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10 Content Marketing Tools for Creation, Distribution and Analytics

Lee Odden
Lee Odden
Content Marketing, Online Marketing

10 Content Marketing ToolsTools are essential for ensuring quality, consistency and enabling scale when it comes to just about any kind of digital marketing. Content Marketing is no different.

There are a variety of content marketing tools, services and applications available, each promising to save the day for everything from persona development to editorial planning to content management, amplification and measurement.

When I was at Content Marketing World a few weeks ago, I moderated a presentation by last year’s “Content Marketer of the Year”, Joe Chernov from Kinvey, who presented on a substantial project he undertook regarding content marketing tools.

The presentation and accompanying slide deck possessed several key characteristics of the most successful content: Thoughtful, structured, empathetic with the audience, uniquely and creatively packaged. It also includes case studies for each tool.

Joe made a point to not focus on the most popular content marketing tools like, Outbrain, Zuberance, InboundWriter, Kapost, Compendium, SkyWord or Curata. Rather, he focused on a collection of tools that warrant attention outside of the mainstream content marketing mix.

Researching tools is something every marketer appreciates but few actually do it in a meaningful way. I reached out to Joe about this:

Very few people do the honest analysis you did with the tools included in your presentation. Do you have a model or process for evaluating new tools? (Especially for companies with limited resources.)

I pay for pain-killers; I make my own vitamins. For example, I work at a start-up and we don’t (yet) have a critical-mass of influencers who are aware of us. So for me, engaging with relevant influencers is a pain. So to cure that, I’d invest in something like Little Bird (fortunately, as an advisor, I can use the tool for free).

Conversely, while it would be nice to be able to dip into a marketplace of writers and use a simple system for managing production and payment, at our size, that’s a luxury — or a “vitamin” — that I don’t need to pay for. Instead, I’ll manage that process myself. For a larger company that already has a significant following a more efficient system for sourcing and managing freelance writers might be a pain-killer. So for them, investing in a platform like Contently might be the higher priority.

The importance and demand of tools for helping digital marketers make more of an impact with their content marketing is rising at light speed. To help meet that demand for information, I’ve taken some what Joe shared in his presentation and combined it with a few of my own findings for each of the 10 tools he reviewed. Enjoy.

Percolate

Percolate

What it is: Real time content marketing platform.

Percolate sources, curates and schedules content for brands to share on the social web. Also uses insights to suggest new content creation. Through Percolate, a brand can publish content for and engage with audiences on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress, and Drupal-based .com.

A tool like Percolate is useful for community managers at big corporate brands who are often overwhelmed with finding content to share across divisions, business units, geography.  After a “calibration” period of identifying a brand’s key interests, visual guidelines and events, Percolate indexes owned assets globally.

Percolate supports a “cradle to grave to reincarnation” approach to content creation that helps companies identify the topics of interest for a target audience and then promote that social content across social channels.

Case Studies: IBM, Stella Artois, MasterCard, Samsung

LookBookHQ

LookBookHQ

What it is: A visual storytelling platform.

LookBookHQ is not unlike Pinterest and Slideshare in that you assemble content (original and curated) including web pages, files, images and video that then become “embeddble” and sharable on social networks. Essentially, LookBookHQ is a way to make your content marketing more visual. Content is displayed in what looks like a Pinterest board. You can annotate images within it and connect them to each other. Some of the content behind the tiles can be gated while other content is open access. Analytics are available to measure engagement and you can integrate with leading marketing automation and CRM solutions.

Example: 20 Women Who Rock Content Marketing 2013

ÜberFlip

Uberflip

What it is:  Like Flipboard or Slideshare on your own domain name.

Uberflip is responsive-design curator feature for content in just about every format from video to social to PDF that can be published as a hub. Conversion functionality is built into the hub, with customized call to actions. This is a great example of a platform that will help a brand create a “best answer” hub for a topic they want to be known for.

