Altimeter conducts research on new markets. Altimeter continues our coverage on Content Marketing by Rebecca Lieb (who’s working in conjunction with me on this post and coverage), researcher Jessica Groopman and our co-authored report on Converged Media (Paid, Owned, and Earned). In our research reports, we both identified the market pains, definitions, workflows, and solutions brands are and want to achieve. As part of this ongoing coverage to look at all the elements of the people, process, and technology,
Don’t buy software without a strategy. While we want to explore a list of software providers that are part of the solution. It’s important to note that these software providers are not solutions among themselves. Strategy, content goals, internal organization and often agency services are part of the broader solution set –software rarely solves everything on its own.
Details about this list. This list won’t contain the following sibling market which includes: Social Media Management System Vendors (SMMS), Marketing Automation, Converged Media, Web Content Management (thanks to Adobe’s Chris Nguyen for the reminder) software players. Also, this list was partly compiled thanks to Santiago an investor Emergence Capital, who helped to provide some of the startups for this list, they were one of the first VCs to contact me, as they’re interested in this market. Here’s but one example of how these lists become official research artifact, I started with this crowd collaborated list, which resulted in this buyer’s guide report. I may segment this list once we have a large sample.
Working Definition: Content Marketing Software systems than enable marketers to perform as digital publishers. Features often include analysis, planning, calendar, workflow, optimization, in support of publishing owned content. These tools still require services components of strategy, content planning, content production, and editorial.
Index: Content Marketing Software Vendors To start with, there are 15 vendors Leave a comment below, I’ll review and add. The descriptions are what was listed on the index page of each vendor, I edited to remove hyperbole.
- Adobe Creative Cloud: Monthly membership gives you the entire collection of CS6 tools and more for video, print, media.
- Compendium: Compendium is a content marketing platform that helps organizations capture and create original content in a branded hub for distribution to any marketing channel.
- Cadence 9: Orchestrating Content Marketing
- Contently: With tools for creating and showcasing amazing content, and by fostering connections between publisher and talent, Contently empowers storytelling that makes a difference
- CollectiveBias: Generating Content and Making an Impression (Submitted by Zena Weist)
- Curata: Easily find, organize & share relevant content for your business.
- Curation Station: Curation Station® can add value to your business, customers, employee teams, and clients by providing up-to-date content on any subject matter.
- DivvyHQ: The Spreadsheet-Free Editorial Calendar Application (Submitted by Todd Wheatland)
- Easel.ly: Create and share visual ideas online, vhemes are visual themes. drag and drop a vheme onto your canvas for easy creation of your visual idea. (Submitted by Jason Miller)
- Editorially: Write, collaborate on, and talk about a text. (Submitted by colleague Rebecca Lieb)
- Expion: Stemming from social media management system, this provider now offers planning, calendar, database, workflow and analytics.
- Graphicly: Upload & enhance your visual stories, then distribute them to the Kindle, iOS, NOOK, Facebook, Web & more. All for one low price. That’s our story. (Submitted by Joe Chernov)
- InBoundWriter: Create and manage all your content securely within the comfort of your workflow and from the freedom of any browser. (Submitted by Michael Brenner)
- Kapost: The Content Marketing Software Platform (Briefed, Marketo summit April 2013)
- Kontera: Understands web-wide “conversations” and current interest trends, and uses this information to provide actionable insights and to activate the ideal brand supporting content within Display, Mobile and Social environments. (Submitted by Josh Berman)
- Marketing.AI: Workflow, audit, and analytics applications that help B2B marketers be more successful with content they publish themselves, such as blog posts, website pages, and social media updates. (Submitted by colleague Rebecca Lieb)
- NewsCred: Content syndication and production, including, 2500+ Premium, Licensed Sources Millions of Full-Text Articles, Images & Video (Submitted by Guillaume Decugis)
- oDesk: Writing services via software platform, (Briefed, April 2013)
- OneSpot: Transform digital content into ads (Briefed, April 2013)
- Outbrain: Recommends your article, mobile and video content on your site and on premium publisher sites to expose it to highly engaged audiences.
- PaperShare: PaperShare is the real-time publishing engine that turns your content into customers.
