We’re witnessing another ‘once in a lifetime’ event (lots of those lately, it seems).

Traditional search is dying. Dramatically. According to Gartner’s latest research, we’re facing a 25% reduction in traditional search engine use by 2026, leading to a 50% drop in organic traffic by 2028.

Why?

Because content discovery mechanisms that marketers have relied on for decades are being fundamentally disrupted. Users are bypassing the entire traditional search ecosystem and instead asking AI for answers directly.

And AI’s answers are simply a better user experience. The answers are nuanced to the user, clear, and complete. The answers are actually answers, not just a list of blue links.

So it makes sense that the question I hear most often from enterprise CMOs is “how do I get our content seen in an AI world?”

The New Reality with AI as Gatekeeper

Your content now faces a new gatekeeper before it ever reaches human eyes: LLMs (Large Language Models) decide what information is relevant, trustworthy, and worth surfacing.

While many see this as a threat, I’ve come to view it as the most significant opportunity in content marketing since the rise of social media. It’s a chance to reset the playing field, where the best content wins, not just the content with the biggest SEO budget behind it.

Seeing this change, we’ve spent months talking with customers, testing, and completely rethinking our product roadmap. I wanted us to be ahead of this change, not scrambling to catch up.

Introducing Contently AI

We’ve been hard at work over the last 6 months preparing Contently for this new reality. After countless conversations with customers and months of development, I’m excited to share the first parts of our new vision:

1. Contently AI Studio

I’ve watched our clients struggle with the classic content dilemma: you can have it fast, good, or affordable – pick two. This impossible triangle has forced difficult compromises, especially as content demands continue to increase.

When we started developing Contently AI Studio, I was actually skeptical. I’ve seen plenty of AI tools that produce hollow, generic content. But what changed my perspective was watching how our managing editors worked with early versions of the platform.

Rather than replacing their expertise, AI became an extension of their capabilities. Our editors remain firmly in control of the creative process: they’re the conductors, and AI is simply a new instrument in their orchestra. They guide the research, shape the narrative, and ensure every piece aligns with strategic goals and brand voice.

What excites me most is seeing how this partnership between our editors and AI technology is delivering real outcomes:

• Our managing editors can now produce thoughtful, strategic content in hours instead of days
• Clients are getting more content for their budget without sacrificing quality
• The consistency and accuracy of content has actually improved, not declined

I’ve been particularly struck by the feedback from our early adopters. In blind tests, content created through this editor-led AI process was actually preferred over traditionally created content. We’re seeing production timelines compressed by 14x and ROI improvements exceeding 450% in some cases.

And let me be clear – we’re not forcing anyone down this path. We will continue to offer a choice. Our network of 160,000+ freelancers remains fully available to those who prefer a completely human-created approach. What matters to me is that our clients get exceptional content that drives business results, regardless of how it’s created.

2. LLM Optimization Blueprint

I’ve been fascinated watching how SEO has evolved over the years. But what we’re developing now is fundamentally different.

While SEO focused on keywords and backlinks, our LLM Optimization Blueprint service actually gets your content into LLMs and AI search results. It sounds simple: just create content that AI systems recognize as genuinely valuable and authoritative. But there’s a lot more to it.

Through months of testing, we’ve developed an approach that ensures your content:

• Appears prominently in AI-generated responses from systems like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google AI Overviews
• Maintains factual authority that AI systems recognize and prioritize
• Builds consistent brand presence across emerging AI discovery channels

What’s remarkable is how quickly we’re seeing results. In our early beta programs, we’ve placed clients in the top position of AI search results in just 6 weeks. One client is now receiving 32% of their sales qualified leads from AI search results, a channel that didn’t even exist for them six months ago.

I believe this represents a fundamental power shift in content marketing. For the first time in years, smaller players with great content can outperform giants with massive budgets. That’s why I’m excited to announce we’re expanding our LLM Optimization Blueprint beta program to more clients.

Bridging Creation and Discovery

What I find most powerful is how these two components – creation and discovery – work together. It’s not enough to just create great content if no one sees it. And it’s frustrating to optimize for visibility if your content isn’t worth reading.

