Content curation is a great way to publish high quality, relevant content on a consistent basis. However, content curation can’t stand alone. Original created content is the linchpin of any content marketing strategy.

In organizations with limited staff and budget, content creation can fall by the wayside, or into the lap of marketers with their plates already full. To enlightened marketers, content marketing is no part-time job, and shouldn’t be treated as such. A successful content strategy that keeps potential buyers and customers engaged requires dedicated writers publishing content consistently.

What if an in-House Content Team Is out of Your Budget?

Outsourcing content creation to freelancers or agencies is a popular option for organizations with limited resources. Curata research found 17 percent of marketers are turning to freelance writers for high quality and relevant content. For companies unable to feed the content beast on their own, a content writing service may be a great option for the marketing team.

Below is a list of content creation services that can help get a content strategy off the ground, drive SEO, and improve engagement. It is divided into two broad categories: in-house writing services, and writer marketplaces. In-house writing services employ writers on staff; marketplaces connect you to a writer appropriate for a specific project. Keep in mind the lines can be blurred between the two types of writing services, and that this list is not comprehensive. It has been updated as of September 2017

Have a writing service you use that isn’t mentioned below? Let us know in the comments section.

In-House Writing Services A-D

Articlez
Content at a price competitive with what others outsourcing to non-native English speaking writers charge.
Services: Articles, blog posts, personal stories, anecdotes, newsletters

Brafton
An agency that provides custom content in various formats from full-time content writers and designers.
Services: Landing pages, case studies, analytical news articles, blogs, eBooks, whitepapers, interviews, custom projects, editing services

Brivin Corp 
Original content creation services that are researched by professionals to ensure quality and boost engagement.
Services: Press releases, blog articles, journalistic texts, and web content

Content Cavalry
One solution for coming up with compelling topics, creating and ensuring top-notch quality.
Services: Articles, social media, blog posts

Content Customs
Owned and operated by Internet designers, developers, marketers, and writers. Offers everything needed to create and maintain an Internet presence.
Services: Content writing services, SEO and marketing, design and development

Content Development Pros
Custom content writing services from content development pros within 72 hours.
Services: Web copy, articles, eBooks, blog posts, press releases

Content Writers
High-quality content for all major industries: travel and lifestyle, legal, food and beverage, medical and healthcare, fashion, music and entertainment, tech and internet, government and non-profit, sports, gaming and fitness, finance, business and real estate, education and daycare.
Services: Blog posts, website pages, press releases, social media posts, product descriptions, email newsletters, whitepapers

Creative CopyWriter
Services for writing projects large or small to entice readers and generate leads.
Services: Web copy, blog posts, articles, corporate brochures, direct mail, email campaigns, newsletters, press releases, presentations, sales brochures and letters, slogans, tweets, video scripts

CrowdFlower
Enterprise crowdsourcing. CrowdFlower offers original, high quality content in multiple languages from skilled wordsmiths.
Services: Sentiment analysis, search relevance tuning, data collection and enhancement, data categorization, content moderation

In-House Writing Services E-M

eBook Writing Service
Create an eBook that penetrates the deepest corners of the market, getting interested readers enthralled enough to return to your work again and again.
Services: eBooks

Editor Group
Delivers writing and editing services, proofreading, strategy and training for sales and marketing, thought leadership, content marketing, investor relations, and community campaigns.
Services: ads, annual reports, articles, blogs, brochures, case studies, magazines, media releases, newsletters, proposals, prospectuses, reports, style guides, tenders, audio and video scripts, white papers

Express Writers
Provides a range of professional writing services.
Services: Web pages, blog writing, resumes, product descriptions, article writing, sales pages, landing pages, topics, content planning, meta tags, content auditing, PR distribution, infographics, press release writing

Graphtek
Writing services for original, engaging website copy reflecting brand messaging and providing customer value.
Services: Web copy, PPC content generation or reviews, blog posts, editing, banner ads, newspapers, magazines

Internet Marketing Ninjas 
An online marketing service that provides search engine optimized web content.
Services: Optimized web content services, digital assets, blog management, press release services

iStrategy Labs
Custom content in various formats.
Services: Animation, illustration, photography, videography, live-streaming, video editing, copy writing, blogging, crowdsourcing

iWebContent
Writes, optimizes and designs content for users and businesses looking to boost their content marketing strategy and stand out in search rankings.
Services: Web content, blog posts, press releases, custom eBooks, blog creation, graphic design, web development

Mad Wire Media 
Writing services that help businesses develop their messaging on websites and increase search rank with content created by skilled writers.
Services: Digital marketing

More Than Words Only
A group of creative writers and expert editors who strive to come up with new ideas for your technical writing services needs.
Services: Web content, blogs, articles, copywriting, social media writing, translation, resumes and cover letters, proofreading, press releases, brochures

In-House Writing Services N-S

No. 2 Pen
Helps brands tell their story and establish an online presence through optimized website content and strategy development.
Services: Web copy, social media posts, newsletters, blogging, PR/blogger outreach, eBooks

Outspoken Media
Provides custom content creation in the form of blog posts, authority articles, link bait, press releases and optimized content.
Services: Blogs, authority articles, link bait, optimized press releases, optimized content

Phenomenal Content LLC
Writing services offering high quality, original content in the form of copywriting, article writing, blogging and editing.
Services: Articles, blogs, editing

SEO Advantage
Articles written by SEO professionals to help organizations rank in search for relevant topics.
Services: Web copy, press releases, blogs, social media, articles

SEO Article Writing Pros
A team of professional content writers and copywriters that can complete custom writing projects based on your specific needs.
Services: Articles, blog posts, press releases, website content, eBooks, eReports, social media posts

Simply Done Tech Solutions
Helps grow inbound marketing strategies and improves SEO via blogs, case studies, eBooks, etc.
Services: Veterinary blog posts, Q&As, Veterinary eBooks, infographics, case studies, how to guides, veterinary videos

SM Content Creation
Will tackle any project, as long as it’s creative.
Services: Website content, copywriting, revisions, blogs, social media

SocialSite Media
SocialSite Media repurposes and optimizes existing content, creates new site content, helps with landing page development, and editorial calendaring.
Services: Blog writing, editing, social media posts, landing pages, content optimization,

Socius Marketing
Provides researched, custom articles for businesses looking to extend their digital reach.
Services: Articles, thought pieces, blogs, whitepapers, corporate histories, executive biographies, email blasts, newsletters, B2B communications

SureWriteSEO
A professional content writing services company specializing in high quality, relevant content optimized for search.
Services: Articles, blog posts, SEO content

In-House Writing Services T-Z

TextRoyal
Features professional US-born writers with experience in over 40 genres, providing SEO-favored, original content.
Services: articles, blog posts, product descriptions, SEO and web content, social media posts, press releases, and more

Textun
Textun offers high quality and cost-efficient writing services.
Services: Report, article, blog post, review, web content

Textworkers
Produces web pages, articles, blogs, and product descriptions for hundreds of companies around the world including Avon, Maybelline, DISH Promotions, oDesk Enterprise Solutions, and more.
Services: Blog writing, article writing, copywriting, product descriptions

The Write Content
Offers help creating content strategy plans, custom-branded content, editing assistance and more from content specialists available for short term and long term projects.
Services: Content strategy, content creation, content editing

Vertical Measures 
A content marketing agency specializing in the development of long form and visual content. This includes free guides, case studies, white papers, infographics, resource pages and video.
Services: Articles, blogs, infographics, videos, guides, social media, SEO content

Write Collective
Topic brainstorming and creation as well as keyword optimization.
Services: Blog posts, articles

Writer Marketplaces A-D

Blog Mutt
A hassle-free writing service that uses experienced writers to produce unique blogs for companies who need consistent content.
Services: Blog posts, articles, eBooks, white papers, social media, web copy

ClearVoice
Offers both a software platform, freelance writer marketplace, and in-house services such as content strategy, management, distribution and measurement.
Services: Articles, blogs, eBooks, infographics, videos, freelancer matching and recruiting

Constant Content
Users can commission freelance writers to create custom articles, and buy pre-written articles.
Services: Articles, blogs posts, copy editing, copywriting, eBooks, press releases, product descriptions, review writing, SEO content, social media updates, technical writing, white papers

Contently 
Allows brands to connect with freelancers in new ways to boost content creation and power the next generation of media companies.
Services: Articles, blog posts, social media, web copy

Content Writers
Connects you with freelance writers who produce professional blog posts, website copy, press releases and social media posts for businesses.
Services: Blog posts, press releases, website page, white papers, social media posts, email newspaper, video script

Copify
Assists businesses from around the world to source fast, high quality content from approved copywriters.
Services: Website pages, article writing, blog posts, press releases, ecommerce content

CopyPress
Software, products, and services that help creatives and advertisers.
Services: Expert content, product copy, eBooks, white papers, press releases, infographics, SEO content

Crowd Content
Quality, unique content to elevate your site to page one on Google and get people talking about your brand on social networks.
Services: Blog posts, product descriptions, website content, eBooks, SEO content, press releases, whitepapers, newsletters

CrowdSource 
Manages a crowd of qualified writers, editors, and moderators to perform large-scale content creation quickly and efficiently.
Services: Articles, buying guides, product descriptions, blogs, recipes

Writer Marketplaces E-S

Ebyline
Helps brands and publishers find and hire high quality content creators. Simplifies the freelancer management process.
Services: Photos, videos, infographics, text

fiverr
A worldwide online marketplace offering content creation services beginning at five dollars per job performed.
Services: Business copywriting, creative writing, translation, transcription, resumes, cover letters, proofreading, editing, press releases, articles, blog posts, research, summaries, legal writing

Godot 
Provides reliable, quality content writing services to give your content marketing strategy a boost, no matter your audience.
Services: Articles, blogs, copywriting, eBooks, social media, SEO, whitepapers

inklyo
Find professional journalists, copywriters, and bloggers that create quality content which attracts attention and provides value for readers.
Services: Articles, blogs, copywriting, newsletter, press releases, resume, SEO

iWriter
A service created solely to facilitate the process of hiring someone to write articles for you.
Services: Articles, web copy, blog posts

Mediashower
Content written by professional journalists and edited by SEO experts to ensure it ranks higher and receives more attention.
Services: Articles, blog posts, SEO content

RightlyWritten
Allows you to place an order with a network of highly qualified copywriters. Does not require a contract.
Services: Articles, blogs, web copy, press releases, newsletters, social media, creative writing, technical writing, product descriptions, eBooks, whitepapers, resumes, cover letters, taglines, slogans, script writing, academic writing

Skyword
Helps businesses engage audiences with unique content designed to perform in social media and search.
Services: Content strategy, original content creation, content performance management, content amplification

Scripted 
A digital forum connecting organizations with highly qualified freelancers who can write blogs, articles, and bulk social media posts.
Services: Standard blog post, long blog post, white papers, Tweets, Facebook posts, website pages, product descriptions, local content, articles

Writer Marketplaces T-Z

Textbroker 
An online forum for custom-made, original written content with over 100,000 U.S.-based freelance writers who can write on various topics.
Services: Articles, blog posts

TextMaster
TextMaster offers professional translation, proofreading, and web content writing services from native speakers across the globe.
Services: SEO content, articles, branded content, eCommerce, proofreading, editing, translation

TextWriters
An online marketplace connecting more than 50,000 professional freelance writers with clients needing different types of content. Also features a catalogue of thousands of pre-written articles.
Services: Hire freelance writers, buy articles online, use ready-made content

Upwork
A large online marketplace where businesses can hire from over two million freelance writers, designers, web developers, mobile programmers, and more from around the world.
Services: Blogs, articles, web content, technical, creative, copywriting, editing, eBooks, translation, biographies, creative

WriterAccess
Connects businesses with one of thousands of freelance writers in minutes, with a quick turnaround.
Services: Blog posts, Twitter and Facebook posts, white papers, web copy

Writology
A platform combining a freelance marketplace and a professional writing service.
Services: Copywriting, web content, academic writing, rewriting, business writing, technical writing, media writing, SEO/content writing

Zerys
A marketplace for thousands of freelancers to connect with businesses, and also doubles as a project management tool for content.
Services: Content strategy planner, content production platform, professional writer marketplace

If you’re looking for writers, you’re advancing in your content marketing career. To find out how to take the next step, download Curata and LinkedIn’s eBook: The Ultimate Guide to a Content Marketing Career.

As they say in storytelling, it’s better to show rather than tell. To this end, rather than telling you how to curate, Curata decided to showcase content curation examples from several businesses successfully curating content for their brands. The following organizations are a selection of business and consumer-facing, curating both on their own platforms and through social channels.

Read on for ten great content curation examples.

Content Curation Leaders:

Non Obvious Insights Newsletter

Rohit Bhargava of the Influential Marketing Group assembles an expertly curated selection of articles from more than 100 sources that fully live up to the tagline of “This week’s most underappreciated marketing stories.”

Slashdot

Slashdot is run by a handful of editors and coders focused on technology-related news. The “news for nerds” website provides snippets of news articles, with a little commentary on why it’s relevant. It also has an active reader-commenting community providing continued conversation on each article.

