Brands must have a clear understanding of their audience, goals, and objectives. They also need to secure internal buy-in and alignment, and have a clear understanding of the tools needed to execute the plan. Even after marketers have addressed those operational challenges, they still need to be able to tell a great story that moves the needle for their business.

As Contently’s VP of product, I’m always thinking about ways we can empower marketers to succeed at their jobs. This quarter, we’re releasing a few key features and services that will help them be more efficient, create more engaging content, and ultimately drive more results.

Content requests

Marketers are often subject to requests from different departments in their organization. These projects can really start to add up, making it nearly impossible to keep track of all the external asks. Moreover, marketers and internal communications teams are turning to their employees for content ideas, but sourcing them efficiently remains a challenge. As content teams continue to play a bigger role in customer marketing, internal comms, and sales enablement, they need a way to oversee and prioritize production across the company.

As a result, we developed a content requests feature that will make it easy for marketers to manage asks from other teams. Users will now be able to receive standardized and detailed content requests, accept or reject the brief, provide organized feedback, and jump straight into creating the asset without wasting any time. They’ll also be able to collect content ideas in a central location, which will increase visibility for internal comms, sales enablement, and other initiatives that require input from outside the core marketing team.

Editorial workshops

Some people treat creativity as though it’s a purely intuitive skill. We believe anyone can learn how to create breakthrough content—as long as they have the right guidance to help them get there.

This quarter, we are releasing new in-person workshops led by Contently’s executive editor, Deanna Cioppa. The goal is to provide customers with the essential tools, resources, and knowledge for tackling ambitious projects. New workshops include:

• Subject Matter Expert Workshop: Learn how to train internal experts on editorial best practices and identify ways they can contribute to your content program.
• Video Strategy Workshop: Plan and execute a video strategy that truly connects with target audiences in this one-day workshop.
• Event Content Workshop: Explore how to maximize the impact of your events by developing a custom strategy, outlining a separate workflow, and brainstorming specific ideas.
• Buyer’s Journey Workshop: Study your target audience and tailor content for each stage of your customer’s buyer journey.
• Brand Magazine Workshop: Kickstart your brand magazine production in this one-day workshop. Create your brand magazine’s identity and goals, brainstorm story ideas, create a working copy of your magazine grid, and develop a design concept to guide your art direction.

International language localization

Whether you’re trying to distribute content through lines of business across the world, or you’re someone who primarily works in another language, collaborating in multiple languages can be costly and time-consuming. It also can get in the way of working with subject matter experts. For brands ready to take their content global, we’ve upgraded language localization support on our platform.

To help international and bilingual clients like Eni, Hilton, and Ricoh, our platform now supports Spanish, Italian, and UK English, with more languages to come.

If you want to learn more, click here to talk to a content expert. 

The post Contently Q3 Product Launch: Content Requests, Editorial Workshops, and Language Localization appeared first on Contently.

Contently was named Best Overall Content Marketing Company for 2018 by the MarTech Breakthrough Awards. We beat out over 2,000 entries for the honor, and I believe focusing on what’s right for our clients was a huge reason why. We’re always mindful of how changes to our product and services affect the way we service our clients. Will a new feature really help marketers create better content? What aren’t we thinking about? Where can we do better? Where can we grow?

Our biggest move this year was the release of ContentlyOne, the marketing industry’s first all-in-one content solution. We wanted to make sure we were practicing what we preached on our blog and at events, so building it required a lot of communication with our customers. Early results have already been promising. RBC, for example, has scaled content across 22 different teams. Walmart, meanwhile, found an approach that consistently connects its content to revenue.

I’m thrilled that the work we’re doing is receiving recognition, but it’s important that we don’t get complacent. We still have a lot of work to do, and our core values—accountability, curiosity, empathy, and candor—exist to make sure we continuously improve. We want to keep speaking openly and honestly to both our customers and the content marketing industry at large. We want to understand their challenges and find ways to address them. Most importantly, we want to help them achieve their goals and own the customer experience.

While we’re on the subject of customer experience, Mark Cuban has this quotation that I’ve always appreciated: “It is so much easier to be nice, to be respectful, to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and try to understand how you might help them before they ask for help, than it is to try to mend a broken customer relationship.”

From day one, that’s how Contently has operated. And as we look to build on awards like this, that’ll continue to be our philosophy.

The post Contently Named Best Overall Content Marketing Company appeared first on Contently.

Since 1976, there have only been five repeat champions in the NFL. In the MLB, only four. In the NBA and NHL, there have been 11 each, largely thanks to the Lakers and Bulls, and the Canadiens and Islanders, respectively. The same thing happens in business, where industry titans give way to disruptors and innovators.

Winning again and again is challenging for a number of reasons: You have to maintain your standard of excellence; anticipate and adapt to new obstacles; and keep your team motivated, happy, and productive. It’s difficult to stay on top in consecutive years, and even harder to do three years in a row.

That’s why I’m so excited to announce that Contently has made the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in America for the third year running. It’s a huge honor, considering only one in five companies on the list have been recognized at least three times.

To add to my excitement, Fortune named us as one of the 25 Best Small-Medium Workplaces in New York. Our workplace and company culture have been recognized before (check out our listings in Crain’s in 2015 and 2016), but joining brands like Etsy and ZocDoc makes this recognition even more special.