Case Study: The C100

Contently

Contently

What it is: A Journalist Marketplace

Connects brands with access to a large pool of newspaper and magazine journalists including management tools for content creation, workflow and payment.  Offers a freelancers a place to catch extra work and brands a combination of talent network, content creation tools, workflow tools, publishing, sponsorship and distribution features.

Case Study: Rackspace (gated)

Little Bird

Little Bird

What it is: Influencer and Content Discovery, Engagement

Little Bird is a platform that helps companies find, engage and subscribe to real influencers on any given topic.

Tour: Video

PaperShare

PaperShare

What it is: A real-time content distribution and engagement platform

Shifts conversion from the brand site to the content itself using an upload once, share anywhere approach.  Includes a dashboard that offers channel specific analytics that let you know who is reading your content, which channels they came from, what else they have read and any insights they share. Also includes an engagement dashboard for nurturing and direct interaction.

Case Study: Intel (social login gated)

Addvocate

Aadvocate

What it is: Facilitates Employee Sharing of Content

Standardizes, prioritizes content and messaging and offers employee level analytics.  Identifies who is representing the brand on the social web, supports content suggestions to employees for sharing and analytics for performance optimization.

Helps alleviate employee concerns about what to share, what to say and whether what they’re doing has impact.

Influitive

Influitive

What it is: Platform for Recruiting, Mobilizing, And Recognizing Brand Advocates

Platform for building an advocate community though ramification: customers complete challenges to earn points and recognition. Integrates with CRM, social networks and marketing automation platforms.

Case Study: Act-On

Optimizely

Optimizely

What it is: A/B and Multivariate Testing Tool

Very easy to use testing tool. Test anything from button colors to order of assets, offer copy and many other variables. Track engagement, clicks, conversions, sign ups, or anything else. No coding abilities needed but if you have them, it can be customized even further.

Case Studies: EA, Liftopia, ZAGG, USTREAM,

TrackMaven

TrackMaven

What it is:  Competitive Intelligence Platform For a Competitors Ads and Content

TrackMaven shows how each piece of content is performing across paid, owned, earned media in real time. Create alerts, easy competitor tracking set up, provides one feed for every one of your competitor’s content marketing channels.

You can track display ads, SEO, PPC. traffic data, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, RSS Content, news and press. Compare your marketing stats with competitors for benchmarking.

Here’s the full deck Joe presented at Content Marketing World organized by category.

10 Rocking Content Marketing Products from Joe Chernov

If you’d like to learn more about content marketing tools and successful content marketing, you’ll really want to be at MarketingProfs B2B Forum this week in Boston.

Among many other outstanding presentations from top B2B brands and industry thought leaders, Joe Chernov and I will join Joe Pulizzi from the Content Marketing Institute, Ann Handley from MarketingProfs and Michelle Kessler from Qualcomm Spark for an afternoon panel discussion “Content All Stars Share Their Secrets“. Follow along on Twitter using the hashtag: #mpb2b

This is by no means a comprehensive list of content marketing tools, so please share: Which tools do you rely on in your content marketing planning, implementation and measurement?

Top image: Shutterstock

About Lee Odden

@LeeOdden is the CEO of TopRank Marketing and editor of TopRank's B2B Marketing Blog. Cited for his expertise by The Economist, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, he's the author of the book Optimize and presents internationally on B2B marketing topics including content, search, social media and influencer marketing. When not at conferences, consulting, or working with his talented team, he's likely running, traveling or cooking up something new.

Comments

  1. Joe Chernov says

    October 9, 2013 at 7:16 am

    Wow, Lee, this is a fantastic write up. You should feel free to present this deck because you just nailed it! Great post, seriously.

    • Lee Odden says

      October 9, 2013 at 11:30 am

      Thanks for the presentation Joe – it was a true example of “walking the talk” in content marketing.

    • Joe Pulizzi says

      October 9, 2013 at 1:19 pm

      Excellent job both of you. Lee, see you in a few!