Kottke.org

Kottke claims to be one of the longest-running active blogs on the Internet. Primarily curated by Jason Kottke, this site focuses on providing interesting tidbits on a wide variety of topics. Jason Kottke has mastered the art of publishing just the right amount of content, and it’s always something interesting.

Digg

Digg is a famous news aggregator with a curated front page, selecting stories for a specifically Internet audience around topics such as science, trending political issues, entertainment, sports, and viral Internet stories and memes. It uses data and social signals to power a user-influenced, editorially-controlled content portal.

ABM Guru

Pitching themselves as the voice of account based marketing, ABM Guru offers stories about every aspect of ABM. There’s a selection of original stories, curated articles, and posts that riff off other original stories about everything from strategy to audience insight, sales enablement, and measurement and reporting. Expert contributors include Engagio CEO Jon Miller, Demandbase CMO Peter Isaacson, Pulse Marketing and Buyer Persona Institute CEO Adele Revella.

Huffington Post

One of the best known curated sites out there, the HuffPo has also invested significantly in original reporting in recent years. It features a unique mix of created, curated, and sponsored posts alongside user-generated content. The site has undergone a significant aesthetic overhaul for a design that, while still busy, is cleaner with more images.

Deadspin

A site chock-full of sports news featuring colorful commentary with a humorous twist. There’s commentaries, recaps, previews of the major sports stories of the day, and sports-related anecdotes, rumors and videos.

Buzzfeed

With a team of editors constantly creating and curating, Buzzfeed provides its audience with interesting and unique combinations of facts. From “5 Important Walking Dead Predictions For This Season”, to “18 Babies Experiencing Things For the First Time,” Buzzfeed is an endless stream of interesting content.

22 Words

Similar to Buzzfeed, 22 Words provides a constant stream of interesting and humorous content from around the web. The curated articles are broken down into handy categories, which include funny, bizarre, amazing, cute and intriguing.

The Week

Provides multiple perspectives of the week’s news and editorial commentary, along with science, business, health, media and the arts. With a wide focus, The Week condenses stories down an easily digestible format, as well as featuring original commentary from writers including David Frum, Robert Shrum, Will Wilkinson, Daniel Larison, and Brad DeLong.

Learning With Content Curation Examples

Thoughtful curation is an indispensable tool in a content marketer’s playbook. It allows you to economically increase your content production capacity, while leveraging your industry expertise to showcase other industry experts’ wisdom. This process boosts your credibility as an unbiased and credible thought leader, and offers your audience a variety of stimulating perspectives.

For a hands on guide to curation, download the Curate Content Like a Boss eBook. It’s packed with practical advice for how to get started with content curation, as well as best practices for pros.

What’s your favorite curated site? Post a comment below, we’d love to hear. 

Content intelligence is a nascent form of revolutionary content marketing technology. It allows you to understand everything there is to know about a piece of content—including its context, so you can use that knowledge to guide decision making for that piece of content. It can even automate and execute some of those decisions.

Content intelligence integrates several existing technologies and applies them to content marketing. These include machine learning, natural language processing, big data, and artificial intelligence (AI). Let’s expand on what a couple of these terms mean:

• Big data involves computationally analyzing extremely large data sets to reveal patterns, trends, and associations; especially those relating to human behavior and interactions. People use big data for everything from predicting stock performance to seasonal buying behavior. And it helps the NSA know whether your post about “blowing up the joint” refers to your bomb-making or DJing skills.
• AI has a more nebulous definition, because what is considered AI is constantly changing. One way of thinking of AI is as intelligence exhibited by any device that perceives its environment and takes actions to maximize its chances of achieving a goal.

Content intelligence may draw on artificial intelligence and big data, but it is neither of those two things. It’s the systems and software that transforms data into actionable insights for content strategy and tactics. Content intelligence means having the full context of an individual piece of content. Not only that, but the whole corpus of content. It allows you to make better decisions about anything pertaining to the content in question.

Check out the infographic below. It offers a quick overview on what content intelligence is, what it can do for you, and where it currently exists in the content marketing space.

Content Intelligence is the Future of Content Marketing

Want to know more about content intelligence, such as which vendors exist, and what you can do to prepare your organization for adopting this technology? Immerse yourself in Curata’s Content Intelligence: The Next Frontier of Content Marketing Technology.

But many people interested in content curation—and some who are already curating—may still have lingering questions about best practices.

What should a curated post look like? How much of the original article should I include? How do I align this content with my own content?

To help answer some of these questions and outline the anatomy of curated piece of content, we created “The Art of a Curated Post.” Just like a painting, a good curated post is not complete without all the necessary elements. Follow along as this curator—let’s call her Claire—paints the perfect post.

Five Elements of Content Curation

1. New Title

It’s vital to always craft a new headline to avoid competing with the original article in search engine results. And a good headline can be the difference between someone clicking on your article or ignoring it. Some handy sites to use for creating titles include:

• Upworthy.com – Although many of these titles can be outrageous, simply browsing this site will help in brainstorming catchier titles.

• UpworthyGenerator.com – This website provides a new “Upworthy Style” title every time you click “Generate.” Again, while these titles are outrageous—and in this case, fake—it’s a good jumping off point to start pushing the boundaries with headlines.

• TitleCapitilization.com – This tool comes in handy any time you are wondering which words are capitalized in a title. Simply paste your title into the field on the home page and it automatically corrects capitalization errors.

• UberSuggest.org – This website helps find popular keywords surrounding various topics to help your article rank higher in search engine results.

• Thesaurus.com – Never underestimate the power of a synonym. Often, simply inserting one word in place of another can take your title to the next level.

Remember, even if a title worked well on the original post you’re curating (it got you to click, didn’t it?), it may not work well for your specific audience.

For example, at Curata we often curate posts about social media best practices. However, we try to put it in the context of content marketing, since this is what our audience wants to read about. A recent post showing this is titled “How to Optimize Content For Social Media Success.”

2. New Image

To avoid copyright issues and add originality to your post, use an entirely new image. Useful image sites include:

• Stock photo libraries such as Shutterstock, iStock, RGBStock
• The Creative Commons for free ‘Copyleft‘ images in a range of licenses
• Image Creation tools such as Canva
• Basic design tools such as PowerPoint, and more sophisticated tools such as Adobe Creative Suite and the free, open source GiMP

3. Body Text

Your own, original body text should take up the majority of the post. Include the following elements:

• Attribution of the original article and author (with a link to the article)

• Commentary and/or annotation. Frame the original article in a useful way to your readers by citing the content’s relevance to them, and provide your own analysis on the topic or issue at hand

• Links to created content. You’ve no doubt spent time creating unique and interesting blog posts, eBooks, and other resources. Now is the time to link back to these assets—when they relate to the topic—and give your audience additional value/further reading

4. Quote

Draw in a quote from the original article, or even several quotes. The exact format can vary depending on the length of the original article and its topic. Be sure to pick a quote or stat that will surprise, educate, and/or entertain your readers. This is your opportunity to bring in intelligent outside voices—one of the main advantages of content curation.

5. Call to Action

A call to action (CTA) is necessary for every blog post, but it’s especially important for curated content. Don’t leave readers hanging. Link to a piece of your content that helps expand their knowledge on the subject at hand.

Offer readers a piece of gated content such as an eBook or a webinar to help generate new leads and nurture existing leads. Keeping leads engaged reinforces how you are catering to their needs and bringing them value on a consistent basis.

Make sure your CTA is both eye-catching and appealing. Here are some great articles about creating CTAs that convert:

• Anatomy of a CTA by Vieo Design

• The Complete Checklist for Creating Compelling Calls-to-Action by HubSpot

• How to Make Calls to Action More Effective by Search Engine Watch

What’s Next?

This is a useful template for composing a curated post, but note there is much more to the curation process not touched upon here. E.g., finding articles to curate and promoting content once it is produced.

Fortunately, there are many tools and technologies to help with each step of this process. We rounded up a handy selection of curation tools in this ultimate list to help you weigh your options.

Want to know more about curating content? Curata’s eBook, The Ultimate Guide to Content Curation will have you curating like a champ. Alternatively, reach out to us for a demo of Curata’s content curation software.

We  dive deeper into each of the skills or traits below, starting at Strategic Thinker and going clockwise.

Strategic Thinker

Fifty six percent of B2B marketers do not have a documented content marketing strategy, and this is a problem. Content marketers must have a strategy in place to produce cohesive and actionable content. The perfect content marketer has a list of several goals and ensures every piece of content drives towards that goal. Some examples of goals include:

• Increase site traffic, brand awareness or lead generation
• Educate prospects on your industry or product benefits
• Improve search engine optimization or customer service
• Build customer trust, rapport, loyalty, or industry credibility

Process-Oriented

Content marketing processes are required to scale your operations. These range from workflow to publishing to promotion to analytics. Within a content marketing process, there must be:

• Defined roles and responsibilities for direct and extended members of your team.
• A path that every piece of content must follow, or at least a staged gate process for decisions to be made about how a piece of content is planned, produced, and promoted.
• An editorial calendar to track content through its various stages.

To learn more about content marketing processes, check out these expert tips to manage your process.

Creative Thinker

Too many people are in a state of content shock as they are bombarded by obscene amounts of eBooks, blog posts, and other vendor content. Therefore, it’s crucial that your uber-content marketer is creative.

Design Skills

According to Ekaterina Walter, author of The Power of Visual Storytelling, the brain processes visuals 600,000 times faster than text. Bottom line? If you can communicate your message through a picture or video, do it.

It is important to think visually. It’s even more important to put these visions into eye-catching graphics, infographics, and images that connect to your main message. Content should always include an element of design. So the ability to create these elements using applications such as PowerPoint, Adobe’s Creative Suite, or the free open source image editor alternative, GiMP, is essential. Examples include:

• An infographic on Copyblogger: “22 Ways To Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue,” demonstrates the power of imagery to communicate a message. Instead of a basic list, Brian Clark created images for each of the 22 ways.
• The ability to repurpose a blog post or eBook into a sharable, compelling SlideShare is essential. This makes long posts or books more digestible for your audience. Learn SlideShare best practices from Todd Wheatland. Also, check out these super SlideShares:

• • SAP’s 99 Facts on the Future of Business
  • Curata’s Content Marketing Advice from 27 Experts
  • SEMRush’s Search Content vs. Social Content
  • Rexi Media’s 5 Reasons We Forget Presentations
  • Eugene Cheng’s SlideShare Experts – 7 Experts Reveal Their Presentation Design Secrets

Video Skills

Video editing is a great skillset to have for content marketers, and is only becoming more important. YouTube currently has five billion video views per day. Uploading videos to a company channel is a great way to reach your audience.

Cisco predicts that by 2021, video will make up 77 percent of all consumer internet traffic. So what does this mean? If you don’t have video editing skills, you might not be able to reach the majority of audiences. Take a look at the Content Marketing Institute’s Succeed with Video Content Marketing: 5 Tips and a Case Study to start your education. Also, check out these great uses of video for inspiration:

• Rand Fishkin of Moz’s Whiteboard Friday
• Sam Adams’ How To: Harvest Ale Pumpkin Keg
• Oreo’s Snack Hacks

Energetic and Influential Promoter

Social Media Know-How

Too many content marketers fall short in marketing their marketing. “Promotion” is the process step to address this shortfall. However, simply composing tweets or posting on Facebook is not enough. The perfect content marketer knows:

• Which channels to publish to according to their business and industry
• The best time to publish for each platform
• Who to reach out to, to make sure content is amplified across several networks and to a wider audience

Influencer Marketing

Speaking of reaching out to people, you have to get your content to the right people. Establish meaningful relationships with key influencers in your industry. These influencers will share your content with their networks and your reach will expand. Here are some great resources to learn more about this important facet of promotions:

• “Secrets to Successful Influencer Marketing” by Matt Heinz, presented at Marketo’s Marketing Nation Summit.
• “Why Online Influencer Outreach is Overrated and How to Fix It” by Jay Baer of Convince & Convert

Analytical Thinker

“Be the Analyst”

• Don’t just communicate facts and figures. Speak your mind, contribute your insights, and voice your opinion
• Ask “so what?” about everything you produce to ensure that what you’re communicating is of value and action-oriented

Measure, Measure, Measure

The best content marketers constantly measure and evaluating the impact of their content. This enables them to: 1) improve their return on investment, and 2) better demonstrate their impact on the organization. Which best describes your company’s content marketing measurement tactics?

• Mostly vanity metrics (e.g., social shares or page views)?
• Engagement metrics?
• Metrics that determine your team’s impact on marketing or sales’ pipeline?