- Percolate Percolate helps brands create content at social scale (briefed multiple times Q1, 2013)
- PublishThis: A Content Cloud Platform to discover, curate, and distribute compelling content across any digital channel. (Submitted by Todd Wheatland)
- Rallyverse: Social media marketing who combines Owned and Paid content
- Relaborate: Collaboration and semantic recommendation technology, to collect knowledge from coworkers, create content, and distribute across your site, social media channels and through email.
- Servio: Servio handcrafts web content at massive scale
- Scoop.it: Share ideas that matter on topic pages.
- Scripted: Writing on Demand, hire freelance writers. Note this is a software plaform that enables long form writing services (Briefed Q4, 2012, trailed offering)
- Shopigniter: Social Product Promotion and Commerce Solutions
- Skyword: Reach and engage your audience with original web content designed to succeed in search and social media. (Submitted by Michael Brenner)
- SnapApp: Content creation platform used by B2B brands and publishers to create over 40 kinds of content that work on mobile, the web, email and social to drive top of the funnel leads and revenue.
- SocialFlow: See the real-time conversation flow on Twitter and Facebook to capture peak audience attention for your messages (Briefed, demo account)
- Springpad: Springpad is in fact enabling social branded content for several brands (Submitted by colleague Rebecca Lieb)
- Stipple: Consumers can now explore, compare and buy products without leaving an image. (Submitted by colleague Rebecca Lieb)
- Squeeze CMM: Content Marketing Measurement tracks what content worked in what context.
- Totally Awesome: Use to understand everything about how sharing drives traffic, virality, and revenue. Spot patterns, identify valuable content and customers, and learn what works.
- Trap:it: Create captivating experiences carefully tailored for individual readers.
- Visually: Our infographics and data visualizations tell your story, drive traffic, and amplify your social media presence (briefed, 2012-2013)
- VisualRevenue: Real-time analytics solution that is designed specifically to enhance the hand of editors in data driven newsrooms. (Submitted by colleague Rebecca Lieb)
- Voraka: (aka writer in Sanskrit) is a writer management engine that manages writers, coordinates the content needs and deliverables of multiple teams, and helps in the delivery of great content regularly
- Zemanta: Is a service that helps publishers by suggesting related posts, pictures, relevant in-text links and tags you can enrich your posts in a way to get more traffic, more clicks, more recommendations and to make your posts look more attractive. (Submitted by Jason Miller)
- Zerys: Software to aid process to plan your content strategy, create an editorial calendar, and find the best possible writer for your specific needs. (Submitted by Todd Wheatland)
- Leave a comment below, I’ll review, add and credit you.
Related Links
- Content Marketing Book: Altimeter’s Rebecca Lieb
- Content Marketing research report: Altimeter’s Rebecca Lieb
- Converged Media Paid+Owned+ Earned by Altimeter’s Rebecca Lieb and myself
- Converged Media keynote speech
- Excellent piece of Content Marketing requirements by J-P De Clerck
Industry Analyst Notes
- April 18 (The day after). I’ve scrubbed the many comments, FB posts, and Google+ comments. The list has gone from 15 to 27 vendors. I’m struggling with including visual presentation type vendors, as that’s going to be a much broader category that could even span Photoshop/Aviary, so I want to be careful about how far I go. The other market is content analytics, as this could span into big data vendors and beyond. I’ve made several new contacts, received a ton of new information, and am very grateful for the market feedback. We all learn together.
- April 22: I’ve updated a few more, they’re still coming, but the submissions appear to be slowing. Market set is around 30 folks, I sense at few different categories within this single segment, some high level categories are emerging in the comments.
- April 24: Colleague Rebecca asked me to add Marketing AI, Stipple, Springpad. Wow, these names are unique.
- April 30: Added 4 more, with help of Rebecca Lieb, Visual Revenue, Springpad, Editorially. Also Collective Bias (Thanks Zena). We’re struggling to manage scope, as curation toolset and analytics and CMS are creeping in. This list now has over 40 startups.
- May 7: Added in Trap:it after conferring with Rebecca.
- May 10: Added Relaborate.
- May 17: Added Expion, which is interesting as they’re the first SMMS vendor to formerly launch these tools that I’m aware of.