When I wrote about the Inc. 5000 ranking in 2015, I mentioned how humbling it is to build a company with some of the most talented people I know. In 2016, I talked about some of the major milestones we hit, including acquiring a company, opening offices in the UK and in San Francisco, and doubling our revenue. The thread connecting all of these achievements is the amazing team and workplace culture we’ve built. Without either we wouldn’t be the company we are today.

If this sounds like the kind of company you’d like to be a part of, you should check out our jobs page. There’s never been a more exciting time to join the team.

The post Contently Named to the Inc. 5000 List for the Third Straight Year appeared first on Contently.

I’m so excited to be addressing this question at the upcoming SiriusDecisions Summit #SDSummit. Shawna Dennis, Global Head of Content Marketing at Manulife, will join me to share a case study on how her company saved $1.2 million by partnering with Contently.

In 2016, Manulife, a global insurance company, had little communication between teams, which made it very difficult to establish a consistent brand voice and develop an efficient process for creating content. Manulife chose to partner with us to access technology that could improve its content sharing, localization, and analytics. A year later, Contently’s platform created a data-driven engine for Manulife that fueled collaboration across departments and helped the company maximize its resources.

“Our goal was to establish a content marketing function that would support our business units around the world,” Dennis told The Content Strategist. “We needed to provide access to content and insights that would help all divisions meet their objectives—something that was easy to adopt.”

If you’re a B2B marketing professional attending #SDSummit this year, I hope you can join me for Shawna’s presentation on Tuesday, May 16 at 10:15 a.m. If not, we’ll be at booth #643 and would love to see you.

The post SiriusDecisions Summit 2017: The ROI of Content Marketing appeared first on Contently.

Contently’s source analyzer measures the number of engaged people who find your content from each source and the number of leads generated by each channel. The tool assesses social, email, direct mail, and other sources, and calculates a score for each one. The data gives your team insight into which channels are the most effective at generating and influencing leads. (The higher the score, the more impactful the channel.)

To access the feature, click on the “Analytics” tab on the top navigation bar, then select “Source analyzer” from the options on the left rail. Once you’re on the page, you can toggle between table and chart to see exact numbers or a visualization of each channel’s reach and lead impact score.

The post Contently’s Source Analyzer Helps You Understand the Impact of Your Distribution appeared first on Contently.

So while it’s true that we’re a software company that loves data, algorithms, and automation, we’re thrilled to announce a new landmark: Our freelance talent network has now grown to more than 100,000 writers, photographers, designers, videographers, and creatives.

The breadth and quality of our freelance talent network, combined with our proprietary technology, allows our customers to access the right humans, in the right places, with the right expertise. In other words, to help them do what humans do best—share stories.

So who are these people?

Spread across more than 1,000 cities in 60 countries, our creatives’ locales are as diverse as our customers. This means we can help our multinational clients, such as Marriott Traveler and LEGO, tell their stories in markets around the world.

Our global network includes writers who specialize in topics that you may expect: B2B tech, insurance, healthcare, retail, and so on–but because the network is so big, we’re also able to boast subject matter experts in topics as obscure as powder metallurgy, mortuary science, and strategic beta. (Haven’t heard of those? Try writing a 3,000-word white paper about them!)

The network’s visual creatives bring copy to life. Crazy-talented video producers, graphic designers, illustrators, photographers, artists, and animators have joined our network to help our customers compete in an increasingly multimedia world.

Collectively, our network is an award-winning bunch. We have Pulitzer winners, National Magazine Award recipients, Emmy winners, Peabody honorees, Cannes nominees, and Webby winners.

How does Contently find such great talent?

It’s simple: We give them something valuable in exchange. Each month, thousands of freelancers sign up for a free Contently portfolio, which they use to display their work to potential clients. Our talent team then uses our programmatic matching technology—combined with a healthy dose of good old-fashioned human smarts—to match clients with the right content creators.

I thought you said you sell software?

While content will always be driven by talented people like the ones in our network, we think that software can help make the creative process even better.

Once a freelancer is matched with a Contently customer, everything—planning, creation, communication—happens in the Contently platform. Our technology even offers data-driven recommendations for which freelancers to choose for specific content types and channels, and we’re building tons of exciting tools to optimize how our talent works with our clients.

To learn more, visit contently.com/solutions to see how our technology and talent can help tell your brand’s story.

Alli Manning is the senior manager of the creative network at Contently.

The post The Contently Network Now Has 100,000 Freelance Creatives appeared first on Contently.

That’s the award by the numbers, but there’s something less quantifiable that characterizes the companies that made this list: they’re nimble, innovative, and doing some remarkable things in media, tech, and more. Some of the most notable include WeWork, BuzzFeed, AppNexus, and SeatGeek. We’re honored to be in their company.

Contently has been recognized for rapid growth before, ranking on both the Inc. 5000 list and Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500. These lists included some of the brightest emerging companies across an array of industries, as well as across the country. But being recognized among our fellow New Yorkers is something particularly special.

Six years ago, we founded Contently to help brands create a better media world, and at the same time to help creative people make a better living—many of whom were our friends, classmates, and colleagues. That’s why we built our headquarters in New York City, the media capital of the world.

The growth our company has experienced means a lot of things, but one thing that we’re especially proud of is how our success has had a positive impact on the freelance creative community at large. We’ve paid out almost $30 million to journalists, editors, videographers, and designers—and our average price per assignment has climbed to nearly four figures, a far cry from the days when content farms were paying $5 for a story. That growth also means that we’ve been able to fund The Contently Foundation, a nonprofit that supports investigative journalism and releases important stories that hold the powerful accountable. And, of course, we’ve been able to grow our own in-house team of designers, editors, strategists, developers, and writers, all of whom are working to tell better stories and help our customers do the same.

