All Content Marketing Software Reviews

Pam Neely

Founder, PamNeely.com

What is your top tip for success in the content marketing industry?

It’s well past time to have a documented content strategy. It doesn’t have to be a 40-page opus; even three pages is a great start. According to the 2019 CMI and MarketingProfs “B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America” report, successful B2B content marketers are 464% more likely to have a documented content marketing strategy than their unsuccessful peers.

Pam Neely has been in digital marketing for 20 years. She’s a serial entrepreneur and content marketing enthusiast with a background in publishing and journalism, including a New York Press Award and a Hermes Creative Award for blogging. She has a Master’s Degree in Direct and Interactive Marketing from New York University.

Mitch Joel

Co-Founder, Six Pixels Group

What is your top tip for success in the content marketing industry?

Content marketing planned is often not content marketing that works. When you sit down and create content, don’t panic if you have no idea what, exactly, you’re going to create. Be it in text, images, audio and video. You can take multiple swings at it. You can edit it. You can delete it if there’s nothing there. You don’t have to know where it’s going when you start. Brands have never been able to “call it” when it comes to making something go viral.

Mitch Joel is Founder of Six Pixels Group – an advisory, investing and content producing company that is focused on commerce and innovation. His first book, Six Pixels of Separation, named after his successful blog and podcast is a business and marketing bestseller. His second book, CTRL ALT Delete, was named one of the best business books of 2013 by Amazon.

Ahava Leibtag

President, Aha Media Group

What is your top tip for success in the content marketing industry?

Empathize: A lot of my customers want someone to empathize with them about how hard content is. I often talk about our own challenges around content marketing and I share what’s going on with the industry as well. Usually when I empathize it gives me a window to educate clients on how they can improve. If you truly understand their pain points, you can help them develop strategies and tactics to solve those.

Ahava Leibtag is the Founder and President of Aha Media Group. With more than 20 years of experience in writing, messaging and marketing, Ahava is a well-recognized content strategy and marketing expert. She is the author of “The Digital Crown: Winning at Content on the Web”.

Kathy Klotz-Guest

Founder, Keeping it Human(SM)

What is your top tip for success in the content marketing industry?

Your best storytellers are clients, partners, employees. Let your best storytellers shine and tell the experience of working with you in their way – in their words. Put the focus on them. Marketing stories often fall short because they are sterile; focus your stories through the lens of actual people, their challenges, their words, their conflicts, and how they resolved those challenges with your help. Note, you are not the focus here; they are! You are the sidekick to their inner superhero.

Kathy Klotz-Guest MA, MBA, founded Keeping it Human(SM), to help companies solve creativity, culture and communication challenges so people thrive! Using techniques from the improv stage and her 20 years in comedy and marketing, Kathy helps teams like yours unleash their innovative playfulness. Her book is, “Stop Boring Me! Creating Kick-Ass Marketing Content, Products and Ideas Through the Power of Improv.”

Drew McLellan

CEO, Agency Management Institute

What is your top tip for success in the content marketing industry?

Your content should live on a channel you own. Don’t build your brand on borrowed channels like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Use those channels to magnify your content but not to host it. Your website should be the hub and think of the social channels as the spokes. Don’t put yourself in a position where a policy change or new rule could put your presence in jeopardy.

Drew McLellan is a 30+ year agency veteran, owner of his own agency and CEO of Agency Management Institute, which serves 250+ marketing agencies, helping their owners build profitable agencies that evolve and scale.

Sam Hurley

Founder, OPTIM-EYEZ

What is your top tip for success in the content marketing industry?

Forget exciting: think useful and interesting. Exciting isn’t always achievable, at least, the nature of excitement that bring bottom line results, so don’t fret trying to make your content something it may struggle to become without tons of resources. Everything you do, each piece of content you publish, and all promotional ideas should entirely stem from the specific needs of your audience. Focus on usefulness and earn the interest of your audience, instead of trying to be exciting.

Sam Hurley is a lateral-thinking, people-focused digital marketer, holding solid experience in both agency and client-side settings. He now runs his own global personal branding and influencer marketing business: OPTIM-EYEZ. Sam has achieved success for SMEs and popular global brands through to blue chip organizations, while being ranked as the world’s #1 digital influencer by Webinale and #2 most influential digital marketer by Onalytica.