There are numerous resources online about content marketing metrics. But these will get you started:

• The Comprehensive Guide to Content Marketing Analytics and Metrics
• Rob Yoegel of Gaggle provides actionable tips to keep in mind when measuring content marketing, including:
  • Know when to measure content production and performance
  • Pay attention to where your customer enters the sales funnel
  • Know where your traffic is coming from
• Tony Jaros of SiriusDecisions recommends B2B marketers specifically measure their content based on these three metrics:
  • Content utilization
  • Content production time
  • Impact to sales

Witty and Humorous

Inject humor into your content. Nothing makes a piece of content stand out more than when it’s funny or witty. This greatly increases the likelihood of your audience sharing your content with their peers. For example:

• Marketo’s blog post “You Know You’re a Content Marketer When…” This post uses memes from popular movies and TV shows to exemplify the many habits—and struggles—of being a content marketer.
• “Telekinetic Coffee Shop Surprise” from the movie Carrie. The makers of Carrie prank patrons of a coffee shop by planting actors pretending to have telekinetic powers. The result is a hilarious clip of screams and surprises.

Skillful Writer

Creator of Irresistible and Alluring Titles

Remember when I said readers are in a state of content shock? Well, creating an attention-grabbing title that is both relevant and decent can make or break your post, regardless of its actual content. The best content marketers have the ability to create a title that not only entices, but compels readers to click. Here are some well written titles:

•   Why Content Marketing Fails by Rand Fishkin on SlideShare
•   Dove’s Heartwarming Ad Will Make You Want to Call Dad by Neha Prakash
•   This is How I Stopped My Content Marketing Ego Trip by Pawan Deshpande
•   6 Reasons to Delete Your Facebook Account Right Now by Kim Lachance Shandrow

Ability to Tell a Story

Instead of us writing about this talent, check out these great examples:

• Southwest’s blog, Nuts about SouthWest, regularly tells stories about employees with posts like “More than a company, we’re a family” and “Behind the Faces of Southwest One Report.”
• Patagonia’s blog, The Cleanest Line, lets “employees, customers and friends” of the brand tell their own stories about the great outdoors.
• Coca-Cola’s blog Coca-Cola Journey, tells lesser-known tales of this well-known brand, such as this post on A History of Coca-Cola Advertising.

Attention to detail

Every sentence—and every word—counts. The best content marketers know that to keep their audience interested, every element of their content should be precise. Without this attention to detail, content can come across as disjointed and lacking purpose. Lack of attention to detail undermines your persuasiveness and credibility, which are crucial for creating trust.

Spelling and Grammar

Good spelling and grammer may seem like an obvious trait for a content marketer. However, many of us still make mistake’s. Don’t misspelll words or defy simple grammar rule. You’re reader’s will notice them. (Yes, the mistakes in this section were intentional.) For example, this Huffington Post article titled “The Ten-Second Race to Content Nirvana” has two spelling mistakes in the very first sentence. The first comment at the end of the post points out the error in the article, which ironically is about creating quality content. (Don’t hold back if you find errors in this post.)

HTML skills

Evolving technology is making it easier to create content on the front end. But having a basic knowledge of HTML can help take your content to the next level.

SEO Insight

Content marketers should be primarily focused on creating quality content for an audience. But don’t underestimate the power of also optimizing content for search engines. For tips about SEO when curating content, check out Curata’s list of SEO Do’s and Don’ts. Cyrus Shepard of Moz also had some insightful thoughts on the topic of “How to Survive the Google Tornado” at Marketo’s Marketing Nation Summit.

Street Smarts

Product and Industry Knowledge

It goes without saying that great content marketers know what they’re writing about. Knowing your products can be especially difficult for marketers in the technology industry though. For example, understanding the intricacies of how a semiconductor chip works when you’re marketing to engineers.

• Work with other functional areas of your company such as product management or product marketing to get a better understanding of your product.
• Attend industry events, both in-person and virtual, to get smarter in your industry.
• Set up Google Alerts on your company, your products, and your competitors.
  • This not only helps you generate ideas, but also alerts you when there is news in your industry that you can capitalize upon (i.e., ideation).
• If you’re a Curata CCS customer, tap into the power of the self-learning discovery engine to bring you the latest and greatest content from across the Internet on your topic of choice. It’s also a great source of ideas for content inspiration, as well as a way to follow your industry’s top influencers.

Customer Insight: “Be the Customer”

As important as knowing what you’re writing about is knowing who you’re writing for. Content marketers need to understand their customers in order to create content that answers their most important and burning questions. They need to understand:

• What customers want to learn
• What customers already know
• How customers are finding content
• How customers are consuming content

Where can you get this insight?

• Directly interact with your customers. Go on sales calls with your reps; sit on phone calls conducted by your inside sales team; conduct interviews with your customers as part of a blog post.
• Go where your customers go. Read your customers’ blogs; attend events they frequent.
• Use existing research. Check out any voice of the customer studies your company may already be conducting. This can include Net Promoter Score (NPS) research or product marketing surveys.

Read, Read, Read

Content marketing is all about creation and writing. However, reading about your industry, your market, your customers, and how to be a better marketer might be just as important. For example:

• Check out the best books on content marketing such as “Youtility” by Jay Baer and “Epic Content Marketing” by Joe Pulizzi
• Read what the top content marketing bloggers have to say
• Stay up to date on the advice of analysts and practitioners

Collaborator

Internal Collaborator

• Within your company: Team with other functions across marketing such as product marketing and field marketing. And don’t forget the rest of your organization such as sales and product management. Great collaboration supercharges performance across all parts of the content supply chain:
  • Ideation
  • Content creation: crowdsourcing across your organization
  • Promotion: Interaction with your social media team
  • Analytics: Interaction with your marketing operations and IT team
• Within your content marketing team: It would be ideal to have all the skillsets mentioned in this post embodied in one person. In reality there will be an entire team of people from different disciplines. For example, editors, writers, SEO specialists, designers, etc. The most effective content is the result of the harmonious interaction of all of these disciplines.

External Collaborator

The best marketers understand that partnering with other players in your industry helps increase your credibility and brings in new perspectives. This results in greater value for your audience, and can result in you better leveraging your resources.

• Develop a guest post program
• Contribute to other company’s blogs
• Establish partnerships with other companies and analysts
• Hire freelancers or agencies to better use your resources
• Curate content to complement your existing content. Curata research shows that the ideal mix is: 65 percent created, 25 percent curated and 10 percent syndicated content.

Innovative

Persistent

Don’t let small obstacles stop you from creating quality content. If you hit a roadblock, keep trying or come up with a new solution.

• Can’t get an interview with a key source? Track down a contact on LinkedIn that can make an introduction for you. If you already have their contact information and they’re not responding, keep calling or emailing them.
• Don’t know how to use Photoshop? Learn.

Fearless

• Content marketers cannot be afraid to fail. In the history of content marketing, ideas and technologies have come and gone. The next big trend in content may be something you already thought of, but are afraid to voice your opinion or insight.
• Take risks. Push the bounds to stand out from the crowd. If you make mistakes in the process, learn from them and move on. Whether it’s an edgier title or a new format, it may help generate more traffic and make your content stand out from other companies in your industry.

Resourceful

Let’s face it, we’ll never have enough time, money, or human resources to do everything we’d like to do in content marketing. The best marketers make the most of what they have.

• Don’t have enough time to write? Hire an agency or a freelancer you trust that will best represent your voice and your audience’s needs.
• Having trouble finding the time to write that big eBook? Use PowerPoint slides to get your message across. Or simply write a long-form blog post.
• Repurpose content from that great eBook you wrote six months ago. Turn it into blog posts, infographics, or a SlideShare from the original content.

Do you—or your team—have every trait of the “dream” content marketer? For more on what employers are looking for when they hire a content marketer, check out these content marketing interview questions.

Do You Have Your Ideal Team of Content Marketers?

Still missing a body part? Don’t worry, you’re not alone in this rapidly maturing discipline. Just remember that happiness is in the journey, not the destination. If you want to know more about the arc of a content marketing career, download Curata and LinkedIn’s eBook: The Ultimate Guide to a Content Marketing Career.

We keep this post updated regularly, so do send us a note if you come across some great research that should be in here. Feel free to share these stats with your Twitter followers. Last updated July 17, 2017.

Start by clicking on a category below, or scroll down to begin the learning!

Content Marketing Definitions:

• Curata: Content marketing is the process of developing, executing, and delivering the content and related assets needed to create, nurture, and grow a company’s customer base. Stages of the content marketing process include: strategy; content development; asset development; and channel leverage across outbound marketing, inbound marketing, and sales enablement.

• IDC: Content marketing is any marketing technique whereby media and published information (content) is used to influence buyer behavior and stimulate action leading to commercial relationships. Optimally executed content marketing delivers useful, relevant information assets that buyers consider a beneficial service rather than an interruption or a “pitch.”

• Altimeter: Eight primary content marketing use cases:
  • Feed the Beast: Creation; Curation and Aggregation
  • Refine: Optimization; Analytics; Audience and Targeting; Distribution
  • Govern: Workflow; Legal and Compliance

• Content Marketing Institute: Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience–with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

• Forrester: Content Marketing is a strategy where brands create interest, relevance, and relationships with customers by producing, curating, and sharing content that addresses specific customer needs and delivers visible value.

• Gartner: Content marketing is the process and practice of creating, curating, and cultivating text, video, images, graphics, eBooks, white papers and other content assets. These are distributed through content management systems, media platforms, and the social graph.

Content Marketing Strategy

• 70 percent of marketers lack a consistent or integrated content strategy. (Altimeter)
• CMOs at the largest technology companies report that building out content marketing as an organizational competency is the second most important initiative, only behind measuring ROI. (IDC)
• 29 percent of leading marketers systematically reuse and repurpose content. (Curata)
• Ninety-two percent of marketers said their organization views content as a business asset. (Content Marketing Institute)

Strategy Documentation:

• Forty six percent of marketers said their organization has a documented strategy for managing content as a business asset; 44 percent said they don’t, and ten percent weren’t sure. (Content Marketing Institute/Intelligent Content Conference)
• Seventy two percent of marketers have a content strategy in place. Thirty percent have a documented strategy; 42 a non-documented strategy. (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)
• The top three things that make content effective: audience relevance (58 percent); engaging and compelling storytelling (57 percent); triggers a response/action (54 percent). (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

Content Segmentation:

• Content segmentation by product/service category (53 percent); buyer persona (40 percent); vertical (35 percent); stage in buying cycle (32 percent); pain point (28 percent). (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• Forty eight percent of marketers support three to five buying stages with dedicated content. (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• Fifty two percent of marketers support two to four roles and buyer personas with dedicated content. (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• Sixty three percent of marketers create content by buyer persona; 38 percent by vertical; 30 percent by geography; and 30 percent by account or customer. (Curata)

Buyer Insight:

• Prescriptive content that lays out a formula for success was the most popular type of content among B2B buyers in 2017, with 97 percent citing it. (DemandGen Report – 2017 Content Preferences Survey)

• Eighty seven percent of B2B buyers give more credence to industry influencer content. Buyers also indicated they give more credence to peer reviews, third-party publications and user-generated feedback. More than two thirds (68 percent) of buyers said they frequently give credence to peer reviews and user-generated feedback. Sixty percent give credence to content authored by a third-party publication or analyst. (DemandGen Report – 2017 Content Preferences Survey)

• Case studies are the top content type for buyers, with 78 percent accessing this format type
  when researching purchases in the past 12 months (vs. 72 percent in 2016). (DemandGen Report – 2017 Content Preferences Survey)

• Forty seven percent of B2B buyers consume three to five pieces of content prior to engaging with a salesperson. (DemandGen Report – 2016 Content Preferences Survey)

• Buyers prefer LinkedIn as the top social network for sharing business related content, with 84 sharing business content on LinkedIn. But email remains the channel most buyers employ to share content, with 94 percent saying email was their number one channel for sharing. (DemandGen Report – 2017 Content Preferences Survey)

• Buyers are most willing to register for and share information about themselves in exchange for white papers (76 percent said they will share information), eBooks (63 percent), webinars (79 percent), case studies (57 percent) and third-party/analyst reports (66 percent). They’re less willing to register for podcasts (19 percent), video (19 percent), and infographics (24 percent). (DemandGen Report – 2017 Content Preferences Survey) (Ultimate White Paper Template)

Budget:

• Eighty eight percent of B2B marketers in North America use content marketing. (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)

• Seventy five percent of marketers are increasing investment in content marketing. (Curata)

• B2B marketers allocate 28 percent of their total marketing budget, on average, to content marketing. The most effective allocate 42 percent, and the most sophisticated/mature allocate 46 percent. (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)

• Fifty one percent of B2B marketers indicate they will increase their content marketing spending in the next 12 months. (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)

• Sixty four percent of companies with a documented content strategy have a dedicated content marketing budget. Meanwhile 14 percent of companies without a documented content strategy have a dedicated content marketing budget. (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• Eighteen percent of companies allocate 10 percent of their budget (excluding headcount) to content marketing (majority of responses from 0 to 30 percent). (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• Fifty three percent of marketers allocate between 1 and 30 percent of marketing budget to marketing technology (25 percent allocate between 1 and 10 percent). (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

Size of Content Marketing Market:

• The marketing software market is expected to grow to more than $32.3 billion in 2018. It will be one of the fastest-growing areas in high tech, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.4 percent. (IDC)

Content Marketing Growth:

• 42.5% of companies are increasing their content marketing staff levels in 2016. (Curata)

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Content Marketing Priorities and Challenges

• Top three content marketing objectives: Drive sales and/or leads; engage customers/buyers/influencers; boost brand awareness. (Curata)
• Top five B2B content marketing challenges: Producing engaging content (60 percent). Measuring content effectiveness (57 percent). Producing Content Consistently (57 percent). Measuring the ROI of content marketing program (52 percent). Lack of Budget (35 percent). (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)
• Top five content marketing challenges: Lack of time/bandwidth to create content (51 percent). Producing enough content variety/volume (50 percent). Producing truly engaging content (42 percent). Measuring content effectiveness (38 percent). Developing consistent content strategy (34 percent). (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• Top three goals of content marketing: Lead Generation (59 percent). Thought leadership/market education (43 percent); brand awareness (40 percent). (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• Business bloggers’ greatest priority is creating a strategy, followed by the need to measure impact of the blog on their organization’s success. (Curata)

• Marketers’ top needs from a content marketing perspective: Audience identification and targeting (67 percent). Analytics (67 percent). Creation (60 percent). Distribution (53 percent). Curation and Aggregation (48%). (Altimeter)

• Thirty percent of marketers say their organization is effective at content marketing (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)

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Organizational Structure (“People”)

• Forty two percent of companies have an executive in their organization directly responsible for an overall content marketing strategy. (Curata)

• Top four areas responsible for setting content strategy: Corporate marketing (54 percent); Product marketing (25 percent); CEO/president/owner (21 percent); PR/communications (19 percent). (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• Top five skill-sets missing from today’s content marketing teams: content creation; content marketing leadership/strategy; promotion; performance management/metrics orientation; subject matter expertise. (Curata)

• Top five areas responsible for creating content: Corporate marketing (53 percent); product marketing (39 percent); subject matter experts (36 percent); PR/communications (32 percent); external agency/consultant (30 percent). (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• Seventy one percent of business bloggers have some type of center of excellence team. This is a team that provides a blogging code of conduct, audience engagement guidelines, best practices and guidance to help internal teams execute their own blogging activities. (Curata)

• Seventy two percent of B2B marketers surveyed by Forrester say less than half of their marketing staff plays a primary role in content marketing today. (Forrester)

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Content Marketing Tactics

Type of Content:

• The target content marketing mix by superstar content marketers is 65 percent created, 25 percent curated and ~10 percent syndicated content. (Curata)

• Top five B2B content marketing tactics: Social media content (92 percent); eNewsletters (83 percent); articles on your website (81 percent); blogs (80 percent); in-person events (77 percent). (IMN Inc.)

• Top three content marketing tactics: Blogging (65 percent); social media (64 percent); case studies (64 percent). (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• Top five B2B content marketing tactics: social media content (93 percent); case studies (82 percent); blogs (81 percent); eNewsletter (81 percent); in-person events (81 percent). (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)

• Fifty three percent of content marketers use interactive content. (Content Marketing Institute)

• Top five types of interactive content used by marketers: assessments, calculators, contests, quizzes, interactive infographics. (Content Marketing Institute)

Publishing Frequency of Content:

• Thirty eight percent of marketers publish content weekly or more often. (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• Ninety one percent of the best business bloggers publish weekly or more often. Only 70 percent of all other bloggers post at this frequency. (Curata)

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Content Creation (Including Outsourcing and Curation)

• Target content mix: 65 percent created (created by dedicated, internal staff, crowd-sourced internally, or outsourced); 25 percent curated; and 10 percent syndicated. (Curata)

• On average, 18 percent of companies’ blog posts are 750 words or more. (Curata)

• Long-form blog posts generate more than nine times more leads than short-form blog posts. (Curata)

• Types of content used in social media marketing include visual assets (85 percent), up from 74 percent in 2016. In second place was blogging (66 percent). Live video (such as Facebook Live and Periscope) is used by 28 percent of marketers (up from 14 percent in 2016). Podcasting is only used by 8 percent of marketers and represents an opportunity. (Social Media Examiner)
• B2B marketers are much more likely to use blogging (75 percent) when compared to B2C marketers (61 percent). B2C marketers are more likely to use live video (30 percent) compared to B2B marketers (24 percent). (Social Media Examiner)

• The most important content for marketers is (only one choice allowed): visual images (41 percent) up from 37 percent in 2016, surpassing blogging for the first time. Blogging dropped from 38 percent in 2016 to 32 percent in 2017. (Social Media Examiner)
• Blogging is more important for B2B marketers (43 percent say it’s the most important) than B2C marketers, 26 percent of whom claim it’s most important. B2C marketers place more importance on visual content (45 percent say it’s the most important) than B2B marketers (32 percent). (Social Media Examiner)

Content Curation

• Eighty two percent of marketers curate content. (IMN Inc.)

• Sixteen percent of marketers curate for their audience every day. Meanwhile 48 percent curate from third party sources at least once a week. (Curata)

• Eighty three percent of marketers curate/share content with their customers and/or prospects from third party sources such as blogs, social media, industry publications or news sites. (Curata)

• Over 50 percent of marketers that curate content say it has increased their brand visibility, thought leadership, SEO, web traffic and buyer engagement. (Curata)

• Forty one percent of marketers that curate content indicate it has increased the number and/or quality of their sales-ready leads. (Curata)

Outsourcing

• Marketers outsource 18 percent of their content, with the remaining content being created in-house, curated, or syndicated. (Curata)

• Twenty five percent of marketers don’t outsource any content creation. (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• About two thirds of marketers outsource less than one third of their content creation (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• The top two most outsourced content marketing activities are writing (44 percent) and design (41 percent). (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• Business bloggers outsource 14 percent of their blog posts. The best practitioners outsource 24 percent. (Curata)

• Fifty seven percent of business bloggers’ outsourced blog posts originate from non-paid contributed or guest posts. (Curata)

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Content Promotion

• B2B content marketing social media platform usage: LinkedIn (94 percent); Twitter (87 percent); Facebook (84 percent); YouTube (74 percent); Google+ (62 percent); SlideShare (37 percent). (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)

• The top five most effective social media platforms to deliver content and engage audiences: LinkedIn (82 percent effective); Twitter (66 percent effective); YouTube (64 percent effective); Facebook (41 percent effective); SlideShare (38 percent effective). (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• Top three paid advertising methods used by B2B marketers to promote/distribute content: Search Engine Marketing (66 percent); print or other offline promotion (57 percent); traditional online banner ads (55 percent). (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)

• Twenty one percent of all business bloggers send posts through a newsletter to their subscriber base at least weekly; 39 percent of best practitioners do this weekly. (Curata)

• Have marketers integrated their social media and traditional marketing activities? Strongly Agree (27%); Agree (54%); Uncertain (10%); Disagree (7%); Strongly Disagree (2%). (Social Media Examiner)

• Weekly time commitment for social media marketing in hours: 0 (3 percent); 1 to 5 (33 percent); 6 to 10 (23 percent); 11 to 15 (11 percent); 16 to 20 (10 percent); 21+ (20 percent). (Social Media Examiner)

• Over 81 percent of marketers found that increased traffic occurred with as little as six hours per week invested in social media marketing. (Social Media Examiner)

• Which form of paid social media are marketers regularly using? Facebook Ads (84 percent); Google Ads (41 percent); LinkedIn Ads (18 percent); Twitter Ads (17 percent); YouTube Ads (12 percent); Promoted Blog Posts (7 percent). (Social Media Examiner)

• LinkedIn generates more leads for B2B companies than Facebook, Twitter or blogs individually. (Inside View)

• Have marketers integrated their social media and traditional marketing activities? Strongly agree (24 percent); agree (60 percent); uncertain (9 percent); disagree (6 percent); strongly disagree (2 percent). (Social Media Examiner)

• Top five social media platforms most used by B2B : LinkedIn (94 percent); Twitter (87 percent); YouTube (74 percent); Google+ (62 percent); SlideShare (37 percent) (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)

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Content Marketing Impact

• Seventy four percent of companies indicate that content marketing is increasing their marketing teams’ lead quality and quantity. (Curata)

• Thirty six percent of companies with a documented content strategy indicate their content marketing is “very effective” or “extremely effective.” (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)

• Seventy seven percent of all companies rate their social media marketing as successful at achieving the most important objectives set for it to some extent. (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• The greatest impact today’s business bloggers have on their organization are: thought leadership, SEO, and brand visibility and buzz. (Curata)

• Fifty five percent of business bloggers are getting five percent or more of their corporate web site’s traffic from their blog. (Curata)

• Eighty seven percent of B2B marketers surveyed by Forrester say they struggle to produce content that truly engages their buyers. (Forrester)

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Content Marketing Metrics

Top Content Marketing Metrics

• The top five content marketing metrics are: web traffic/visits (63 percent); views/downloads (59 percent); lead quantity (42 percent); lead quality (39 percent); social media sharing (36 percent). (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• Only 30 percent of leading marketers feel they are effective at measuring content marketing’s impact on the bottom of the funnel. (Curata)

• Metrics for B2B content marketing success: sales lead quality (87 percent); sales (84 percent); high conversion rates (82 percent); sales lead quantity (71 percent); website traffic (71 percent); brand lift (69 percent); SEO ranking (87 percent) (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)

• Content marketing metrics routinely tracked by organizations: Views (55 percent); leads (48 percent); likes, +1’s, tweets, shares (45 percent); downloads (41 percent); conversion rate (40 percent). (MarketingSherpa)

• The top three metrics used by business bloggers today include: page views, shares or likes, and time spent on site. The best practitioners are leading the charge to identify their blog’s impact on the sales pipeline. (Curata)

• Top three B2B goals of content marketing: Lead generation (85 percent); sales (84 percent); lead nurturing (78 percent). (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)

Content Marketing Measurement Success

• Only eight percent of marketers consider themselves “very successful” or “extremely successful” at tracking content marketing ROI. (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• Forty five percent of content marketers rate interactive content as “extremely effective” or “very effective”. (Content Marketing Institute)

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Content Marketing Technology

• Fifty six percent of marketers use content marketing-specific software to manage their content workflow and distribution. (Curata)

• Seventy percent of content marketing leaders are increasing investment in marketing technology. (Curata)

• Sixty nine percent of companies use an editorial calendar for content marketing. (Curata)

• Over 100 content marketing vendors have been placed in 15+ categories in this Content Marketing Tools Map.

• Top five areas of technology investment by marketers: social marketing, digital commerce, marketing analytics, customer experience and advertising operations. (Gartner)

• Thirty three percent of marketing budgets go to technology, with 28 percent of that spent on infrastructure. (Gartner)

• Forty percent of companies have either “moderately” or “fully” integrated their marketing and sales automation systems. (Curata)

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Vertical-Specific Data

Automotive Industry

• Forty six percent of auto marketers have a formal content marketing program in place, compared to 33 percent of overall respondents. (IMN Inc.)

• Almost 70 percent allot less than 10 percent of their marketing budgets to content marketing efforts, versus 38 percent overall. Twenty five percent acknowledge they don’t set aside enough budget to those efforts. (IMN Inc.)

Banking and Financial Services

• Forty five percent report content marketing efforts are done on an ad-hoc basis, compared with 30 percent of overall respondents. (IMN Inc.)

• Fifty percent of banking and financial services marketers have not even thought about using content across channels, versus seven percent of overall respondents. (IMN Inc.)

• Fifty five percent of banking and financial services marketers allocate less than 10 percent of their marketing budgets to content marketing efforts. However, 45 percent say they would increase budgets if funds were available. (IMN Inc.)

• Ninety one percent of banking and financial services marketers curate content, compared to 82 percent overall. (IMN Inc.)

• More than half of banking and financial services marketers worry about trademark, copyright and citation issues. (IMN Inc.)

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Had Your Fill of Content Marketing Statistics Yet?

For an in-depth look at more useful content marketing numbers, download Curata’s Comprehensive Guide to Content Marketing Analytics and Metrics.

To figure out which tools fit your needs best, we put together the following list of content promotion tools.

This list includes social media networks, social media management tools, paid content promotion tools, distribution tools and advocacy tools. Please note this list is not comprehensive and there are other ways to promote content such as emails and newsletters. For a look at the entire ecosystem, see our complete content marketing tools map.

Content Promotion Tools

Social Networks

Use these networks to build followings, reach out to influencers, and even pay for sponsored posts and customized reach. For expert tips on using social media, see Neal Schaffer’s guest post: 11 Effective Ways to Use Social Media to Promote Your Content.

Twitter – Boasts 328 million monthly active users as of Q1 2017. Users can post messages of up to 140 characters, share photos and videos, create custom lists, send direct messages, and more. Promote content on Twitter organically, with Twitter cards, or paid promotions.

Facebook – The social media giant has two billion monthly active users as of June 2017. It lets users connect with friends, share links, photos, videos, and events, join groups, and more. There are options for promoting content organically and through paid promotions.

Pinterest – Share your images and videos on customizable boards and “repin” others’ images. Pinterest has 175 million monthly users as of Q1 2017.

