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.
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