We’re going to continue to build smart technology that helps brands succeed at content marketing and helps freelance creatives make a living doing what that love. We’re going to continue to grow our offices here in New York and around the world. And we’re going to continue working to make the media world a better place.

Receiving recognition is great, but this ranking also serves as an affirmation that Contently, and the company we dreamed of creating, is making a difference for the people we built it for—and for the industry as a whole.

The post Contently Named to Crain’s New York Business Fast50 List appeared first on Contently.

The list featured a diverse group of organizations, including law firms, financial companies, architectural firms, consultancies, and tech companies like ourselves. The fact that Contently has made it two years in a row, despite stiff competition, is a testament to the phenomenal employees that make up this company.

That doesn’t mean that making it here was a breeze. If you’ve ever applied for a workplace award, you know it’s not exactly easy. You have to ask the entire team to take time out of their busy schedules and—without the usual means of coercion, threats, or bribery (kidding!)—you just have to hope that they actually have nice things to say.

Part of what makes the Crain’s ranking so encouraging is that the large majority of the scoring is based on those confidential surveys. That means people said great things about working here at Contently—even when they easily could have used it as an excuse to rant.

Like any fast-growing technology company, there’s been a lot of change here at Contently. Since we last ranked on Crain’s “Best Places to Work” list, we’ve:

• More than doubled the business, growing annual revenue from seven to eight figures
• Acquired a company and opened an office in Minneapolis

• Brought on top executives and expanded our global offices
• Hired more than 50 new employees
• Promoted 18 employees
• Significantly grown our nonprofit, The Contently Foundation
• Grown Ladies@ to connect Contently’s female employees with women at technology companies across the country
• Had six employees switch career paths within the company
• Launched a content-focused internal communications program

With all this activity, I’m incredibly proud that we’ve been able to sustain a great workplace year after year. Sure, we have the cliché startup perks like snacks, dogs in the office, and trivia nights—all of which are awesome. To me, though, this ranking proves that our culture is about much more than those surface-level benefits.

Our founders have instilled key values in each new employee since day one. We encourage everyone to own their work, give to others, and truly care about one another as colleagues and people. That’s resulted in an office culture where people can feel comfortable to be themselves, do their best work, and further their careers.

As we continue to hire new employees (yes, we are hiring!), these are the type of people we’re looking for. If this sounds like it could be you, consider giving us a shout.

The post Contently Named One of the Best Places to Work in NYC for the Second Year Running appeared first on Contently.

A lot has happened at Contently since Inc.’s last list:

• We acquired a company and enhanced our technology.
• We brought on top executives and expanded our global offices.
• We won awards for the Contently platform, our content, and our company culture.
• We published “Content Methodology: A Best Practices Report,” a summary of what we’ve learned about content marketing from six years in the industry.
• We signed and renewed contracts with 20 percent of the Fortune 500, and have the pleasure of working with the most innovative companies in the world.
• We more than doubled the business again, growing annual revenue from seven to eight figures.

As Contently’s CEO, it’s my job to look at all the granular metrics that measure our successes and failures as a company. Over the past three years—the timeframe measured by the 2016 Inc. 5000 list—our revenue grew by 749 percent.

Our business intelligence team will be the first to remind me that there isn’t a single magic metric that shows if we’re succeeding. But even if it’s not magic, consistent year-over-year revenue growth is about as close as you can get. Our inclusion on the Inc. 5000 represents the collective work of our entire company, and 749 percent tells me that the work we’ve been doing is amazing.

I’m not writing to brag about myself or my co-founders. (Though I’ll certainly send this to my mom—hi, Mom!) Every time our customer success team has a 10 p.m. call with an international client, our design team finishes all of their daily work while also producing an award-winning print magazine, our services team helps connect creatives with clients across the world, our sales executives travel for 10 days straight, and our product team works overtime to get a new feature launched, they’re doing what it takes to help us build a great company. For that, we’re eternally grateful.

But there is so much more that we can, and will, do. As Contently has grown, so has the content marketing industry. There is more opportunity for growth than we ever could have predicted when we started. And we’re going to continue focusing on the success of our customers by providing them with the smartest technology and the best team on the planet.

Maintaining growth is not easy. As we continue to track so many metrics to ensure that we’re making the right decisions for our company and our customers, we’ll be working toward our return on the 2017 Inc. 5000 list.

The post Contently Included on Inc. 5000’s Fastest-Growing Companies List for Second Consecutive Year appeared first on Contently.

In content marketing, it can rear its ugly head in the planning process, throughout the course of production, and when managing content assets across multiple departments. When brands don’t know where or how to access valuable company assets, the result is inconsistent messaging and a waste of time and resources.

Enter Contently’s new media library, an indispensable tool for managing all your organization’s media assets in one organized and easily accessible library—all within the Contently platform.

With the media library, it’s possible to upload crucial media assets—individually or in bulk—then filter, tag, and sort so they’re easy to find.

Once the library is populated, team members can pull the most recent brand-compliant media assets and insert them directly into the body of new or existing stories, a creative brief, or the assets tab of proposed stories. Permissions settings control who can upload, delete, and view these assets.