LinkedIn – A business-focused online network. Users can share links, add connections, join groups, write recommendations, and search for connections by company, industry, skills, and more. Marketers can share content through company updates, sponsored updates and LinkedIn Pulse posts.

Google+ – Google’s social network. Set up “Hangouts” using video chat, and create “Circles” of people for organizing contacts and targeting messaging.

Offerpop – A social media platform for businesses to recruit, engage, and convert customers.

SlideShare – Upload and share slide presentations, gain insight into who’s viewing your presentations, collect business leads, and more.

StumbleUpon – A discovery engine for finding and recommending web content. Allows users to discover and rate web pages, photos, and videos personalized to their tastes using peer-sourcing and social-networking principles.

Flipboard – Curate articles, videos, pictures and more. Save them into a glossy, shareable digital magazine format.

Social Media Management Tools

These tools help you organize your online presence. Many allow you to post to several social networks. They also typically analyze your posts’ performance through a dashboard, showing which content performs best on which platform.

Sprinklr – Large global companies use this social media management system. Engage with customers, connect with CRM systems, build custom widgets, publish and manage content, and more.

Tweetdeck – Track brand mentions and hashtags, manage multiple Twitter accounts, and schedule Tweets, all in a single Twitter platform.

Hootsuite – Administer multiple social media accounts. Analyze social media traffic, track brand mentions, collaborate with other team members, and schedule messages and tweets.

Buffer – Add articles, photos, or video. Buffer automatically posts content to your social media accounts throughout the day.

Traackr – Discover influencers, nurture relationships with them, and demonstrate the impact of these relationships.

Sprout Social – Allows multiple users to schedule, publish, and analyze social media posts across several platforms.

Social Bro – Follow trends on Twitter and capitalize on them with this fully functioning Twitter listening and publishing tool.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud – Find and analyze what’s being said about your brand and your competitors’ brands. Find out what customers want, which content is working, and how to keep up with the conversation.

Social Mention – A social search engine that searches for and analyzes real-time aggregated content across 100+ social media platforms.

Bottlenose – Track what’s trending in your industry. Get warnings about breaking news stories using advanced topic discovery and Natural Language Processing (NLP).

Spredfast – Company-wide social media collaboration and monitoring, and social analysis reports.

Meltwater Buzz – A social media marketing SaaS platform. Combines monitoring and analytics with engagement to give you a complete lifecycle approach to social media community management.

Marketwired Resonate – Connect to your industry marketplace in real time through social media and traditional distribution.

CisionPoint – PR software that helps you reach your audiences and manage campaigns across traditional, digital and social media.

GetStacker – Receive all social media mentions in a single inbox. Schedule messages across platforms, and run reports on social media content.

ViralHeat – Publish, analyze and run reports about social media posts via multiple networks.

Followerwonk – Discover metrics such as who your Twitter followers are, where they are, when they tweet, and easily share your reports with the world.

Content Marketer – Three products to help you find and contact influencers via email and Twitter. Email templates feature tracking, scheduling, and follow up sequences.

Narrow – Build a targeted Twitter following by interacting with the users most likely to be interested in your company’s offerings.

Image Sharer – Create viral traffic by allowing your readers to automatically share images on your site and link back to you.

Jing – Capture basic video, animation, and still images from your computer screen, and share them on the Web.

Meet Edgar – A social media scheduling tool. Catalog your updates in a library that builds over time and automatically refreshes.

Oktopost – A B2B social media management platform. For managing, measuring, and amplifying your social media marketing.

Viraltag – Easily pull visual content from websites, Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr, Dropbox, RSS Feeds. One click scheduling for all social networks, and measure results from each channel.

DrumUp – Content discovery and social sharing. DrumUp uses data mining and NLP algorithms to discover, analyze and rank content based on relevance to the user’s interests.

Paid Promotion Tools (aka Native Advertising)

Use these content promotion tools to advertise content on websites across the Internet.

ContentGain – This widget places links to third-party content on other websites to boost distribution. The original content publisher shares ad revenue with the website sharing the content.

OneSpot – This tool automatically turns owned or earned content into optimized ads. It distributes the content across OneSpot’s ad inventory, retargets users, and monitors results.

Gravity – Using algorithms based on users’ reading and sharing history, Gravity enables websites to deliver personalized recommendations.

Outbrain – This content discovery tool recommends your content to readers of other premium publishers. It offers a personalized reader experience while exposing your content to engaged readers.

Vocus – Scans for prospects looking for companies like yours, suggests relevant social conversations, and distributes your press for traffic and search.

Taboola – Takes your content and places it on publishing websites, targeting it towards your selected audience.

nRelate – This platform helps content developers and publishers find an easier path to your target audience. Grows your reader-base from your site or elsewhere on the web.

Content Blvd – Connect with brands and publishers to create relevant and rewarding product placements.

Vibrant Media – This native advertising tool places content ads within other forms of editorial content. All triggers are user-initiated.

Disqus – Allows bloggers and website publishers to engage readers with an industry-leading comments section.

ContentClick – A native ad delivery system. Integrates content into thousands of blogs and websites.

Zemanta – Partners with many native ad networks such as Outbrain and nRelate.

Adblade – Target content with advertisement opportunities on over 100 branded content sites.

Mylikes – Places content on various websites and allows you to control your daily budget and bidding strategy.

PubExchange – Helps create partnerships between content creators. Partners then share ads for each other’s content on their blogs and other websites.

Resonance – A content retargeting tool for keeping your message in front of people who visit your website. Tracks the content they view and makes them aware of the next most relevant piece.

Zemanta – Programmatically buy native content ads on almost all native ad platforms. Target your audience with the reach and frequency to meet your marketing goals.

Distribution Tools

Content promotion to these networks will expand your reach.

Brightcove – This cloud content services provider offers an online video platform. Add custom video players to websites, social media profiles, and mobile destinations.

PR Newswire – Distribute news releases to a global media database of more than 700,000 journalists and blogger contacts. Monitor traditional and social media, and engage in real time conversations with journalists, bloggers, and other influencers.

Cadence9 – A unified solution for managing content marketing. Plan content using an editorial calendar, assign tasks to team members, administer content creation and publishing workflow, and more.

Dynamic Signal – Cloud-based promotional tool for content marketers. Distributes to multiple channels and alerts marketing and sales teams when content is published. Leads are integrated into Salesforce and marketing automation platforms.

JustReachOut – Find the right journalists and bloggers to pitch by searching keywords, competitors, niches, publications, and more.

Advocacy Tools

One of the most powerful forms of content promotion could be inside your own company. Use these tools to enable your employees—and in some cases your customers—to share content across their own social media profiles.

GaggleAMP – Amplify social media efforts. This tool allows you to create “gaggles” of people who can share company social media updates to their followers.

SocialChorus – Amplify social media posts and create brand ambassadors out of employees, customers, and partners.

Amplifinity – Creates advocacy programs across various mediums, including email, direct mail, and social media.

EveryoneSocial – Employees and customers can build their own social profiles to share your company’s created and curated content.

SoAmpli – Encourage employees to become brand advocates. Helps you feed them content and reward them accordingly.

Influitive – Create an army of advocates with Influitive. Fosters a community of customers to share your content across various platforms.

SocialLook – Increase content traffic and conversion rates by sending messages through employees’ social media presence.

Smarp – Empower employees to discover and share content such as blogs, events, and open positions to social media networks. Employees can measure the impact their content has on their network.

Content Promotion Tools are Crucial for Content Marketing

Do you use a tool for content promotion we haven’t mentioned here? Let us know in the comments below. If you’re interested in furthering your content marketing career as much as your content, download Curata and LinkedIn’s joint eBook: The Ultimate Guide to a Content Marketing Career.

Agencies can help focus your efforts, outsource work, and assist with content strategy, content writing, SEO, and other facets of your content marketing supply chain. To find a content marketing agency near you, Curata compiled this list of the top agencies in America, as well as some of the top agencies in the world. The interactive map below is zoomable; click here for a full page view.

Map created by Column Five.

To provide a feel for how these agencies can meet your specific needs, we’ve also listed a few services they provide below, along with a small sampling of their client base.

Please note this list is not comprehensive and does not include traditional PR or advertising agencies, which can also offer content marketing services. It exclusively features agencies that specialize in content marketing. This map initially only included agencies within the continental U.S.; we have now expanded it to include some of the top agencies outside the U.S., many of which have U.S. offices. It has been updated as of June 2017 with agencies in Utah, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and more.

Arizona

iAcquire
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Services: Market Research, Strategic Planning, Competitive Analysis, Content Strategy, Organic Search, Social Media
Examples of clients: Kissmetrics, Stuntdubl, Moz

Vertical Measures
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Services: Content Marketing, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Local Search Marketing, Link Earning
Examples of clients: Home Depot, Ryland Homes, Mobile Mini

Ethology
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Services: Content Strategy, Audience Research, Mobile Experience, Social Media
Examples of clients: NextCare Urgent Care, Infusion Soft, LifeLock

California

Column Five
Location: Irvine, CA
Services: Content Strategy, Content Development, Content Distribution
Examples of clients: Microsoft, Intuit, Linkedin, World Bank Group, TED

Freshwire
Location: Marina del Rey, CA
Services: Storytelling Workshop, Digital Content & Social Strategy
Examples of clients: Vevo, K-Swiss, Esurance

BrandGrew Strategies
Location: Orange County, CA
Services: Business Plan Development, Content Marketing, Social Media, SEO, Creative Design, CRM
Examples of clients: ASI Controls, AHR Expo, Diversified Automation

Marketing Interactions
Location: Palm Desert, CA
Services: Buyer Personas, Digital Content Strategy, Coaching for Content Performance, Sales Enablement
Examples of clients: Adobe, Cisco, Logicworks

ClickSpring
Location: Roseville, CA
Services: Content Marketing, Digital Advertising, Commerce Solutions, Branding & Creative
Examples of clients: Pappas Investments, Laguna Gateway, Health & Harmony

Siege Media
Location: San Diego, CA
Services: SEO Consulting, Content Promotion, Content Creation, Content Strategy
Examples of clients: TripAdvisor, Zillow, Shutterfly

Demand Media
Location: Santa Monica, CA
Services: Content Creation, Content Optimization, Consultative Services
Examples of clients: Experian, Samsung, L’Oreal

Eastwick Communications
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Services: Digital Media and Strategy, Content Marketing, Analyst Relations
Examples of clients: Moxie, Lynda.com, Salesforce

Directive Consulting 
Location: Los Angeles, CA and Orange County, CA
Services: SEO, PPC, and Content Marketing
Examples of clients: Allstate, UE, Main Street Hub, ClutchColorado

Scripted
Location: San Francisco, CA
Services: Blog Posts, Social Content, Website Content, Press Releases, Video Scripts, Product Descriptions, Email Newsletters
Examples of clients: Eventbrite, Adidas, L’oreal, Intuit

Colorado

Burns Marketing
Location: Johnstown, CO
Services: Brand Development, Web Development, Creative Services, Event Management, Digital Marketing
Examples of clients: ESA, HP, Datalink

Type A Communications
Location: Parker, CO
Services: B2B Marketing, Content Strategy, Brand Storytelling
Examples of clients: American Express, HP, VMware

Connecticut

Content Boost
Location: Norwalk, CT
Services: Custom Content Publishing, White Paper Development, Video Production, Social Media Management
Examples of clients: Infocision, Vocalcom, Tadiran Telecom Inc.