What about CMS/CXM platforms like Sitecore? Bias: My employer, non-linear creations, is a Sitecore partner. Their Digital Marketing Suite (packaged with their flagship CMS under the “Customer Engagement Platform” label) offers most if not all of the functionality you listed. It’s what we use to do our content marketing.
Onalytica “ our IRM (Influencer Relationship Management)
automatically identifies when influencers are likely to find your content
interesting/useful – based on what they say on the open web/twitter
Great starting point. Here are a few others to consider: Skyword (content production platform), Graphicly (visual content
distribution), LookBookHQ (visual content curation platform). Theoretically you
could ad creative marketplaces like Dribbble, given how important design is to content marketing. Those marketplaces are invaluable. -Joe
Hi Jeremiah, we’ve done quite a bit of research into this space. Check out Skyword, Disqus, InboundWriter as well
Thanks Michael, if you have any links to your research, please provide, I’m all about cross-linking to help others find your existing good work. I’ll review these vendors for submission and credit you, thank you
InfiniGraph – Engagement Performance Insights over industries – identify what tending (What’s working), trend scoring of content, Hypercuration – intelligence on content thematic. Better engagement through better content
Joe you’re always helpful. I thought of you and your role(s) as I was creating this post. Skyword was added by Michael, thanks. I just added Graphicly and credited you. I need to think about LookBookHQ, as this could be an entire market on it’s own (encapsulated content, or rich media content for brands) and I want to segment when possible. Dribbble is related, but more of a marketplace –not a content marketing system or platform on it’s own right that I’m focused on here.
Thanks Chase! InfiniGraph looks interesting, with a focus on analytics. Our analyst Susan Etlinger is looking at this space in detail. It’s not quite a direct fit for this specific list, but I can see how it’s part of the greater suite that’s needed. I’ll keep an eye on them, but won’t include yet as this would expand list to many other analytics vendors. I’m grateful for your submission Chase.
Flemming, Thank you! I’m thinking on how that fits into this story, I see IRM is related, I’ll get back to you on how this integrates.
Joe. Great question, and relevant. In fact, Chris Nguyen, from Adobe (also a personal friend) asked the same thing. I updated the post to show that’s a sister space. Thank you,
Thanks for the Kapost mention! It’s awesome to see how many great tools are popping up in this space.
It would be very helpful to distinguish the content marketing tools based on their suitability for consumer-centric or business audiences. Many of the tools that rely on keyword volumes and patterns, or trending social media topics depend on volume-based metrics to draw their insights. For topics and audiences that are niche oriented (such as many topics near and dear to B2B marketers), these approaches are much less useful.
I just sent you an email with more details. Everything we’re doing here is about content marketing. I think what would be good is for you to see how our Hypercuration works, how we supply content feeds with insights and our editorial calendar output. Yes we have analytics but that is part of the element to understand content for decision support.
Hi Jeremiah (and thanks Joe for mentioning us) – I’d be pleased to tell you more about LookBookHQ and how our customers are using LookBooks – will drop you a line. Cheers, Nick
Christine, Thanks, your team was helpful in showing me a demo last week
Christine, I’m just looking for tools that enable businesses. So this list is B2B.
Thanks, Jeremiah. Great seeing you last week. Glad you had a chance to check out the demo.
You’re going to be busy with this project, Jeremiah. Great initiative – looking forward to seeing your upcoming report too Robert.
Clearly a broad range of tools captured above, here’s three more I don’t see yet that may fit your target – DivvyHQ, Zerys, PublishThis (just relaunched).
My pleasure. We have not published our work but happy to share the high-level analysis we conducted via email? We consider Disqus’ recomendation engine as same use case as Outbrain and Scribid just a different creative execution. One additional vendor to consider is Newscred for content curation.
The conversation has spread here:
Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/jdchernov/posts/10151400252549436
http://www.facebook.com/JeremiahOwyang/posts/10151406840336523
Google+
https://plus.google.com/111654284395316165338/posts/QR9ZgCqy4u8
Curious why you didn’t include Sprinklr here given their Digital Asset Management system, Content list and Content suggestion features?
Thanks for the reply. The likes of Forrester and Gartner do a good job covering the CMS/CMX space but I’d be curious to hear Altimeter’s take too one of these days. Different perspectives and all.
Thanks Jeremiah, this is really helpful at a time when I think everyone is facing issue with content marketing anf how to do it right.