Our early adopters are telling me that this integrated approach is giving them confidence that their content investments will actually deliver business results. Which is our mission at Contently. And these new capabilities are taking it to another level.

What This Means for Content Teams

I understand that integrating AI into established content workflows can feel daunting. Our team has worked hard to make this transition as smooth as possible, with our strategists guiding implementation every step of the way.

What I’ve observed is that most clients start small, applying these new approaches to a subset of their content. As they gain confidence and see results, they gradually expand. There’s no need for a dramatic overhaul of your entire content operation overnight.

Leading the Next Era of Content

Content marketing is undergoing a significant transformation. I believe we’ll see companies with modest budgets outrank enterprises spending millions, all because they understand how to adapt to AI as both a creation tool and distribution channel.

At Contently, I want us to help our clients lead this transformation. We’ve already been working with select enterprise clients and are excited to expand to more with the launch of Contently AI Studio and LLM Optimization Blueprint.

I guess this isn’t really the future of content, because everything I’m talking about is already here. The opportunity exists now, and the companies that move quickly will establish advantages that become increasingly difficult for competitors to overcome.

I’m excited to partner with you on this journey. Whether you want to fully embrace these new approaches or take incremental steps, our team is ready to help you navigate this changing landscape.

Let’s get started.

– Brandon

The post The Future of Content(ly) appeared first on Contently.

I wasn’t entirely surprised by this finding; I’d recognized this as a pattern when examining the analytics of individual accounts. But now I wondered: were our customers secret SEO wizards?

When I started digging deeper through interviews with the content marketing teams that use our platform, I came to a surprising realization. They were not. And most were nowhere near reaching their full potential.

Our customers’ SEO performance was primarily attributable to the high-quality, well-reported, original stories they were producing through Contently, which Google loves and naturally garners backlinks. But from a strategic perspective, there was so much room for improvement.

The main culprit? A flawed process that might look familiar to you:

1. The content team would create a story without an SEO strategy in mind.

2. The SEO team would come in at the end, cram in keywords, and make the writing worse.

3. The story wouldn’t rank for the keywords that got crammed in anyway.

Keyword stuffing may have worked a decade ago, but modern search engines are so sophisticated in interpreting language that pieces edited after-the-fact for SEO don’t often drive results.

In 2021, SEO is most powerful when used to give insight into your audience. The questions they’re asking. The topics they’re researching. SEO insights should spark your ideation—providing the creative constraints to inspire your team and spark story ideas that answer your audience’s biggest questions. When we examined our most successful and sophisticated customers, this was the approach they took.

And so, we decided to build the latest and greatest feature on the Contently platform: SEO Story Ideas.

SEO Story Ideas is the newest addition to the Ideation section of our platform. It uses a purpose-built algorithm to instantly recommend story concepts likely to rank well in search, based on your content strategy and existing target keyword list.

Our algorithm searches through billions of keyword options in order to deliver the target phrases that make sense for individual brands, and have the strongest implications for content pieces. Each idea comes complete with critical organic search data, so it’s easy to determine which have the most potential to drive organic search traffic.

With this feature, we’re excited to continue to boost our customers’ content performance, while taking another big step in our mission to fuse the art and science of storytelling together.

By automating the keywords research process, SEO Story Ideas frees up time for SEO strategists by allowing their content partners to find data-driven story ideas easily and independently, while giving editors and writers inspiration for high-impact content.

SEO Story Ideas is the newest addition to the Ideation section of our platform. It uses a purpose-built algorithm to instantly recommend story concepts likely to rank well in search, based on your content strategy and existing target keyword list.

In just a couple clicks, our customers can turn a story concept into a pre-filled pitch request and ask their freelance team to come up with unique angles on the story. Or they can assign the story and put it into production. This ensures our customers are creating content that’s not only high-quality and well-reported, but also likely to perform well in search.

Optimizing ideas and proving ROI

Of course, this wouldn’t be a Contently post if we didn’t also talk about content measurement and optimization. We’ve also built on our industry-leading Content Value analytics which now show how much the organic search traffic to each story you create is worth, based on how much it would cost a competitor to replicate that success. (Some of our best-in-class customers are able to demonstrate over $50 million in content ROI using this method.)

