relationships, idio might be worth trying.
The challenge with many sales enablement systems is how well
they cater to the novice or non-techie and to the advanced ninja at the same
time. Most sales forces have that type of range. I recently judged internal
online marketing awards for a major global brand from their dealers. This is a
big-iron kind of product. I did not expect really sophisticated digital
marketing examples and I was really impressed. From beginner all the way to the
most advanced use of digital sales enablement.
Take a look:
Check out their case studies page to download some industry
generic white papers and a small collection of cases from eConsultancy,
SlimFast, and Guiness.
Check out their infrastructure partners from Eloqua to
ExactTarget. They are making a big case around how ell they integrate into
existing platforms and investments.