An organized library prevents contributors from using outdated or off-brand assets and keeps design and marketing teams from purchasing or creating images already in the network. Users will also have visibility into creation date as well as how often and when an asset was used.

Future iterations will show how well assets performed in stories, which will make it easier to choose the ones that ensure success.

Contently’s media library simplifies the publishing process, prevents you from losing resources to unnecessary licensing and time mismanagement, and returns the focus to where it should be: creating great content.

If you’re a Contently client, please contact your account manager about gaining access to the media library.

The post Introducing: Contently’s New Media Library for Enterprise-Wide Content appeared first on Contently.

“Brands spend a remarkable amount of money each year creating dark assets like white papers, slideshows, pricing worksheets, and sales collateral. … But once these assets make their way to download folders and inboxes all over the world, they are essentially lost. Are people actually engaging with—and sharing—those assets?”

When you think about the enormous amount of time, money, and resources needed to produce print-based marketing collateral, it’s pretty shocking that—until now—there’s been no real way to track how those materials are performing, or to optimize them to drive better ROI. That’s why this week we’re excited to announce the official launch of Contently Docalytics.

Fueled by the powerful combination of Docalytics’ technology and Contently’s award-winning analytics offering, Document Analytics is the only product available that allows marketers to turn downloadable content into dynamic, trackable web assets that can be analyzed and optimized for better results.

Contently clients who upgrade to this feature will not only be able to learn about whether a prospect or client has downloaded a piece of content, but also gain an in-depth understanding of how they are interacting with it, thereby driving true data-driven decision-making to improve marketing efforts.

How it works is simple.

Contently users can upload downloadable documents like PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, and Keynote decks into the Contently library. Those assets (like the latest issue of The Contently Quarterly) are then accessible in a web-based viewer, which is easily shared with prospects and clients. This brings your downloadable assets into one central location, next to all of your stories and blog posts.

With version control, you’ll be able to make sure your sales team and customers access only the most on-brand and up-to-date content, easily updating assets across campaigns as changes are made—all while using the same URL.

Most importantly, you’ll be able to track what content users engage with the most, and why, with page-by-page engagement breakdowns that give specific information on what users are interested in and at which points they aren’t engaging.

This allows you to learn from your content—to create more of what works and less of what doesn’t—and to improve results, repeatedly, across campaigns.

Future iterations will include powerful lead-capture forms and analytics to help your sales and marketing teams better leverage your content.

If you’re a Contently client, feel free to reach out to your account manager to see if you’re eligible to upgrade to Document Analytics. We look forward to hearing from you!

The post Introducing Docalytics appeared first on Contently.

Today I’m pleased to announce that we’ve crossed another milestone off the list: We’ve acquired our first company, Docalytics.

What is Docalytics?

The short story is that Docalytics is a technology company based in St. Paul, Minn., that provides sales and marketing teams with detailed data on how people engage with downloadable content like PDFs and sales materials.

The slightly longer version is that they’re a company of incredibly talented engineers as well. We knew we wanted to work with them right away. (Well, after seeing their product… and then getting to know them in an old-school Minnesota bowling alley.) Not because we go around wanting to acquire every company we come across, but because it was obvious that we’re a perfect match.

Why we’re excited

This acquisition launches the next phase of Contently and shifts how we’ll be working to influence the content industry as a whole.

Now more than ever, we stand behind our mission to make the media world a better place—to support freelance creatives, to empower brands, and to produce better content for everyday people. We still believe that great stories build relationships. But we understand that creating an organization propelled by great content marketing is a big investment, and brands need hard numbers to prove that their investment is paying off. Downloadable content has always been a key part of content marketing—especially for B2B brands—but until now, there hasn’t been a way to see how potential customers are interacting with that content.

That’s where our acquisition of Docalytics comes into play. Integrating Docalytics into our software will allow Contently customers to track engagement on downloadable content, thereby getting a deeper understanding of how well their content investment is paying off.

Smarter decisions around content

Our brand clients use content to achieve a diverse set of business objectives, ranging from brand awareness to conversions to driving new revenue streams. These goals need to be tracked with metrics beyond engagement time, metrics that measure exactly how leads are generated and converted.

In the words of the Ninja Turtles’ wise Master Splinter, “What you know is dangerous to your enemy; what you think you know is dangerous to yourself.” In other words, when it comes to content marketing, brands can’t compete if they’re basing decisions on guesswork. Contently Analytics helps brands remove this guesswork from their content marketing. It includes features like contributor analytics, benchmarks that compare content across brands, and data-driven recommendations in one centralized location. Now, with Docalytics, we’ve added the ability to track downloadable and emailed content. No one else does that.

We’re also welcoming aboard the members of Docalytics’ incredibly talented team. They’ll operate as employees of our new Midwest office, focused on continuing to grow our engineering team and Midwest sales efforts.

For our clients, this means:

• Key features added to the Contently platform, including the ability to track downloadable content, optimize lead capture forms, and integrate with marketing automation, CRM, and email marketing platforms.
• One centralized location for tracking, managing, and optimizing content production and performance.
• Understanding what content works to generate and convert more leads, helping both sales and marketing teams tie revenue directly to content.
• Flexible lead forms, which improve retention throughout the lead funnel and increase lead conversion rates.
• A larger product development team building and rolling out new features even faster than before.

Content everywhere

With our newly integrated software, we’re building what we’re calling “content everywhere” capabilities. This is centered around the concept that brands not only need to create great content on their own site, but they also need to be where their audiences are, from YouTube to email to LinkedIn.