When combined with our in-depth story-level engagement insights, these new analytics provide a comprehensive view of the performance and ROI of every story you tell, so you can make smarter decisions through each round of publishing.

Some of our customers have already been using this feature in beta for months, to tell incredible, high-performing customers, and we’re so excited to see everyone combine the art and science of storytelling—with a little dash of improved process to make everything hit just right.

Watch a demo to explore these new features now!

The post Introducing SEO Story Ideas: Your New Favorite Content Strategy Tool appeared first on Contently.

I know I’m not alone. Marketers have to keep an eye on both the past and the present. Marketing–and content marketing especially–is a delicate balance between planning for the future, staying nimble to respond in real time, and analyzing past performance metrics to inform continuous optimization. When you’re in the thick of it, it can be pretty chaotic and hard to find your footing.

This year, we set out to help marketers conquer content chaos by giving them tools to align their people, strategy, and technology. We launched campaigns, which help marketers understand how a piece of content fits into an overall strategy (not to mention its budget). We rolled out our content request feature to help marketers rely on their internal subject matter experts with ease. We also added to our already robust strategy offering with editorial workshops, which help marketers tackle ambitious projects with a blueprint of best practices.

Individually, these features solve pain points and help marketers execute at scale. When viewed holistically, though, they help marketers achieve content mastery.

Today’s marketers are expected to be Swiss Army knives. They’re supposed to write, edit, shoot video, run campaigns, analyze data, prove ROI, work with sales, help accounts, know HTML, and then maybe sleep if there’s any time left in the day—not exactly the best formula for success. But with the right strategy and tools, not to mention the right partner, marketers can create content centers of excellence that power their organizations and their strategy.

I’d say that 2018 went by too fast, but I can hardly wait for what 2019 has in store.

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

The post Contently Looks Back at 2018: Campaigns, Workshops, and Content Mastery appeared first on Contently.

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.

The industry has improved so much since then. And we’ve had to as well. A few weeks ago, all of our employees gathered in our New York HQ to talk about our driving theme for 2018: smart growth. Our focus has shifted subtly to ensure that we only add the right clients to our customer base and set them up to drive long-term business results.

Plenty of innovative brands are well on their way to content mastery. And we’ve helped a number of them get there by providing the insights, resources, and products that marketers need to get the most out of their content programs. There’s a fine line separating smart growth and superficial results, and the people who work at Contently have spent years establishing the right methodology to help our clients.

That philosophy is resonating. Inc. unveiled its 2018 list of fastest-growing private companies, and Contently has earned a spot for the fourth year in a row. This honor comes on the heels of being recognized by both Forrester and Gartner as a leader among content marketing platforms.

It’s rare for companies to make the Inc. 5000 list four years in a row, and it’s a testament to the people who make Contently a special place to work. We’ve had our ups and downs as a pioneer in the industry, but I firmly believe we’re on the right path toward smarter, sustained growth. We’re also learning from our clients’ successes, seeing how their content has impacted their business goals and helped their teams scale.

Speaking of which, we’re looking to keep growing and improving ourselves. If you want to help us making Inc’s list again next year, click here to find out how you can join the team.

The post Contently Named to the Inc. 5000 List for the 4th Straight Year 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.

This is an incredibly important message to send. But organizers from A Day Without Women recognize that not all women can afford to take off work, and not all work environments restrict women’s rights. (For more info on the movement’s goals, click here.)

At Contently, we wanted to find a way to participate in “A Day Without Women” while supporting our female employees who are (valiantly) choosing to show up for work.

Today, we asked several female employees to lead an educational seminar on Women’s Herstory. These women decided to turn it into a collaborative event, taking time to honor every woman in the company for her achievements, and interviewing our HR director to better understand how Contently ensures a more equal work environment.

In addition, we’ve decided to make a symbolic gesture. Since women are paid, on average, 80 percent of what men make for the exact same job (although that is not the case here), we have decided that the women of Contently will have the last 20 percent of the day off. Our hardworking ladies will leave at 3:24pm and do whatever they feel is right to change the world on their own terms.

And yet, one day is not enough.