Cameron Conaway

Director of Marketing Communications, Solace

What is your top tip for success in the content marketing industry?

Organize and build a strategy around arena states and edge states. Arena states are search terms and keywords that are “in the arena” of your product or service. For example, a vendor selling an AI-powered widget for retail websites may think “AI for retailers” is the only phrase in their arena. That phrase would definitely be center court, but other keywords such as “visual merchandising” are also in the arena and may prove important for generating traffic. Edge states refer to those hot industry terms that haven’t yet become part of the industry lingo but are “on the edge” of becoming widely used.

Cameron Conaway is the author of six books, including Malaria, Poems, an NPR Best Book of 2014. He lives in San Francisco, where he works for Solace as the Director of Marketing Communications.

Andrea Fryrear

President and Lead Trainer, AgileSherpas

What is your top tip for success in the content marketing industry?

Frequency shouldn’t be your first thought. It’s easy to start content marketing planning by deciding how often to publish, but you need to consider your audience first. How do they like to consume content? Where do they find their information right now? Once you know that, you can start to plan content types and publication cadences that meet them where they already are.

Andrea is the President and Lead Trainer for AgileSherpas, the world’s leading Agile marketing training and consulting company. She is a Certified Professional in Agile Coaching (ICP-ACC), a Certified Agile Leader (CAL-1), a Certified Scrum@Scale Practitioner, and an ICAgile Authorized Instructor. A sought-after speaker, Andrea shares her findings (and failures) regularly from stages around the world as an international speaker on all things Agile marketing.

Jayson DeMers

CEO, AudienceBloom

What is your top tip for success in the content marketing industry?

Get opinionated. It’s tempting to play it safe by writing undebatable content, ensuring that 100 percent of your readership agrees with you. But in my experience, it’s often better to strike up controversy by stating a strong, debatable opinion. The people who agree with you will think more highly of you, the people who disagree will get you more attention by commenting on and sharing your work, and you’ll differentiate yourself from the competition at the same time. The only caveat here is to be opinionated respectfully, justifying your viewpoint with evidence and fairly acknowledging the other side of the issue.

Jayson DeMers is the founder & CEO of AudienceBloom, a Seattle-based content marketing & social media agency.

Brian Carter

Keynote Speaker and CEO, The Brian Carter Group

What is your top tip for success in the content marketing industry?

Create standout, high-quality, useful, interesting, engaging content. Whether it’s free, requires them to fill out a form, or is paid content, it has to get a click and keep people engaged. Don’t underdeliver on your content or you hurt your brand and lose sales. Hook them with the title and idea and then engage them every step of the way through the content.

An IBM futurist and top expert recommended by LinkedIn, Brian Carter has been a trusted influencer for over a decade who has built programs and been a keynote speaker for companies like Microsoft, NBC-Universal, The U.S. Army and Salesforce as well as small businesses. Brian is a bestselling author you may have seen on Bloomberg TV or in Inc, Entrepreneur, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times with over 250,000 online fans and a reach of 3 million people per year. He delivers motivational keynotes with practical takeaways based his 15 years of cutting-edge work and runs the digital and social advertising agency The Brian Carter Group.

Jessica Gioglio

Digital & Social Business Strategist and Co-Author, The Power of Visual Storytelling and The Laws of Brand Storytelling

What is your top tip for success in the content marketing industry?

Tell Your Story – Humans have been telling stories since the beginning of time – and for good reason. Stories captivate our attention by bringing ideas, opinions and emotions to life in a powerful, memorable way. So much so, that research from Stanford University shows that stories are 22 times more memorable than facts and figures alone. Small business owners are uniquely positioned to tell amazing stories about their brand and business. From why you started your business, to your mission, what differentiates your products or services, customer stories, and more, there are so many opportunities for small businesses to tell their stories.

Jessica Gioglio is the co-author of, “The Power of Visual Storytelling,” and “The Laws of Brand Storytelling.” Professionally, Jessica has led innovative digital marketing, public relations and social media programs for companies including, Dunkin’ Donuts, TripAdvisor, State Street, Comcast and Sprinklr, work that has resulted in numerous industry awards.

Larry Kim

Founder and CEO, MobileMonkey

What is your top tip for success in the content marketing industry?