This means integrating with the marketing systems that connect to these channels, and building a channel-specific experience for each step of the content process. Docalytics is supporting this by enhancing our integrations and our understanding of how specific pieces of content perform on each channel.

The ink just finished drying on the deal, but our engineers have been busy working hard on seamlessly integrating Docalytics into Contently Analytics. We’ll be making updates as we continue to build, but here’s a preview of what it’ll look like when it goes live in March. Notice the in-depth measurement of downloadable assets, including a heatmap, a breakdown of engagement by each page, downloads, sends, prints, and more.

Looking ahead

We think that enterprise companies will use content across every department, not just marketing. We’re seeing it already. We have clients using our platform to power high-level thought leadership content that supports brand awareness (PR), clients sharing bottom-funnel content to convert leads (sales), and clients using content to retain existing customers and help those customers succeed (account management).

Departments like HR, corporate comms, PR, and investor relations are using content to build relationships and meet business goals, and we’re building our technology to fill this need.

The Contently platform already supports sales teams that use content to build relationships, but we can do even more to help them use content as a tool. Docalytics is an important part of this sales enablement, as it helps track the success of content once it’s been downloaded or emailed.

One new company, one new celebrity pig

Along with Docalytics’ amazing software, Contently is also gaining access to YouTube sensation Hamlet the Minipig, who’s managed by Docalytics CTO Ryan Morlok. Hamlet, who has appeared on The Today Show and 30 Rock, will lead Contently’s influencer marketing efforts.

With our original to-do list officially completed (plus one celebrity pig), it’s time for us to tackle a whole new set of crazy dreams. We’ll be rolling out plenty more exciting news over the next few months. Without giving away too much, I can tell you that we’ll be continuing to build smart technology, doing it with integrity, and having some fun along the way.

The post We’re Bringing Data to Downloadable Content With a New Acquisition appeared first on Contently.

Lasting stories begin with meaningful ideas, whether we’re writing the next great novel or launching a brand publication that will shake up an industry.

Contently’s new pitch request functionality taps into the ideas of our powerful freelancer community, helping you harness the creative energy of high-caliber contributors to fill your editorial calendar with great content.

With the new pitch request capability, you can:

• Provide detailed instructions to get what you want. Publications can provide explicit guidance on the ideas they want their teams to submit through a detailed pitch brief.
• Target the right contributors. You can assign pitch requests to everyone on the publication or just a specific team.
• Schedule ahead. Publications can set up future pitch requests with scheduled submission periods. At the end of a submission period, pitches are available for review. (Bonus: Reviewers won’t have to remember to reach out to contributors in advance if a pitch request is already scheduled.)
• Find everything in one place. Admins and managing editors can track pitches from one screen—filtering by publication, pitch status, or contributor.
• Keep everyone in the loop. Pitch requests now appear on users’ calendars as well as a separate pitch page. Assigned teams are also notified at the beginning of each submission period.

Whether you’re developing concepts for a sci-fi-themed branded video or building an editorial calendar for an innovative new company publication, the pitch request feature will save you time and bolster the precision and creativity of your stories. Happy pitching.

The post Ideas Inside: Introducing Contently’s New Pitch Request Functionality appeared first on Contently.

Contently was ranked 29th on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500, a list of the fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, and energy tech companies—both public and private—in North America.

Technology Fast 500 award winners are selected based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2011 to 2014. This year’s winners put us alongside impressive companies like Twitter, Mashable, Facebook, and Shutterstock. Technology is a fast-growing industry gaining speed each year, so it’s no surprise that the 2015 Technology Fast 500 was an extremely competitive list. These 500 companies achieved an average growth of 850 percent. At Contently, our revenue increased by 3,329 percent.

When we were just starting out, we said that quality content was a critical part of corporate communications and that brands needed smart technology to help them build relationships with their audiences. Not everyone was on board with the idea from the start. Enterprise technology is a crowded industry—CMOs and CEOs are constantly bombarded with sales pitches for the latest product that they “can’t succeed without.” But over the past five years, we’ve worked hard to provide smart technology, world-class creatives, and excellent services to make our clients successful.

On a company level, this ranking demonstrates that we’re leading the charge for content marketing that actually works. And from an industry perspective, this honor proves that brands recognize the importance of technology that helps them tell original stories.

Every indication shows that the growth of the content industry will continue, and we intend not only to keep pace but to lead the pack. And hey, if we keep growing, maybe we’ll finally get that fro-yo machine after all.

The post Contently Ranks #29 in Deloitte 2015 Technology Fast 500 List appeared first on Contently.

Why? Because enterprise companies invariably have complex internal processes for approval, editing, and governance. Shepherding a piece of content through editing, collaboration, approvals, and compliance can seem like trying to get through an obstacle course—and all too often, even the most brilliant work can get lost on the shelf and forgotten.

With that in mind, we’re especially excited to release some major new workflow enhancements, one of many steps we’re taking in the next few months to make content marketing less challenging for our clients.

The key is flexibility. What we’ve learned from working with the world’s leading enterprises is that your content marketing platform should be able to adapt to your needs, both online and offline, in a way that sets you up for the highest likelihood of success.

As a Contently user, you will now be able to input custom names for all the steps in your workflow and provide more context for those steps, moving from a linear approval process to a more fluid system that suits your individual needs, whether you’re working on a blog post or a multimedia project.