Hi Jeremiah, great list. I’d also add Pressly to the mix – they have a platform for creating interactive social-magazine-like content packages. Nice to see LookBookHQ mentioned in the comments too.
http://www.blogsconnections.com – Distribute your content to bloggers worldwide
Amrita thanks, Interesting company, Pressly. There are a few other startups that do a great job of packaging up a user experience. I’ve not included them at this time. Let me think about how they fit in this category, I want to try to keep scope manageable.
Excellent Rohit, thanks! We’re hearing the market demand. Our survey in Q4 2012 to corporations rated Content Marketing as a top need for go to market.
Thanks Heather, a fair question. I’ve complete, if not comprehensive coverage of the Social Media Management System vendors, (which includes Sprinklr). At this time, I’m segmenting them as a different market, although I expect many mergers and purchased to create a bigger suite.
See all the posts here: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/category/social-media-management-systems/
Noted, Blog Connections provides syndication services to bloggers. This may be an index all on its own, for now, I’ll see if there are any other patterns before including Eti. Thank you!
Todd thanks! I added all three, you are my new champion! Thank you, all three were the exact fit I was looking for. I credited you, thank you Sir.
Nice, ScoopIt appears to create a deep and engaging experience as part of the publishing end. Let me keep this in mind in figuring out how to include it, I may segment these types of vendors out in another way. Thank you!
Thanks Jason, I added, much because it’s like Visually, credited you. ColumnFive looks more like a services model.
Zemanta, as I understand it, is more of a syndication and discovery network. I’m not including them (as well as others that were submitted) at this time. That’s an entire different market.
Love that you’re engaged here G! Thank you for contributing.
Brian, I’ve included, thanks to a submission from Jason Miller
Thanks G. I looked at it 3 times. There were a few other commenters. I’m struggling with the way your website has positioned itself, it wasn’t clear on what you do.
Are you curation and publication?
Or a user experience engine that puts content into a specific media type?
I’ve looked at the above, thanks!
Thanks Tom. I’ve looked at this, I’m struggling with the information trying to be conveyed, from Prefuse. I won’t be including at this time as I’m not clear it’s for marketers and publishers.
I checked out your website, thank you! I may need for a second list for publication and experience software. I’m not sure if fits here. I’m trying to keep scope tight, I’m open to learning more.
Thanks Joe. Altimeter ownership is mainly ex-Forrester, we’re aware of the work Forrester does. We’re focused on business disruptions, and tend to look at new markets.
In this comment, I’ll capture suggestions on segmentation methods.
1) Rawn Shah
I think you may need some subcategories: Content Creation/Sourcing, Content Management, Content Promotion/Adversiting
2) Robert Rose @Jeremiah – great start… You may also want to get briefed by EByline, PublishThis, TextBroker, DivvyHQ and Zerys… Note – those are all in what we’re calling Content Collaboration providers… Curation, Optimization, Social etc.. will all be in subsequent reports.
Submitted by Ann Handley of Marketing Profs
http://zmags.com/how-zmags-works/
I may have a different list for content experience software. Hang tight all. Just bringing all this to one location.
newscred is a great tool.
I would also add Sprinklr, Spredfast, Expion and the other social crm vendors in this space that have workflows around content creation, approval and distribution.
Inpowered – takes earned media and pushes it to paid.
Thanks Michael, that’s a different market, I’ve covered it in detail here: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/category/social-media-management-systems/
Great list Jeremiah! As discussed, here at Emergence we’ve been spending a lot of time looking at opportunities in the Content Marketing space, and we believe there’s a huge SaaS play that is going to emerge. Given our experience in SaaS that is why we are watching closely! 🙂
They’re listed above, thanks MIchael
agreed, totally differently market. Although some of our clients are using them for content marketing .. or more proactive content versus reactive/listening type of content.
Thanks for crowd sourcing this dynamic space, Jeremiah. I know you’re trying to define content marketing through the publishing process, but I’m stumbling on the “to what end” part of the equation. Can we any longer separate the publishing of content with the deep engagement it enables and ultimate social selling it requires? To that end, I’d recommend you check out PaperShare – it’s not just a real-time publishing engine with all the associated analytics and efficiencies (which it is), but it’s also a platform to make content the destination for social selling and customer creation.