Set Somewhat Delusional Goals. There is tremendous power in intentionally projecting a somewhat delusional plan or campaign. Delusional projection forces the epic change required to be successful. Furthermore, when you set big, hard-to-achieve, tough-to-believe goals, most people will think you’re crazy. The 1% of people who don’t think you’re crazy are the ones that will help you turn your lofty visions into reality, and those are the exact people you want to be working with.

Larry Kim is the CEO of MobileMonkey, the World’s Best Facebook Messenger Marketing Platform and free chatbot builder. He’s also founder of WordStream, Inc., the leading provider of AdWords, Facebook and keyword tools used by over a million marketers worldwide. He’s a contributor to CNBC and Inc. Magazine, and has received Marketer of the Year awards from Search Engine Land, US Search Awards, and PPC Hero.

Berrak Sarikaya

Founder, Amplify Your Biz

What is your top tip for success in the content marketing industry?

Channel your inner 5-year-old when working on a new piece of content. There are two million articles posted every day. Why should anybody read yours? Even if your content isn’t selling something, it should have a purpose. How many times can you answer the question “but why?” about your content idea & will it add value for your audience?

Berrak Sarikaya is a natural conversation driver and an Amplifier, motivated by a firm belief in owning who you are instead of trying to fit the mold. As a content strategist and created, she’s worked with startups, small businesses, Fortune 500 companies, and agencies in both the B2B and B2C landscape.

Heidi Cohen

Chief Content Officer, Actionable Marketing Guide and Principal, Riverside Marketing Strategies

What is your top tip for success in the content marketing industry?

Develop share of audience attention (or SOAA). Deliver regular portions of consistent content including blog posts, newsletters, videos and/or podcasts. This encourages your audience and prospects to actively seek and expect your content. As a result, you reduce the need for paid distribution to get your message to break through.

Heidi Cohen runs the Actionable Marketing Guide, a top social media, content marketing and digital marketing blog, and Riverside Marketing Strategies, a digital consultancy. Heidi understands media and content from the inside out. Since working for a local newspaper at age 18, she’s worked for global media and content companies including Bertelsmann, The Economist, and The New York Times.

The Awl (2009-2018)

What it did: The Awl was an independent web publisher in New York City. The network consists of four websites about news, ideas and obscure Internet minutiae of the day, aimed at an intelligent and educated, sophisticated yet fun-loving audience.
Why it closed:  Unable to find a sustainable business model amid a rapidly changing digital-media industry
Survived by: HiLobrow, Vox, Vulture

Path (2010-2018)

What it did: Path was a social networking-enabled photo sharing and messaging service for mobile devices. The service allowed users to share up to a total of 500 contact.
Why it closed:  Path couldn’t keep up with social media competition. It was later acquired by Kakao.
Survived by: Facebook, Hangouts, WhatsApp Messenger, Telegram, Diaspora

Empower Network (2011-2018)

What it did: Empower Network hosted one of the largest blogging communities online, and provided educational training products and services to online marketers, entrepreneurs, start-ups, home-based and small businesses.
Why it closed:  Empower Network closed due to bankruptcy
Survived by:  Affilorama, Wealthy Affiliate, ShareASale, Market Health

Seeso (2016-2017)

What it did: Seeso was an over-the-top subscription streaming service providing comedy content such as original and broadcast television shows.
Why it closed:  The service failed to generate a substantial subscriber base.
Survived by: VRV, Variety.com, Netflix, Tubi TV, Crackle

Vessel (2013-2016)

What it did: Vessel was a commercial video service which resembled that of YouTube whereby a viewer could watch videos for free.
Why it closed: Acquired by Verizon
Survived by:  Youtube, go90, VidLii, BitChute, Sendvid

Readability (2010-2016)

What it did: Readability was a web and mobile app providing a customizable reading view for online readers.
Why it closed:  No one was using Readability anymore
Survived by: Instapaper, Pocket, Inoreader

Tsu (2014-2016)

What it did: Tsu was an invite-only social media platform that rewards all users for their original content and network.
Why it closed: Membership declined, and Tsu failed to raise an additional round of funding to keep its social network alive.
Survived by: Steemit, Diaspora, Reddit, YOYOW

Brand.com (2010-2015)

What it did: Brand.com was a content marketing platform providing Internet search management, creating positive web articles about its clients in order to have them overtake negative news, and Wikipedia profile management.
Why it closed: The company filed bankruptcy.
Survived by: Curata