Also, you can assign a contributor, due date, and, when appropriate, a price to every step in your workflow—giving you more ability to control your projects and manage your contributors. Once your customized workflows have been built, users will now be able to change, edit, and remove steps in the workflow as needed.

The post Product Update: Enhanced Workflow Flexibility appeared first on Contently.

That’s why we recently launched a new page in the Analytics section of Contently highlighting key metrics for all your contributors, including the number of people, overall engagement, average time, average finish, and attention time. Ultimately, you’ll see which contributors are resonating best with your audience.

Drilling down further, you’ll also be able to see their most- and least-effective stories, as well as a link to a filtered view of the stories page for each contributor.

View performance over your preferred date range, or sort contributors by the metrics you find most important. Ultimately, Contributor Analytics will help you better understand your audience and your content creation team, so that you can continue to improve overall content quality—and results.

The post New From Contently: Contributor Analytics appeared first on Contently.

For the first time, Entrepreneur magazine sought to take a deeper look at privately held businesses in the U.S. through a more holistic approach: the Entrepreneur360 Performance Index. And we were pleased to find that we made the cut.

Contently was ranked among the “Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America 2015.” Entrepreneur360 reviews company growth not just through top and bottom line numbers, but in sustainability, or the ability to achieve lasting success.

The results highlight the fact that companies can take different paths to this long-term success. In fact, Entrepreneur segmented the list into six archetypes: Best Practicers, Data Champions, Controllers, Classics, Forward Thinkers, and Contrarians. Contently was named one of the “Best Practicers.”

Best Practicer companies are defined by their tendency to:

• Embrace industry change
• Pursue aggressive growth
• Use data
• Communicate frequently with customers
• Support employees
• Establish nimble decision-making processes

As a technology company in a relatively new and competitive industry—content marketing—we’ve embraced constant change while growing rapidly, earning the 100th spot on the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing companies.

We’ve built the Contently platform into an award-winning content technology solution that uses data to help brands make smart decisions around the content they create. Now we count some of the world’s most recognizable brands as our clients and advocates.

And we’ve been able to do this all while valuing our employees, and tackling problems by thinking differently—like our nonprofit arm Contently.org, which funds award-winning investigative journalism.

We’re passionate about making the media world better for brands with stories to tell, and the creatives that tell them. Not just today, not just tomorrow, but long-term—because we’re only just getting started.

The post ‘Entrepreneur’ Magazine Names Contently One of the ‘Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America’ appeared first on Contently.

Our judges chose three finalists in each of our three categories: startup, mid-market, and Fortune 500. Judges reviewed a diverse pool of submissions that included video, infographics, long form content, and more. The finalists demonstrated not only innovative thinking and creativity, but also a commitment to defining, and delivering on, strategic content goals.

Here they are:

Startup

Asana: “Workstyle” is an editorially driven destination for lessons, ideas, and stories from forward-thinking teams and leaders.

South African Tourism (U.S. Office): “What’s Your BIG 5?” is a campaign encouraging United States travelers to visit South Africa by highlighting what the country has to offer through stunningly beautiful short videos.

HireAHelper: “Moving 101” is an educational resource for people planning on moving that provides tips about how to best combine DIY moving with professional movers.

Mid-Market

CPA Australia: “The Naked CEO” is a content campaign centered around a mentoring opportunity for students and young professionals, fronted by CPA Australia CEO Alex Malley. In addition to videos and articles, the content includes a book, which is then promoted through digital content.

Scripps Networks Interactive: “Fueling Life” is a campaign on behalf of Chevron that highlights the relationship that forms between a person and their vehicle in an empowering, entertaining way.

W.L. Gore & Associates: Experience More is a monthly digital publication brought to readers by GORE-TEX® that uses longform articles and striking visual images to tell human-centered stories for adventure junkies.

Enterprise

JPMorgan Chase & Co.: “From the Ground Up” is a series about the community of Brownsville, Brooklyn, one of the most dangerous areas in the New York City area. It uses videos and articles to tell stories of people and issues that make a community strong.

ING Group: ING World is a bilingual digital publication (English and Dutch) that provides readers with the latest information about ING’s performance and strategy in an engaging and educational way.

Thomson Reuters: “9 Billion Bowls” is a campaign that address global food issues through educational content, including videos and longform articles, from industry experts.

In addition to many submissions from Fortune 500 companies, close contenders included small businesses that are investing significant time and resources in creating great content, like Williamsburg Charter Sails, for example, and Crunch Accounting.

Judges will select the winning content marketing submissions based on their innovation, creativity, strategy and results. The winners will be announced at the inaugural Contently Summit at the Altman Building in New York City on November 5.

The post The Contently Awards Finalists, or Why Content Marketing’s Future Is Looking Bright appeared first on Contently.

When Contently’s product team sat down to determine what type of technology we wanted to build, we told ourselves that we would strive to do something different.

While other companies offered a kitchen sink full of features, we decided to stick to what content marketers actually need to be successful. While some companies collect data indiscriminately and dump it in people’s laps, we wanted to create analytics that help marketers learn and adapt, and ultimately help them decide what to do next.  And while other companies have tried to cut corners on the way to content marketing success, we knew that to be successful, we’d have to focus on the challenging tasks that lead to long-term results.

Basically, we decided to build a smarter content marketing platform.

Digiday recently recognized this work by naming Contently the “Best Content Marketing Platform” in the Digiday Signal Awards.