Digital Gravity Media
Location: Stamford, CT
Services: SEO, Web Design, Social Media Management, Video Marketing, PPC Advertising
Examples of clients: Pimpenella Construction, KP Events Group, Historic Districts Council

Moveable Media
Location: Stamford, CT
Services: Influencer Marketing, Content Marketing
Examples of clients: MasterCard, P&G, Williams Sonoma, Intel, General Mills

Florida

Well Planned Web
Location: Tampa, FL
Services: Content Strategy, Content Creation, Content Marketing, Content Metrics
Examples of clients: Kodak, American Cancer Society, The New York Times

Wax
Location: Miami, FL
Services: Market Research, Content Marketing & Custom Publishing, Website Design & Development, Strategic Planning, Social Media Strategy, Web Analytics
Examples of clients: BlueCross/BlueShield, Humana Inc., RUMC

SPROUT Content
Location: Pensacola, FL
Services: Inbound Marketing, Attract Qualified Visitors, Convert Leads, Create Long-Term Relationships
Examples of clients: The New York Times, Expo Logic, Apet Incorporated

TechShepherd
Location: Boca Raton, FL
Services: Social Media, Content Writing, Graphic Design, Web Design, Content Strategy
Examples of clients: Quality Deployment, Unique HR, Newslab

Fractl
Location: Delray Beach, FL
Services: Digital Marketing Strategy, Content Marketing Strategy, Digital Public Relations & Influencer Marketing
Examples of clients: eBay, DIRECTV, Autonation, Eventbrite, Wayfair.ca

Georgia

Huge
Location: Atlanta, GA
Services: Business Strategy, Branding, User Experience Design, Content, Social, Search, CRM, Research
Examples of clients: Nike, Lexus, Crate and Barrel

Mariposa Interactive
Location: Claxton, GA
Services: Content Marketing, Social Media, Analytics, Marketing Automation
Examples of clients: Facebook, Cisco, Mozilla

Content Science
Location: Atlanta, GA
Services: Consulting, Content Training, Research, Executive Recruiting
Examples of clients: American Cancer Society, Coca-Cola, John Wiley & Sons

Endurance Marketing
Location: Atlanta, GA
Services: Content Marketing Strategy, Content Creation, Content Promotion, Social Media Strategy, Social Media Management
Examples of clients: Meda Pharmaceuticals, Sage, Kroger

Illinois

ComBlu
Location: Chicago, IL
Services: Content Strategy, Community Building, Thought Leadership
Examples of clients: Dell, Allstate, 3M

Imagination
Location: Chicago, IL
Services: Content Strategy, Listening, Competitive Research, Planning, Execution
Examples of clients: Wells Fargo, Walgreens, Box Tops for Education

Indiana

Convince and Convert
Location: Bloomington, IN
Services: Content Marketing, Social Media
Examples of clients: Cabela’s, United Nations, Allstate

Relevance
Location: Indianapolis, IN
Services: Content Strategy, SEO, Digital PR, Paid Media, Paid Search, Analytics
Examples of clients: GardaWorld, Teradata, Rackspace

Iowa

Lexicon Content Marketing
Location: Iowa
Services: Graphic Design, Editorial Content, Marketing Strategy, Web Design, Photography
Examples of clients: Chrysalis, UConn, Kreg Tool Book

Louisiana

Hop Online
Location: New Orleans, LA
Services: Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Conversion Rate Optimization
Examples of clients: Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Conversion Rate Optimization

Zehnder Communications
Location: New Orleans, LA
Services: Content Creation, Social Media, PR, Market Research, Advertising
Examples of clients: Burger King, Hyatt Regency, Farmers Insurance

Maine

Eucalypt
Location: Scarborough, ME
Services: Strategic Consulting Services, Content Development & Promotion
Examples of clients: LinkedIn, Edcast, DoubleDutch

Massachusetts

King Fish
Location: Beverly, MA
Services: Brand Development, Content Development, Content Publishing, Social Media, Mobile Marketing, Corporate Events, Market Research & Analytics
Examples of clients: Bank of America, Carrabba’s, Zappos

Allen & Gerritsen
Location: Boston, MA
Services: Strategy, Creative, Branded Entertainment, Brand Experience
Examples of clients: Boston Celtics, Campbell’s, City Year

Avitage
Location: Boston, MA
Services: Content Operations Management & Strategy Services
Examples of clients: HP, Forrester, SAP

Brafton
Location: Boston, MA
Services: Content Marketing, Content Writing, Video, Graphics, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Content Analytics
Examples of clients: MobileCause, Pinnacle, Appian

Captains of Industry
Location: Boston, MA
Services: Content Strategy, Content Creation, Social Media Support, Audience Insights
Examples of clients: Akamai Technology, First Wind, Whatman

DigitasLBi
Location: Boston, MA
Services: Content Strategy, User Experience, Branded Content, Affiliate Marketing, SEO, Social Media, Analytics, PPC
Examples of clients: Sony, American Express, Coca Cola

Minnesota

Brandpoint
Location: Hopkins, MN
Services: Content Strategy, SEO Strategy, Social Media Strategy, PPC Strategy and Services
Examples of clients: Plow and Hearth, Mobstac, Service Brands

Ciceron
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Services: Digital Strategy, Brand and UX Design, Digital Marketing, Brand Advocacy
Examples of clients: 3M, General Mills, United

MSP Communications
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Services: Brand Journalism, Creative Content Packaging, Digital Strategy, Social Media, Lead Generation, Analytics & Insights
Examples of clients: 3M, Delta, IBM

TopRank Online Marketing
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Services: Content Marketing, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Search and Social Ads, Website Analytics & Conversion Optimization
Examples of clients: LinkedIn, Dell, McKesson

Missouri

Influence & Co.
Location: Columbia, MO
Services: Executive Branding, Content Marketing Strategy, Distribution
Examples of clients: Dell, American Airlines, Office Depot

New York

Story Worldwide
Location: New York, NY
Services: Integrated Campaigns, Social Media, Content Marketing
Examples of clients: Lexus, Unilever, Estee Lauder

Campfire
Location: New York, NY
Services: Content Marketing, Social Storytelling
Examples of clients: Snapple.com, American Horror Story, Healthy Look

Meredith Xcelerated Marketing
Location: New York, NY
Services: Content Strategy, SEO, Mobile Marketing, Content Strategy, Social Media
Examples of clients: Acura, Kraft Foods, Kia

Group SJR
Location: New York, NY
Services: Middleweight Content
Examples of clients: The Home Depot, General Electric, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Good2bSocial
Location: New York, NY
Services: Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, SEO (specifically for law firms & legal vendors)
Examples of clients: LexisNexis, Pernod Ricard USA, Practising Law Institute

Inbound ContentWorks
Location: New York, NY
Services: Content Strategy, Content Creation, SEO, Brainstorming, Editing, Distribution, Publishing, Analytics
Examples of clients: Aol, UserTesting, Travel Channel

Time Inc. Content Solutions
Location: New York, NY
Services: Native Advertising, Sponsored Content, Infographics, White Papers,
Examples of clients: DirectTV, Planters, Tide

McMURRY/TMG
Location: New York, NY
Services: Content Strategy, Print & Digital Publishing, Digital Design & Development, Interactive Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Search Marketing, Video
Examples of clients: The Ritz-Carlton, WebMD, CBS Television

Mirrorball
Location: New York, NY
Services: Content Development & Production, Content Distribution & Promotion, Social Media & Digital
Examples of clients: Nestle, Harley-Davidson, L’Oreal

Razorfish
Location: New York, NY
Services: Brand Marketing & Storytelling, Experience Design, Digital Performance Media, Digital Strategy & Innovation
Examples of clients: Kellogg, Nike, Audi

North Carolina

Pace
Location: Greensboro, NC
Services: Content Strategy, Editorial Planning, Content Management, Content Creation, Channel Creation
Examples of clients: Verizon, Four Seasons, AAA

Centerline Digital
Location: Raleigh, NC
Services: Content Marketing, Content Strategy, Content Creation, Brand Storytelling, Content Distribution and Promotion
Examples of clients: IBM, GE, Quintiles, SAS, Lowe’s Home Improvement

Ohio

Marcus Thomas
Location: Cleveland, OH
Services: Ideation & Creative Services, Search Marketing, Digital Development, Content Marketing, Digital Strategy, Analytics & Performance Optimization
Examples of clients: Krylon, Akron Children’s Hospital, Dutch Boy

Fathom
Location: Valley View, OH
Services: Content Marketing, Digital Advertising, SEO, Analytics, Social Media, Email & Marketing Automation
Examples of clients: Bissell, McGraw-Hill, The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Core Element
Location: Cleveland, OH
Services: Marketing Planning, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, SEO, Analytics & Metrics (specializing in manufacturing)
Examples of clients: Lincoln Electric, Cleveland City Forge, Formtek

Oregon

Babcock & Jenkins
Location: Portland, OR
Services: Brand Strategy, Demand Generation, Content & Social Marketing, Marketing Automation, Data & Analytics, Sales Enablement
Examples of clients: LifeLock, Xerox, Google

Pennsylvania

Marketing Insider Group
Location: West Chester, PA
Services: Content Marketing Strategy, Business Case Development, Content Audits, Personal Branding/Executive Coaching, Optimization & Testing, Editorial & Writing Services
Examples of clients: Blue Cross Blue Shield, Verizon, IBM, Pfizer, SAP, Fidelity, Adidas

DaBrian Marketing
Location: Reading, PA
Services: Digital Branding, SEO, Content Marketing, Social Media, PPC Advertising, Web Analytics, Web Design
Examples of clients: Deutsche Bank, Merk, Comcast

South Carolina

10x Digital
Location: Greenville, SC
Services: Content Marketing, Web/Digital, PR, Marketing, Reputation Analysis
Examples of clients: The Balance Group, FOB Student Housing, Orthopaedic Associates

Enveritas Group
Location: Greenville, SC
Services: Content Marketing, Content Creation, Content Localization, Content Management
Examples of clients: Nintendo, Verizon, Holiday Inn

Texas

13th Floor Studios
Location: San Antonio, TX
Services: Content Marketing, Digital Content Production, Long Format Content
Examples of clients: Jeep, Sprint, P&G

Utah

97th Floor
Location: Lehi, Utah
Services: SEO, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Analytics, Reputation Management, PPC
Examples of clients: Dell, ESPN, Adobe

Avalaunch Media
Location: Lehi, UT
Services: Infographics, eBooks and White Papers, Content Marketing, SEO, PPC, Web Design, Video and Motion Graphics
Examples of clients: Expedia, Home Depot, Intel

Washington

Waggener Edstrom Communications
Location: Bellevue, WA
Services: Audience Discovery, Strategy, Content Marketing, Measurement & Optimization
Examples of clients: Skype, Microsoft, Volvo

Content Harmony
Location: Seattle, WA
Services: Content Marketing Strategy, Content Creation, Content Promotion, SEO, Content Management, Analytics Consulting, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Content Marketing Training
Examples of clients: Avvo, MaxCDN, Versitas, Doctor on Demand

Heinz Marketing
Location: Redmond, WA
Services: Demand Generation, Pipeline Management, Sales Enablement, Content Strategy
Examples of clients: Morgan Stanley, SmartSheet, Socrata

Yesler
Location: Seattle, WA
Services: Research & Strategy, Content Marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales Enablement, Customer Engagement, Marketing Analytics
Examples of clients: Amazon, Microsoft, Intel

Global Content Marketing Agencies

King Content
Location: Sydney, Australia
Services: Content marketing, Content Strategy, Content Amplification and Creation, Content Performance and Measurement; Social Media Services, Native Advertising, Training and Events
Examples of clients: Thomson Reuters, Lenovo

Head Office NL
Location: Hoofddorp, Netherlands
Services: Content, Platform Development, Planning & Distribution, Social Media, Online Monitoring and Community Management, Monitoring & Insights
Examples of clients: Canon, Mercedes-Benz, Heineken, KLP, Toyota

Velocity Partners
Location: Surrey, England
Services: Content Marketing, Marketing Positioning & Strategy, Branding, Design & Digital, Demand Generation
Examples of clients: Sales Force, Kimberly-Clark, Sprint Business

C3 Creative Code and Content GmbH
Location: Berlin, Germany
Services: Content Marketing, Strategy Development, Social Marketing, Content Platforms, Concept, UX Design, Big Data, ECommerce,
Examples of clients: Deutsche Telekom, Porsche, Volkswagen, Amway, Hermes

Spoon
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Services: Content Strategies, Native Advertising, Social Media, TV, Websites, Mobile Apps
Examples of clients: Electrolux, Kia, Volvo, Interflora, Tetra Pak

Lush Digital
Location: Perth, Australia
Services: Content Marketing, Video Production, Social Media Marketing,
Examples of clients: Baileys, Ronald McDonald House

256 Media
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Services: Strategy, Magazines, Digital Publications, Website Audits, Infographics, Social Media
Examples of clients: Symantec, House & Home

New Content
Location: Sao Paulo, Brazil
Services: Content Strategy, Content Management, Content Creation, Content Distribution, Video Production
Examples of clients: Google, Nestle, Unilever, Volkswagen

SPH Magazines
Location: Singapore
Services: Online Media Planning, Search Engine Marketing and Optimization, Web Analytics Consultancy, Landing Page Optimization
Examples of clients: 3M, Accenture, DKNY, Nokia, Mazda

Top Lead
Location: Kiev, Ukraine
Services: Infographics, Presentations, Motion Graphics, Analytical Articles/Blogs
Examples of Clients: Baker Tilly, Credit Agricole

grist
Location: London, UK
Services: Content marketing strategy, Content Creation, Content Distribution, Digital Services
Examples of clients: Accenture, AIG, BDO, Fidelity, KPMG,

Time to Find a Great Content Marketing Agency

Have a favorite content marketing agency that we didn’t mention? Let us know in the comments below!

If you’re considering a content marketing agency, you’re likely at the point where you need a content marketing platform (CMP). Figure out the right questions to ask €”to pick the best CMP for your organization with The Complete Guide: How to Choose a Content Marketing Platform Vendor.

Those responsible for content within an organization have to plan out content for the upcoming weeks, months and year. This helps build alignment between teams and also keep writers accountable for their work. According to Curata research, 90 percent of marketers now use an editorial calendar.

For top-of-class calendar functionality, workflow, and analytics, the Curata CMP content marketing platform is one of several options available on the market. There are also several excellent free templates available—included below.

The following table lists the creator of the template, the format (Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, WordPress plugin or PDF) and its accessibility (gated or un-gated). This will help you choose a template based on your preferences.

A more detailed description of each template and a glimpse of what each one looks like follows. Cross-reference with The 12 Must-Have Fields for a Content Calendar to ensure your template has all the essential attributes.