Thank you,those examples help. I’ve added Scoop.it.
Great questions, which Rebecca and I hope to answer. Her focus on content, and mine on social will show the intersection between these players. Thanks for submitting PaperShare, I’ve added.
Thanks for this Sachin, I’m evaluating on how to include analytics players. I’ll get back to this.
Santi, thanks for triggering this discussion!
Hey Jeremiah, nice initiative and thanks for the mention. You know we have a list of tools? But we focus on reviews and categorization first. I would add ContentGems (until recently Intigi), we have a full review if you want. Definitely take a look at
Repost.us. Mentioned this week on TechCrunch, sent some interview questions to CEO but haven’t heard back yet. However, we’re testing. Well, there are so many more. Do get in touch so we can share our stuff with you. Next week we review Kapost and Cadence9. Scoop.it is almost done too (but from pro viewpoint). If you take the modern ‘holy trinity’ of search, content and social, you might want to take a look at this one: http://www.contentmarketingexperience.com/2013/a-map-of-the-modern-content-marketing-software-and-partner-ecosystem and I would sure like your comments on this one: http://www.contentmarketingexperience.com/content-marketing-software-overview-and-selection-guide. Still a bit hidden really 😉 but better help you guys than doing everything alone, if help welcome of course. Cheers.
You can also customize a curated board and add it to your own domain as we did. They grow fast I can see it in the way every day I get messages people I know have joined 😉 Review coming.
Hi Jeremiah – Another great report in the making. I would encourage you to look at Kontera as well. Advertisers are using Kontera to intelligently deliver the best and most relevant owned, social and earned content as brand messaging within the ideal and most relevant Social, Display and Mobile contexts. It’s about using content to provide a more meaningful user brand experience in the right place at the right time. Let me know if you have any questions.
Added thanks!
Hi Jeremiah,
Might I recommend you add Percussion Software. Through Percussion CM1 marketers are able to see in real time what content is driving the most traffic on their website, conduct an SEO audit, and check the status of content to make sure new content production isn’t bottle-necked. And publish content to their website with the click of a button.
Let me know if you have any questions,
Alexis Karlin
Digital Marketing & Operations Manager
Percussion Software
Outstanding list – very thorough! This is a segment of the marketing technology field that’s very, very exciting. We’ve actually reviewed and spoken to many of these companies and have a great relationship with Compendium. Let me know if you’d like any assistance from our team, @twitter-79543:disqus .
Update: as promised the – quick – review: http://www.contentmarketingexperience.com/contenmarketingsoft/enterprise-content-marketing-software-marketing-ai
Jeremiah,
Have you seen what is going on with EveryoneSocial. Company combines full content marketing with full corporate, employee and external group distribution. As the CEO I can assure that it’s hitting a sweet spot in the market where people are looking for a single enterprise class solution.
Great post! Trying to get a handle on the options available for content/editorial management. One of the tools I was looking at was Betaout. (i have no affiliation with them). Just wondering if there was a specific reason they were omitted based on your experience? Would be curious to get your thoughts on this. Thanks again for taking the time to put together such an awesome list.
Ebyline is another great content marketing platform. I think their 2,000 vetted writers, journalists and photo/video freelancers give them a leg up on the others. Ease of use is key and they nailed it.
Scoop-it is a good tool for content curation and has the tools HootSuite lacks. It is an ideal entry point for SMB’s and professional groups.
Its apparent simplicity should not lead to its capability being under estimated. It could do with more share facilities but the main ones are there. It always strikes me that what would be very cool would be integration or a hybrid app between Hootesuite and Scoop-it. Whilst your segment might not allow for that, in reality that level of integration I believe is needed to support content marketing strategy implementation, curation and distribution/sharing
hi It was a great read. Thanks for sharing it.
Thank you for sharing excellent information. Your website is very cool. I am impressed by the details that you have on this blog. It reveals how nicely you understand this subject.
Inpowered – takes earned media and pushes it to paid.
takes earned media and pushes it to paid. right or not
Are you curation and publication?
Great list Jeremiah! As discussed, here at Emergence we’ve been spending a lot of time looking at opportunities in the Content Marketing space…
Thank you,those examples help
please more help to me