The Digiday Signal Awards commend the “technology platforms that underpin modern advertising, marketing, commerce, and publishing.” This win is an honor, not just because other winners include tech giants like Oracle and Salesforce, but also because Contently is, first and foremost, a technology company. While freelance creative talent is central to our success, none of it would be possible without our tech.

What we’re about, fundamentally, is content marketing that actually drives business results, from brand awareness all the way down to direct ROI. We’ve practiced what we preached from the start by using our technology to publish our own publications (you’re reading one right now) that have become the envy of our industry. And our entire business is based on helping our clients achieve similar results.

This year, we’ve made our platform more intelligent and more intuitive with the launch of Contently Analytics, inline comments, the Stories API, and more—a big part of why we’re fortunate to count some of the best content creators in the world as our clients.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been recognized for our company culture, our rapid expansion, and now for our technology. As a company, we pride ourselves on the ability to think differently in order to be better. With all of this praise, it’s important to take a moment to think about how far we’ve come. But now more than ever, we’re going to continue to look forward.

The post Digiday Signal Awards Names Contently Best Content Marketing Platform appeared first on Contently.

But while there are a few tech unicorns that get more than enough cash and hype, for most startups, the reality is a little less glamorous. When budgets are lean, growth requires foresight, luck, and most importantly, creativity. But at the same time, without the pressure to live up to billion-dollar expectations, some startups have the ability to make a name for themselves by taking calculated risks.

At Contently’s recent salon, a few top marketers joined us for a discussion on how content impacts the way startups position themselves in an extremely crowded industry.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the the session.

On taking risks:

At Signpost, VP of Marketing Andrea Kayal has the freedom to make creative decisions, but she also stressed taking risks you can justify with data. Her advice? Experiment with fresh ways to generate leads and new business as you’re ramping up. If these risks lead to success, then it’s time to double-down on what worked to stay efficient as possible.

At Chango (now Rubicon Project), Senior Director of Marketing Som Puangladda took a chance by launching “Marketers Against Marketing,” a riff on the popular game “Cards Against Humanity,” and the risk paid off, driving exponential ROI. As a result, the company followed up with a new expansion back titled, “The Ego Edition,” to capitalize on the momentum of the original campaign.

On email:

All of the panelists touched on the importance of email newsletters, particularly for startups that don’t have huge budgets to spend on paid distribution. The ability to marry content to distribution can lead to tremendous organic growth. As Contently Editor-in-Chief Joe Lazauskas put it: “Email is the new homepage.”

On the power of video:

Just because a company has a lean budget doesn’t meant it has to abandon multimedia content. Sara Goldfarb, content marketing manager at AppNexus, pointed to cost-effective live streaming platforms like Periscope as a way to reach more people during events. And Puangladda explained how a few bedrock videos can go a long way towards driving long-tail engagement—like Chango’s “How to Explain Programmatic Video to Your Grandma,” which you should check out as soon as you finish reading this.

The post How Startups Hack Their Growth Through Content Marketing appeared first on Contently.

Decades later, I put my sitcom bartending fantasies on hold to work at Contently as director of people (that’s startup lingo for director of HR). Today, Contently was named one of the best places to work in New York City by Crain’s New York Business. The rankings looked at factors like benefits, charitable giving, perks, and company culture. For me, the most exciting part of this honor is that the majority of the scoring is based on confidential input from employees—and I promise I did not bribe their responses.

We’re growing quickly, and it can be tough to make sure that our company is a place where people want to come everyday. Yes, we have the cliché startup perks like snacks, laser tag field trips, and dogs in the office—which are all awesome. But it’s about a lot more than that. Our founders have three key values that they’ve instilled in each new employee since day one. When we have a decision to make that will have an impact on our company culture, we ask ourselves if it fits our core principles:

Own it

We only hire smart, talented, and driven employees. We give our team the freedom to take responsibility for their work because we trust them and know that we hired the best talent out there. They can take long vacations and work flexible schedules since we know they’re committed and will do what it takes to get the job done.

Be a giver

Giving is important from both a company and individual perspective. From the top down, executives promote a collaborative work environment. Many of our projects are interdepartmental, and employees are always encouraged to help each other to get work done.We founded Ladies@, a group that connects Contently employees with the larger startup and technology communities, to raise the bar for all women across the the tech industry. And through RaisedbyUs, a nonprofit, we set up payroll deductions to donate to hundreds of charities.

Be awesome

At Contently, we truly care about each other. Whether it’s karaoke on a Friday night, playing in our shuffleboard league, or meeting for our monthly book club, we choose to spend time together outside of the office. As we continue to hire new employees, it’s important that our team feels a sense of camaraderie and that we become friends with the people we spend most of our time with each day.

Our office may not be Cheers, but it’s definitely a place where everybody knows your name.

The post Where Everybody Knows Your Name: Contently Named One of Best Places to Work in NYC appeared first on Contently.

We’d love if you would vote for the three panels our team is participating in.

1. Engaging With the Audiences That Matter

Who’s on it: Contently VP of Brand Development Elisa Cool with leading marketers from HSBC, Genpact, and CNBC Digital.

Why you should vote for it: There’s a ton of talk about creating and sharing content, but what’s often overlooked is that there’s very specific content that needs to get to a very specific audience: the people with the power to make purchasing decisions. You’ll hear from brands and publishers using content to engage their target audiences, providing a diverse perspective with clear takeaways.