As a white male founder, it’s not only my desire to honor the achievements of the women in this company, it is my duty.

It may seem counterintuitive for me to speak up on International Women’s Day. But only when people with societal privilege (here’s looking at you, guys) stand up and acknowledge both flagrant and subtle forms of discrimination, can we make progress combating them.

This year, a pillar for International Women’s Day is “securing executive statements of support.” With executive support comes accountability from those who wield economic power. Consider this your proud executive statement of support to promote and fight for women’s economic, political, and social equality.

The sad truth is that in 2017, discrimination against women still exists in the workplace, even when leadership takes aggressive steps to fight against it. We don’t tolerate discrimination inside of these walls. Yet despite demanding respect for and from all of our employees, we recognize systemic issues are at play. Men and women are socialized differently. This subconscious stereotyping impacts people, in unique ways, years later when they enter the workplace. (For example, studies show men tend to be promoted based on potential while women are rewarded for past performance.)

Our HR director has thoroughly combed through every role at this company to ensure that when women and men are equal in skill and role, they are equal in pay. We then have a rigorous professional development plan tailored to the individual.

At Contently, we cherish our female leadership not simply because they are women, but because they bring a perspective this company needs to succeed. And we support the personal development of every woman here, which is why we jumped on board when a few brave women announced they wanted to start a women’s organization. (The org site, Ette All, launches today.)

Each day, we aim to build a company that embraces differing views, and gender is one of those factors that influences how one sees and experiences the world. As such, we, the founders, want to emphasize our commitment to the progression of feminism and demand equal rights for women and men.

The post How Contently Is Supporting International Women’s Day appeared first on Contently.

And that’s not hyperbole. I’m proud to announce that for the second year running Contently has been named to Deloitte’s 2016 Technology Fast 500 Ranking, which recognizes both public and private companies with operating revenues of at least $5 million.

This year, Contently achieved an explosive 697 percent growth rate, ranking number 123 on the list. We’re honored to share this accolade with other groundbreaking companies like Facebook, Twitter, Hubspot, and Marketo.

Making this list for the second year in a row is particularly important to us because Contently is a technology company first and foremost, and technology companies thrive on growth.

Since our ranking last year we’ve launched an array of exciting products: Contently Social, a suite of social integrations and access to more than 600 social strategists and creators; Contently Live, a content hub optimized for lead generation that drives business results; and Document Analytics, a measurement tool for PDFs and other downloadable assets—just to name a few.

Helping marketers by providing smart technology and great storytelling isn’t just what we sell—it’s at the core of everything we do. It’s why we invest so much in our award-winning digital publication, The Content Strategist, a leader for digital marketing news and analysis. It’s what spurred us to acquire our first company, Docalytics. And it’s what inspired us to expand across the Atlantic to London, as well as across America to St. Paul, MN and San Francisco, CA.

Navigating a rapidly changing industry isn’t easy. But our sustained growth is evidence that we’re on the right path. And while seeing my kids grow up is the greatest thing in my life, watching Contently grow has been pretty rewarding as well.

The post Contently Named to Deloitte’s Fast 500 List for Second Year Running appeared first on Contently.

Saying goodbye to the weekend is never easy, but there is a solution: making the workplace a better place. That means building a culture where people enjoy each other’s company, are fulfilled by their responsibilities, and have access to the resources they need to succeed.

Of course, that always sounds much simpler than it actually is. As the head of people at Contently, it’s my job to make these solutions a reality as best I can. Today, we received some vindication that we’re on the right track: Contently was named one of Ad Age’s 2016 Best Places to Work.

Hundreds of media, advertising, adtech, and martech companies from across the country applied and were judged on their workplace policies, practices, demographics, and employee experience. It was a competitive list. Only 50 companies made it, and we’re honored to be sharing the accolade with companies like Pandora, PwC, and Foursquare.

So how did we make Ad Age’s list? Well, when you’re competing against ad agencies and startups, fun perks are a must—and on that front Contently does not disappoint. Besides free snacks and a stocked fridge, we also make sure our employees have plenty of opportunities to bond with their fellow employees. Ideally, the best perks involve both food and socializing, like our recent company lunch and 15-way trivia battle royale.