Do you use a template that we haven’t listed here? Let us know in the comments below!

Content Marketing Editorial Calendar Templates

Excel Spreadsheets

Madison Miles Media

Download here
Accessibility: Gated

Keep assignments organized with this excel template. Align content with keywords and audience segments, connect content to the buyer’s journey, and track keyword usage.

Curata

Download here
Accessibility: Gated

This template features 12 essential fields for creating an editorial calendar. (Learn more about the importance of these fields in this step-by-step process.) Detailed instructions, steps, and suggested meta tags are provided for each field, as well as links to additional resources.

Hubspot

Download here
Accessibility: Gated

This template lists a week’s content on each tab, allowing plenty of room for details such as keywords, personas, and calls-to-action.

Convince & Convert

Download here 
Accessibility: Ungated

Look at the year ahead with this template. It lets you see several months at once, along with a tab called “Content Repository” to dump ideas in.

Pam Moore

Download here
Accessibility: Gated

This template separates each month into a different tab, along with a tab for “Content Inventory” to keep track of published pieces.

Bob Angus

Download here
Accessibility: Ungated

A standard calendar that includes a high-level road map to view large events throughout the year such as product launches and conferences.

VerticalMeasures

Download here
Accessibility: Ungated

This color-coded template offers both a month-to-month view and an entire year overview.

Lee Odden

Download here
Accessibility: Ungated

This spreadsheet simply lists each piece of content in chronological order. It suggests filling in several categories, such as audience, media, keywords, and tags.

Shareaholic

Download here
Accessibility: Gated

This week-by-week spreadsheet also includes a tab to track URLs of content to enable campaign tracking.

myMarketingCafe

Download here
Accessibility: Ungated

This basic template also comes with a small business marketing guide, including a general marketing calendar.

Web. Search. Social.

Download here
Accessibility: Gated

This spreadsheet allows you to categorize content in a number of ways, including keywords, status, topic, talking point, and due date.

Content Marketing Institute

Download here
Accessibility: Ungated

CMI’s template includes a general marketing calendar, an editorial calendar with a week-by-week view, and a spreadsheet to store all blog post ideas.

Bluewire Media

Download here
Accessibility: Gated

This template provides a color-coded key to categorize pieces of content by stage, such as pending, planned, or published.

98toGo

Download here
Accessibility: Gated

In addition to a basic editorial  calendar, you can track assets by type—such as blog post or eBook—and by buying-cycle stage.

Brett Snyder

Download here
Accessibility: Ungated

This template is chock-full of examples. It provides plenty of space for detailed responses in many categories such as subject, focus keywords, key elements, and sources.

Google Sheets

Webpage FX

Download here
Accessibility: Ungated

A robust template that not only tracks pieces of content week by week, but also gives space for ideas and downloadable assets.

Crackerjack Marketing

Download here
Accessibility: Gated

Another option for marketers using Google Sheets, this template has a section specifically for measuring content performance.

WordPress Plugins

EditFlow

Download here
Accessibility: Ungated

If you’re a WordPress user, this is a great way to look at upcoming posts in a month-to-month view. It’s also highly adaptable—you can drag and drop unpublished pieces onto new dates and months.

Editorial Calendar

Download here
Accessibility: Ungated

Similar to EditFlow, this tool allows you to look ahead at all scheduled blog posts in WordPress and also quick-edit titles and times within the calendar.

PDFs

Roger Parker

Download here
Accessibility: Gated

Want to print out your calendar so you can scribble all over it? Download this template, which maps out an entire year.

CoSchedule

Download here
Accessibility: Gated

Another option for printing, this calendar also comes with an eBook detailing the benefits of using an editorial calendar.

One of these editorial calendar template options will suit the needs of most content marketers. Want a free editorial calendar template pre-loaded with 12 essential fields? Download Curata’s free template here.

What is Big Data?

First, some definitions. Big data involves computationally analyzing extremely large data sets to reveal patterns, trends, and associations; especially those relating to human behavior and interactions. It is used in everything from predicting stock performance to seasonal buying behavior to helping the NSA know whether your post about “blowing up the joint” refers to your bomb-making or DJing skills.

Every human who uses any form of digital communication generates data constantly, both about themselves and about humans in aggregate. Big data refers to the ability to find, sort, and make sense of this ocean of ones and zeroes. It encompasses structured, semi-structured, and unstructured information, both human-generated and from sensors, machines, and public records.

Structured data generally means information residing in a fixed field within a record or file, such as that found in spreadsheets and relational databases. Information that’s tagged to show some elements within the data, such as metadata in email or photos, is semi-structured data. Unstructured data meanwhile, includes content such as untagged text, images, audio, video, and so on.

Big data can also include demographic or psychographic information about consumers. Think product reviews and commentary, blogs, content on social media sites, and the digital exhaust streamed 24/7 from mobile devices, sensors, and technical devices.

Defining Artificial Intelligence

The definition of AI is more nebulous because what is considered AI is constantly changing. One way of thinking of AI is as intelligence exhibited by any device that perceives its environment and takes actions to maximize its chances of achieving a goal. Another instance is when a machine mimics “cognitive” functions such as “learning” and “problem solving”—also known as machine learning.

Capabilities currently classified as AI include understanding human speech, self-driving cars, and interpreting complex data. As the technology improves however, capabilities once defined as AI are removed from the definition. For instance, optical character recognition is no longer perceived as artificial intelligence, but as a routine technology. The same with GPS navigation systems.

Another way of thinking of AI is that it merely refers to algorithms we don’t fully understand yet.

The implications of this technology could feel as if we’re living in an anime cyber thriller, hurtling towards some utopian (or dystopian) future—the finale isn’t clear yet.

Applying Artificial Intelligence to Content Marketing

We’re barely at the beginning of applying the technologies of AI—such as natural language processing and machine learning, to content marketing. Artificial intelligence today has very narrow applicability. It is typically built to do one complex thing—usually a complex data-driven thing—more efficiently than a human can do it. Over the last two to three years, several technology startups launched that are purpose-built for individual content tasks. These companies are trying to apply AI capabilities to a task that’s very time-intensive for humans, to make it more efficient and effective.

AI technology is still raw, and arguably pretty stupid. “It’s basically no smarter than a preschooler in a lot of cases,” says Paul Roetzer, the Cleveland based founder of the Marketing AI Institute, a resource for those interested in applying AI to content marketing. “But it can be trained to do one thing exceptionally well, almost super-human, and that’s where a lot of the companies are focused.”

AI as it applies to content could involve any content-related task we do as marketers, predicts Roetzer. Whether finding keywords, picking blog post topics, determining what to share on social media, writing hard copy, creating landing pages, or writing headlines. Everything we do that requires us to manually create a strategy or plan, develop content, and promote it can be automated or enhanced with artificial intelligence.

It pays to be skeptical about anything touted as ‘AI’ however. Thirty years after the 80’s, AI is once again a buzzword. Many software tools that call themselves AI aren’t really. They’re more like 80’s expert systems that merely rely on hard coded rules.

Who’s Making it Happen?

The main software leaders in the AI field are the obvious players, such as IBM’s Watson, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft—all the big tech companies.

However, this field is young. Think Internet in the early 90’s young. There are few content AI or marketing AI platforms as yet. There are mainly tools that perform specific tasks in equally specific contexts. You currently need multiple different tools to build AI into a content strategy. One related challenge marketers will face, argues Roetzer, is that the majority of those tools won’t be independent companies within 18 months. The big companies are buying up promising AI upstarts because there is a lack of talent that can actually build AI solutions.

What About Purely Marketing Companies Developing AI?

San Francisco’s Salesforce has made massive investments, buying multiple AI companies for a cool couple of billion dollars. That technology was then built into Salesforce Einstein, which launched in September 2016. San Mateo-headquartered Marketo now has predictive content recommendations, although this technology seems to have been mainly from acquisitions.

The Marketo and Salesforce marketing automation platforms use lead scoring technology. It examines which content someone’s consumed, how much they’ve consumed, and their demographic and firmographic to give them a score. Based on this data it automatically sends them to sales, and starts sending them relevant content. It will then send them different content based on what they continue to consume.

“I don’t know if it’s quite intelligent though,” muses Curata CEO Pawan Deshpande (Curata is my employer). “Because it’s basically a hardcoded set of rules determined by the marketer. It’s not learning from past performance and evolving and adapting. Marketing automation doesn’t really have much in the way of machine learning in it at present—but it certainly could.”

Boston-based Curata has been around since 2007. It uses natural language processing and machine learning to power two software platforms. Curata CMP offers full funnel predictive content analytics and editorial calendaring. Curata CCS is a curation platform that discovers content, filters out noise, sanitizes text, extracts metadata, automatically summarizes, and makes it easy to review, curate, publish and promote content. It uses machine learning to self-optimize and learn user preferences to find better content.

Other marketing companies using AI in content tools include Manhattan-based opentopic, which has a personalization project called Sia built on Watson. Austin-based OneSpot uses image recognition and natural language processing to automatically tag and categorize content and images. It then uses machine learning to automatically surface relevant information to the right visitor on the right channel at the right time. Conversica is headquartered in California with offices in Missouri and Washington. It uses AI to automate the lead contact and qualification process, and identify which leads intend to purchase and are ready to buy.

Storytelling Machines

Natural language generation refers to a computer using data to produce natural language as a human would write it. Machines write 100 percent of Associated Press earnings reports, along with some of their basic sports news stories. Two major players in this area are Narrative Science, headquartered in Chicago, and North Carolina-based Automated Insights.

Persado has $66 million in funding and offices in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Rome, Athens, London, and Germany. Persado uses natural language processing and natural language generation to automatically create Facebook ads, landing page content, and email subject lines. They are unique in that they are in the creative realm of using machines to create content that isn’t data-driven.

There are dozens of other players in this field.

So What is Content Intelligence?

Content intelligence may draw on artificial intelligence and big data, but it is neither of those two things. It’s the systems and software that transforms data into actionable insights for content strategy and tactics. Content intelligence means having the full context of an individual piece of content. Not only that—but the whole corpus of content, to make better decisions about anything pertaining to the content in question.

Forrester analyst Ryan Skinner defines content intelligence as “technology that helps content understand itself—what it’s about, how it speaks, how effective it is at accomplishing certain goals, what emotions it calls to mind, etc.”

So what does having the full context of a piece of content mean? It’s understanding what the content is, what it’s related to, how it’s performed in the past, and how related content has performed in the past. This includes understanding how competitor content may have performed as part of the broader context it sits in. As well as other content it’s competing with in search engine optimization and search engine results pages.

Content intelligence means understanding everything there is to know about a piece of content. And to the extent that the past can help predict the future, using that comprehensive understanding to guide decision making for that piece of content. It doesn’t necessarily have to include the automation and execution of those decisions.

The Evolution of Car Navigations Systems

Once you have a content item’s full context, the next step is automation and execution of certain tasks. Think of the evolution of car navigation systems. For decades when people wanted to get somewhere, they would look at a paper map, then approximate a route.

But the information a map gives you is woefully incomplete. It just doesn’t give you much context for your trip. For example, you don’t know any of the speed limits, or where there’s stop lights, rest areas, or gas stations. Forget about real-time changing conditions such as roadworks or traffic. So people would plan out trips just based on a map and guesstimate most things.

Then GPS comes along and lets you pinpoint exactly where you are on your journey. (Although it didn’t necessarily tell you which path you needed to take.) Next came the navigation system. It could suggest an optimal route, absent traffic information. It could say where you are, where you want to go, and some good ways of getting there.

The next evolution was Google Maps and Waze. These platforms have real-time traffic data—not to mention satellite navigation such as Sirius, offering a real-time dynamic understanding of traffic flows and patterns.

The next step beyond is automation. It doesn’t just give you intelligence on what to do and guide your decisions. It actually does it for you: i.e. the self-driving car. We haven’t quite conquered this as yet—but we’re close.

Content Marketers Are Still Using Maps

Many content marketers are now at the very first stage of using maps when it comes to content strategy. They don’t really understand where they are because they mainly look at ‘vanity metrics’ such as pageviews, social shares, and so on. These are top of the funnel metrics that offer a rough approximation of how content is doing. But they don’t measure content lower in the funnel, or show content’s impact on your business.

Some marketers today however, go beyond vanity metrics. They connect all the dots by pulling in significant quantities of data that’s hard for a human to compile, let alone compute. These companies pull together data from many disparate sources and apply that to content to get a fuller understanding, manifested as analytics and reporting. They can look at a report and get comprehensive data at a glance. They can then make an intelligent and informed decision about a course of action, which was formerly not possible.

These marketers understand the business results they’re driving exactly. This includes the leads, revenue, and sales pipeline a particular piece of content is generating. This is where the technology is at today.

Content intelligence technology is exciting relative to where we’ve come from, but it’s still nascent. At this stage it’s mainly collating full context data to provide intelligence. “I think we’re really at the data aggregation stage,” says Deshpande. “Simply collecting all the data about content from disparate systems is a challenge. After that, machine learning systems have the full context to make intelligent recommendations.”