2. Why Are VCs Obsessed With Content Marketing?

Who’s on it: Contently Editor-in-Chief Joe “Lazer” Lazauskas with top content leaders from the venture capital world.

Why you should vote for it: Somehow, there’s a hot trend in Silicon Valley that no one’s talking about: VCs are launching a content marketing arms race among each other in hopes of securing the industry’s most coveted entrepreneurs. And the implications for entrepreneurs and investors alike are huge.

(Also, if this panel gets voted in, Lazer promises to record a thank-you video in a full-body bear suit. The metaphor he’s going for is unclear.)

3. No CTO, No Problem: Building A Non-Technical MVP

Who’s on it: Director of Contently Studios John Hazard moderates a panel with leading brands and venture capitalists.

Why you should vote for it: Too many entrepreneurs are holding themselves back because they think they need a CTO to move forward. Entrepreneurs will share their experiences with building and launching products, along with a VC perspective to round out the conversation.

Not sold yet? Click on the links for a little more detail, and take these five easy steps to vote:

1. Go to SXSW PanelPicker.
2. In the top right corner, click Sign In.
3. You can sign in with Facebook or by creating an account.
4. Once you have your account, click on each of the above topic links, and click the thumbs-up sign.
5. Click Share toward the bottom left to share these topics on social!

We’ll see you in Austin—BBQ and beer on us!

The post 3 Awesome SXSW Panels That Won’t Happen Without Your Help appeared first on Contently.

Why am I taking this trip down memory lane? Last week we hit another important milestone on our journey: We learned that we ranked #100 on the 2015 Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing companies.

On a personal level, it’s incredibly satisfying that the nearly 100 employees at Contently will have a tangible reminder that their hard work is paying off. Whether it’s our head of HR who has consistently recruited top talent, our youngest intern who grew to become one of our top account managers, or our developers who bring amazing innovation to the Contently platform, everyone should be reminded that their contributions are what got us here. The top 500 companies on Inc.‘s list collectively created 57,822 jobs, and it feels good to know that Contently will be contributing even more to that number in the coming years.

For our company, and the content marketing movement more broadly, the recognition from Inc. is one more piece of evidence that shows just how impactful original storytelling can be when embraced by brands. When we started Contently, there was a lot of skepticism—the term “content marketing” was barely a twinkle in the marketing industry’s eye, and the hot trend was for content farms to exploit writers who were creating content for SEO robots. Luckily, there were a few eager employees, one brave investor, and a handful of ambitious brands that took a chance on us.

In 2011, we launched The Content Strategist to practice what we preached; we wanted to show that we could build the best marketing industry publication using Contently’s technology and network of freelance writers, designers, videographers. Fast forward to 2015. What has TCS become? A best-in-class trade publication and our most effective sales and marketing tool, with an audience of more than 250,000 monthly readers. It’s full of insightful writing, clever videos, infographics, e-books, cartoons, and longform articles, and it has consistently driven incredible return on investment.

TCS is editorially independent but also serves as a lead generator that has helped our company grow to more than $7.5 million in revenue in 2014. To put that number in context, our business grew over the last three years by 3,391 percent—a figure that surprised just about everyone, apart from our business intelligence team.

This year’s Inc. 5000 list was very competitive, with a median growth rate of 1,772 percent, and we’re extremely proud to be included. We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished, and we’re proud to be able to tell the people who bet on us that their bet is paying off.

The post Gambling on Content: Contently Ranks #100 on Inc. 5000 appeared first on Contently.

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• Option A: Strive to make Contently an excellent and equitable workplace for all female employees.
• Option B: Strive to make technology, startup, marketing, and media industries (historically misrepresented industries and the ones that Contently is a part of) excellent and equitable industries for all female employees, by reaching out to women and men to raise the bar across the board.

As you may have guessed, we picked Option B. We shortened Ladies@Contently to Ladies@ and we started planning. Recently, we took what felt like a significant step toward our lofty goal with the official Ladies@ launch event. Three excellent speakers joined us to give advice on the theme “3 Things I Wish I Could Tell Myself 10 Years Ago.”

Stephanie Rule, anchor and managing editor for BloombergTV and Bloomberg News, kicked things off to a packed house at Meet on Chrystie.

Stephanie spoke in an intimate and conversational tone, sharing personal stories and words of wisdom about the challenges of balancing work, family, and friends when you set ambitious career goals for yourself.

Dave Zwieback, VP of engineering at Next Big Sound, gave insights on how to take risks to find a career that you’re passionate about, advising the crowd to “choose the things that energize you and don’t apologize for not doing the things that drain you.”

Georgene Huang, founder of Fairygodboss.com, spoke about how to advocate for yourself in the workplace, particularly when it comes to tough issues like maternity leave, negotiating a higher salary, and finding a schedule that works for your family.

In addition to learning from women and men with experience under their belt, an important part of Ladies@ is fostering relationships between people across companies. Attendees from companies like ZocDoc, Namely, eRevalue, and Spotify ate, drank, and networked.

We already have another Ladies@ event in the works for October, and we’d love to see you there. Even though it’s called Ladies@, this isn’t a women-only club. Men are more than welcome to come. In fact, guys, we need you there—to make sure the workplace is welcoming to women, we all need to work together. We’ll be launching an official Ladies@ website that will include great tips from leading women and men who want to reach out to others in our industries and collectively raise the bar.

The post Failure Sucks but It Probably Won’t Kill You: Advice From the Ladies @ Launch Event appeared first on Contently.