But while those kind of things are important, it’s really our non-edible benefits that make Contently a great place to work. Things like our comprehensive health insurance, paid parental leave, and two-month paid sabbaticals for employees that have been with us five years all ensure that our employees are healthy and happy.

Each benefit we offer is meant to reduce stress, improve work-life balance, provide our employees with the resources they need, and instill a sense of community at Contently. Whether it’s our dog-friendly office, annual education credit, unlimited vacation policy, or weekly mindfulness sessions, our goal is to support our employees in both work and life.

If this all sounds like I’m persuading you to come work at Contently, I am—we’re hiring! But I’m also drawing attention to our perks and benefits because they illustrate one of our core beliefs: You need smart, talented people to do great things, and great benefits ensure that those people are at their best.

More than anything, it’s those smart, talented people that make Contently what it is—and they’re the ones that help make our Mondays suck a little bit less.

The post Contently Named One of the 50 Best Places to Work in Media By Ad Age 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.

The post Contently Buys Analytics Startup That Tells B2B Marketers How Well Their Downloads Work 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.

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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.

When it comes to content performance, marketers are limited to looking at their own historical data, charting growth or decline, with little background on whether those metrics are good, bad, or even downright useless. The truth is, it’s incredibly difficult to understand how your efforts are performing without something vitally important: context.

Think about it. How do you know how you’re really doing unless you know what success (or failure) actually looks like?

That’s why Contently is in the process of releasing the industry’s first-ever content marketing benchmarks, providing the crucial comparative metrics you need to understand how your performance stacks up to that of other organizations.

Gain powerful new insight into how you compare to other companies:

• Production data: See how your operation’s output and efficiency stack up to the world’s best content marketers, including metrics focused on content creation. Identify key areas for improvement and growth.
• Performance metrics: Dig into critical comparative content performance data including total and average attention times, engagement, and people. See where your content stands relative to industry norms.
• Dynamic benchmark data: View production and performance benchmarks for any date range, from weekly, monthly, or quarterly to any custom range required to meet your reporting needs.

In the near future, we’ll expand our benchmark capabilities to include:

• Additional production and performance metrics: More visibility into your content strategy.
• Content amplification metrics: Better optimize your distribution spend. Metrics will include total cost, CPC, CTR, total attention time per dollar spent, and more, allowing you to eliminate waste and more quickly exploit areas of opportunity.

Data-driven decision making is a large part of what it takes to create content that works, and it’s part of what makes Contently the smartest content marketing platform on the planet.

The post New From Contently: Content Marketing Benchmarks appeared first on Contently.

Success requires being able to tightly manage the communication between the many humans needed to make great content happen. That’s why, over the past few months, Contently has been in the process of developing the most highly customizable workflow tools on the market.

Producing quality content at scale requires a workflow that mirrors the complex real-world circumstances of your organization, assuring that everyone clearly understands what’s going on in language that everyone understands.

In order to tackle this challenge, we’ve made it easier for you to define your own work steps in a modular fashion, as opposed to being limited to pre-determined tasks.

In the last three months we’ve released the following updates, each of which brought us closer to the promised full flexibility of all existing and future workflow templates:

• Allowing you to custom-name a step to add needed context
• Adding the ability to include payment, due dates, and bylines to any step
• Enabling you to add, delete, and move steps while creating and editing a story, without affecting the actual workflow template
• Simplifying story statuses to “Unassigned,” “In Progress,” and “Complete”

Latest Update: Production and Approval in One Unified Workflow

This week, we’ve got one more major update to Contently workflow: We’ve combined the production and approval processes into one fully customizable and easily editable workflow.

As a user, you will notice that the first step of every workflow template is now “Create Story.” Previously when creating a story, production step and approval flow were kept separate, thus forcing the user to always have creation as the first step.

Before:

With “Create Story” now part of the workflow, users have the flexibility to change its title, move it around in the workflow, and, in case it’s not required at all, delete it.

After:

Ultimately, it’s all about creating content that works. These latest changes to the Contently workflow ensure that you can work as easily and efficiently as possible.

The post Update: A Simpler, Unified Workflow appeared first on Contently.