  2. Cara Posey says

    October 9, 2013 at 7:41 am

    Lee, this is a great list. Some tools I know, some I’m trying out (like Little Bird) and others I have yet to try. I will humbly add ExpertFile to this list…another platform that is great for finding experts and reviewing expert content as well as a platform for companies and individuals to share their own content. We also just launched our new visual dashboard, helping B2B marketers and agencies with content marketing analytics and assessing ROI for expert content marketing efforts as well as identifying new opportunities. I hope you’ll check it out as a potential tool that adds additional value to your list above http://www.expertfile.com/blog/expert-content-marketing-analytics-b2b-agencies/. Thanks, Cara

    • Lee Odden says

      October 9, 2013 at 12:03 pm

      Thanks Cara and congrats on launching the new visual dashboard.

  3. marcusnelson says

    October 9, 2013 at 9:53 am

    Looking good Lee, really appreciate you covering Joe’s presentation (and Addvocate 🙂

    • Lee Odden says

      October 9, 2013 at 12:02 pm

      Thanks Marcus – Joe’s work made it a lot easier 🙂

  4. Matthew White says

    October 9, 2013 at 11:41 am

    Interesting ideas here. As always, a great post Lee.

  5. chorenf says

    October 9, 2013 at 11:45 pm

    Lee – thanks so much for profiling Influitive (and thanks Joe as well). One small note: ramification should be gamification. Ramification sounds pretty cool though and we’ll if we can add it in a future release. 🙂

  6. Sandhya Ramesh says

    October 11, 2013 at 7:38 am

    Thanks for the list, Lee. We should try using some of these at Agile CRM.

  7. Yoav Schwartz says

    October 11, 2013 at 10:43 am

    Proud to have Uberflip as part of this list among such great companies. Thanks Lee and Joe!

  8. Lee Odden says

    October 12, 2013 at 7:30 am

    Hi Neil, it’s not my list 🙂 It’s from a presentation given at Content Marketing World by Joe Chernov. Based on the interest, I’ll definitely need to come up with my own short list of content marketing tools.

  9. michael bian says

    October 15, 2013 at 3:56 am

    Very Good article. Thank you for the list !

  10. Dante Cook says

    October 16, 2013 at 1:42 pm

    Compendium and Kapost? Other than the fact that I work for Compendium so i may be a little biased but we’re probably the top two names in the space in terms of Creation, Distribution and Analytics.

    Most of the tools mentioned on this list are geared towards content curation and marketplaces centered around finding content to source from.

    • Lee Odden says

      October 17, 2013 at 7:46 am

      Hey Dante, nothing wrong with being biased towards your employer. It also helps if you actually read the post.

      If you did that, you’d know that Compendium and Kapost are both mentioned. This list of tools was selected by Joe Chernov for his presentation at Content Marketing World and highlights tools that are not being talked about by every other marketing blog on the web.

  11. Apree says

    December 3, 2013 at 3:12 am

    Thanks for sharing this list Lee & Joe such a great information.

  12. Entreb says

    March 11, 2014 at 3:22 am

    It seems that I have not used those tools which are mentioned above. It’s nice to explore them. Thanks a lot for sharing these content marketing tools.

  13. FieroFiery says

    May 15, 2014 at 9:31 am

    Here is another list of 11 resources for content marketing, and it looks like there were no duplicates, so a bunch more websites really. I have started using RebelMouse and Scoop.It after reading this article: watsonnowlin.com/content-marketing-tools/

  14. Shannon Byrne says

    June 23, 2014 at 3:45 pm

    Hi Lee! Great post. Little Bird and Paper Share are definitely new to me. I will have to check them out. I think you’ll also find Mention.com of value. It’s a media monitoring app that allows you to monitor, react to, share, and analyze your keywords across the web and social all from one web or mobile platform. I’d love for you to give it a try and let me know what you think!

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