The next step for this technology will see it do the majority of computation and inference to determine the best course of action, based on a given set of data. Currently this is where marketers apply their intuition. This could include choosing whether or not to refresh an evergreen article. Or whether to spend money on paid promotion for an article that’s popular and could go viral. The best course usually isn’t obvious however, requiring a lot of data exploration digging, which machines are much better at.

Which Problems Does Content Intelligence Address?

Every marketer alive today proclaims how “data driven” they are. But if you look at how content is utilized, it’s still mostly based on intuition and guesswork. At marketing conferences, if you want to know what content to create you’ll always be advised to go ask your sales team. Or to go search online and see what questions people are asking. Or to look at search volume. These are all good inputs, but they’re mainly based on what’s worked in the past.

What to Share

Sales teams typically share content based on anecdotal feedback. You’ll often hear one sales person yell out on the floor, “Do we have a piece of content about analytics that I can share with this prospect?” And someone else will say, “Yeah, here’s a tasty piece.” These anecdotes reinforce behaviors. So if something worked well and someone hears how a content item helped them close a deal, the next sales rep likely repeats the pattern. Demand generation teams will do AB-testing on emails when looking at what data to share. But beyond that a lot of it is just very anecdotal, or looking at very rudimentary metrics.

Jeff Brewer, Lead Software Engineer at Lux Research and a former quant in futurist Ray Kurzweil’s hedge fund, believes content intelligence can really pay dividends when paired with consumer behavior models. “This means moving beyond content suggestion by anecdote to using consumer models and characterizing content from previous interactions to suggest what to share next,” he says. “Besides improving sales outcomes, a data-driven suggestion platform can evaluate new, untested content to determine efficacy with minimal risk to the sales pipeline. This helps both sales and marketing departments hone their craft. These models can be as unique as every company’s set of products, content, and markets. AI based content intelligence customizes these models for each company.”

There are many other channels where most decisions about how to utilize content come down to intuition. These include social channels, websites, advertisements, and so on. This is where content intelligence can add the most value. It can make those decisions informed, and even automate some of those decisions in a scalable manner.

What to Read Next

On a web page you’re usually presented with the most popular or most recent stories. With content intelligence, expect instead to see stories based on your previous browsing history and position in an organization’s hierarchy. Along with what your title is, what you’ve consumed in the past, what other people in your organization have consumed in the past. Even which content—or certain pieces of content, shared in succession—has the highest conversion rate at the stage you’re currently at in the consumption cycle.

Those are just a few factors. But there are literally hundreds of possible factors that can be fed into an algorithm to find the right weight for all those inputs. So you know exactly what context something has, and what the right piece of content is. Content intelligence helps utilize your existing content inventory most effectively.

Which Content to Update

Another way content marketers can use their inventory more effectively is by knowing when to refresh evergreen articles. Say a particular article or blog post performed really well, but it hasn’t been refreshed in a year. You are automatically sent a prompt for this article to be refreshed and shared.

There’s a constant stream of things a content marketer can do to be a lot more effective, that don’t take up much time. But it’s hard to figure out what they are. Content intelligence can surface that information in an easy-to-understand, and easy-to-act-on way. So you can login every day, or every week, get some really useful feedback or advice, make those changes, and see specific growth in certain areas.

You can do this at every different touch point with content intelligence. Your website, a sales person on the phone or emailing with a prospect. Any time you have a touch point with a customer, you can show targeted information that’s highly valuable to them.

Which Content to Create

The content creation process is another area to be optimized. Content intelligence can make recommendations about what you should be creating based on what performs well, or what your competitors are doing. And the recommendations can vary based on what your goals are. So you could say, “we have a goal of a certain number of leads or pageviews generated for this quarter.” And you could receive recommendations to help you achieve that. The recommendations will differ based on the goal.

While machines can mainly only create data-driven content for now, that’s evolving quickly. IBM partnered with a movie studio and created a video trailer using AI, which took over the creative process. Coca-Cola has used AI to generate TV adverts, selecting the music and creating scenes. If Pepsi had content intelligence, they may have avoided uniting the entire Internet in opposition to their Kendall Jenner ad.

How to Promote

Think about how hard it is to know what to promote, when to promote, and where to promote it. Content intelligence will enable highly personalized, cross-channel promotion that humans are just not wired to do.

“I am a big believer that the first major AI platform to be built, will probably be the first billion dollar AI company, because it will completely redefine marketing strategy,” says Roetzer. “Think about a company trying to spend a hundred thousand dollars, or a million, or hundred million dollars on marketing. Humans are incapable of figuring out the best way to spend that money. Given all the channels, all the need for personalization, all the different possibilities of what you can do with that money, there is just no way… the greatest strategists in the world together can’t figure out the optimum way to spend a million dollars. But AI can. It’s the hardest problem to solve, but that’s the one that is going to change everything.”

The Solution to Content Shock?

Tennessee-based marketing strategist, speaker, and author Mark Schaefer coined the term content shock in 2014. It describes the phenomenon of an ever increasing arms race to produce more, and more compelling content. This content is seldom personalized, and consumers’ attention span is resolutely finite. But marketers keep producing more and higher quality content for a slice of a pie that’s not growing.

Content intelligence is a significant competitive advantage for organizations wanting to overcome audience content shock. They have the insights to produce better, more engaging content. And more intelligent means of distribution to get content to the right sections of audience where it’s most compelling. Content intelligence enables you to present the right content to the right person, every time.

For a B2B marketer, downloading an eBook on most sites means you’ll likely be presented with that same eBook as a call-to-action if you revisit two days later.

If you’ve created enough great content however, with content intelligence you can truly tailor the experience someone has with your brand and site to an individual level. It’s the Netflix or Amazon approach. You don’t feel there are too many products on Amazon, because you only see the stuff that matters to you, based on your behavior. If content is the same way—if you only see what’s relevant to you all the time—it doesn’t matter to you how many millions of eBooks are out there.

Who Are Some of the Players in Content Intelligence?

The term content intelligence has been around for over a decade. But the companies building the technology are generally less than ten years old.

Curata CMP pulls in data from many different sources. This including the content itself, social metrics, traffic metrics, lead metrics, marketing pipeline metrics, sales pipeline metrics, and revenue metrics. It shows the precise business impact of every piece of content you produce.

Headquartered in Brighton, England, BuzzSumo pulls together social sharing data for all content across the web. Idio has offices in London and New York, and uses machine learning to analyze content, marry it to a consumer profile, and serve personalized content. Washington D.C. based TrackMaven focuses more on competitive analysis. It helps you track how your marketing performs against competitors, peers, and industry influencers. Conductor Searchlight has offices in New York City and San Francisco. It shows you how your content is doing in SEO and how your competitor’s content is doing. Florida-based Ceralytics is a platform for creating, analyzing, and promoting your most effective content.

Where is the Technology Moving Next?

Content intelligence is increasingly looking at what’s driven business results in the past, and advising you what to do going forward based on your goals. Or telling you where you will end up in terms of those metrics. It will automate parts of this process. This year expect a focus on helping to optimize your current content inventory for immediate benefit. Longer term, expect more of a focus on external data sources.

The past doesn’t always predict the future. Content marketing is inherently a very creative process, and thinking outside the box should not be underestimated. So expect the more mundane, repetitive, unskilled parts of content marketing to be automated by content intelligence. But not the need for experimentation.

How to Prepare for Content Intelligence

The insights content intelligence provides are only as good as the amount and quality of the data you have. To leverage this technology for competitive advantage requires a sufficiently long history of well-structured, well-maintained, trustworthy data. Deshpande offers an example of the importance of this from when he worked at Google in 2005.

“Back then Google Translate worked best for Chinese and Arabic,” he says. “And it wasn’t because Google had the best algorithms for those particular languages—it was because they had the most data. The Department of Defense translated so many documents in those two languages that Google had the most training data to input into the system. It really demonstrates how data is more important than the algorithms behind it.”

Know What You’ve Got

One of the most important steps an organization can take is to conduct a content audit of inventory. Best practice is to do this at least once a year, and it’s also vital to effectively utilize content intelligence. This audit should capture the content text, images, metadata, and other associated attributes invisible to the content consumer. For example: the persona, the buying stage it’s designed for, the vertical it’s for, and who wrote the article—especially for organizations using ghostwriters.

Given sufficient examples/inputs and their resulting outputs, a machine learning algorithm learns which inputs correlate with which outputs. Then it can predict which inputs correlate to positive outputs, and optimize for a desired output. Content marketing inputs are those in your content inventory. Performance related data makes up the outputs. This means things such as leads generated, revenue generated, social shares, traffic data, variants such as time on page or bounce rate; whatever you’re trying to optimize for.

You can then examine marketing pipeline metrics to see how these inputs turn into opportunities for sales. For example, which leads consume which content, how often they consume it, when they consume it, and so on. Did someone consume something when they were an opportunity, at purchase decision, or much earlier? Which of these pieces of content then led to revenue, and how much revenue? Then there’s outside, broader context data such as competitive data, and related topics and trends at the time.

Promotion and Distribution

The last phase is understanding how content is distributed and promoted. It can be hard to tell why a piece of content did well. Is it because it’s fundamentally strong, compelling content, and therefore got traction because people are sharing it? Or was it just heavily promoted mediocre content?

For example, on the homepage of Google News they used to have a ”recommended stories” section. These stories got the highest click-throughs, so the team felt they were making good recommendations. But it turned out they were getting the highest click-throughs because it was the first thing on the page. It was the problem of display bias.

Collecting, Storing, and Cleansing Data

Again, clean data—and lots of it, is imperative. You can’t just go out and buy a machine learning algorithm, flip it on, and start seeing immense value. Any time you use an AI application, with machine learning in particular, you have to teach the machine by giving it data.

Cleansing your data means de-duplicating it. I.e. making sure there aren’t two contacts with same email address, or the same contact with two different email addresses. Simple things like that ensure your data is correct. There’s a tool called IBM Watson Analytics which allows you to upload a dataset to find out how good your data is.

Marketing automation systems warehouse content consumption data that pertains to leads further down the funnel. But vendors don’t currently retain that data well for storage reasons. For example, Marketo only stores web activity data for 90 days, after which they start purging the data. Oracle stores your web activity data for 25 months.

The longer your data goes back, the better. So it will pay to pull data outside of your marketing automation system and build a data warehouse. Other systems pull social data. It’s easy to go and see how a piece of content is doing today in terms of social shares. You can look at a snapshot and say, “Ok, I got this many shares on LinkedIn.” It’s harder to go back and see how the numbers changed over time. So the sooner you start cataloging and storing that information the better, so you get more historical context.

Google Analytics is pretty good for storing historical data, but even that has issues. If a company has over 500,000 pageviews in a given time period, Analytics starts sampling data. It’s too much for their channel, so you’re don’t actually get truthful data.

Every system has its downsides, and it’s important to know what the downsides are. To avoid being hindered by those limitations, it will pay to store data outside many systems.

Clippy’s Revenge

There are some applications around now that are about as useful as Microsoft Clippy. Clippy was the famously intrusive Microsoft Word paperclip that used to give unhelpful, obvious suggestions. (Microsoft euthanized Clippy in 2007.) Many content intelligence tools are arguably still at the Clippy stage.

While everyone likes to make fun of Microsoft, they’ve morphed Clippy into other technologies. Now if you use the same language or phrasing over and over in a Word document, it offers subtle, non-obvious stylistic suggestions beyond just spelling and grammar. Rather than being an annoying paperclip in the corner, it’s built into the workflow. That’s where content intelligence is working towards to provide value.

The adoption of content intelligence will likely come down to a question of trust in the technology. Firstly trusting that the data is right. Then that the insights are right. Then trusting that the system’s suggestions will actually help rather than hurt. And finally trusting the system to automatically perform the suggested action on its own.

Think about this analogy. In the 1920’s when elevator technology first started displacing elevator operators—that was a big deal for elevator passengers. Many people would take the stairs because they just didn’t trust an elevator sans operator. This dynamic exists with people’s attitudes towards self driving cars. Content intelligence needs to overcome the same level of trust. The technology needs to develop and provide insights and automation. But even with that, it may take even longer for folks to really trust it to make the right decisions.

The Content Intelligence Disruption

We’ve reached the point with certain systems where we trust machines more than we do ourselves. It doesn’t make sense for us to tell an elevator what the best routing is to get to a floor. Many people now trust a GPS navigation system over their own intuition in most cases when driving cars. This is the point content intelligence needs to reach before we see wider adoption.

Content intelligence right now is reducing or removing the need for freelance writers who produce low level copy. It may do the same for certain marketing operations and demand gen positions. (There will be plenty of software engineers kept in gainful employment however.)

It will likely take another two years for the intelligence to offer more consistently helpful insights. And perhaps another three years to gain wider adoption and trust. That said, content intelligence, like all new technology, will offer first movers a significant competitive advantage—whether vendors or users. It will also eventually devolve into a more utility-like function as economies of scale allow full industry penetration. From now until then however, marketers ignore this technology at their peril.