That’s because there’s still a gap between AI’s promise and its practical value — you know, all those “AI best practices” that no one can quite trace back to real outcomes. Meanwhile, clicks and organic traffic are in freefall.

Of course, at Contently we firmly believe in the value of AI as a force multiplier for great teams. Used thoughtfully, it can streamline research, tighten workflows, and help people ship higher-quality content faster.

But we also recognize that there are some persistent “marketing myths” about what AI can realistically do for content programs and how to use it effectively. These myths tend to take root because AI marketing advice swings between extremes: Hype merchants promise transformation without effort, while skeptics dismiss everything as a fad. Neither helps the marketing director trying to figure out what actually works on Monday morning.

This is the year to get that clarity. Here are five myths that deserve to stay in 2025.

Myth 1: More AI Tools Automatically Mean More Efficiency

On paper, it sounds logical: Add more AI, get more done. In practice, it often works the other way around: Instead of replacing manual steps, many teams end up layering tools on top of one another.

The takeaway isn’t “use fewer tools,” but rather that true efficiency comes from connected workflows. When AI lives inside the places work already happens — your briefs, your CMS, your editorial calendars — the gains start to show up. Good training and clear guidelines can also do more for productivity than chasing the newest feature set.

What works: Before adding anything new, map your current process end to end. Look for bottlenecks AI can realistically remove, consolidate where possible, and invest in helping your team use the tools they already have with confidence. Some basic guardrails also keep everyone from experimenting in five different directions at once.

Myth 2: AI Content Performs Just as Well on Its Own

Thanks to AI, we’re no longer short on content. Most teams can publish more than ever. The real challenge is creating work that actually sounds like you — and earns more trust than the nearly identical post your audience saw five minutes earlier.

Performance now hinges on expertise and perspective, not volume. Search engines and readers both look for signals that someone who knows the topic is actually behind the keyboard, but generic AI text often lacks the lived experience and perspective that makes content persuasive. In other words, grammatically correct copy isn’t the same thing as a compelling narrative.

What’s more, left to its own devices, AI tends to default to the safest version of an idea, which is rarely memorable (and probably won’t drive conversions).

The teams seeing results are treating the AI content creation process as a collaboration. They layer in examples from real customers, clarify claims, tighten arguments, fact-check (!!!), and make sure every piece serves a clear business goal.

What works: Use AI to speed research, outlines, and first passes. Then layer in human editing for accuracy, voice, story, and differentiation.

Myth 3: AI Will Solve Bad Strategy

AI optimizes execution. But it cannot fix fuzzy positioning or off-base business goals. Speed amplifies direction, including the wrong direction.

We see this play out all the time. Teams use AI to publish more, faster… and the metrics that matter don’t budge. Traffic goes up, but conversions stall. The content ranks for keywords, but it doesn’t speak to real buyer pain. Without clear positioning or a path to conversion, all that new visibility simply evaporates before it reaches pipeline.

What works: Get crisp on messaging and conversion paths before you scale production. Then let AI help you execute a strategy that’s already pointed in the right direction.

Myth 4: Everyone Needs to Adopt AI for Everything Immediately

FOMO drives bad technology decisions. Teams adopt tools because competitors are using them, not because they actually solve identified problems. Those wrong-fit tools then create cost, confusion, and cynicism that makes future adoption harder.

The teams that make AI work may not move the fastest, but they do make those moves deliberately. They start by identifying a problem worth solving, define what success should look like, and only then pick the technology.

Readiness also matters. A team still ironing out basic content workflows won’t get much leverage from advanced optimization features. A team without clear governance can accidentally multiply brand, legal, and data-privacy risks as soon as AI scales production.

What works: Look for a single, high-impact use case where AI can remove friction or cost. Run a contained pilot. Document what improved (and what didn’t). Expand from there.

Myth 5: AI Search Is Basically the Same as SEO

Marketers understand visibility through rankings. So it’s easy to assume AI-powered answers are just another extension of Google’s algorithm. They aren’t.

Traditional SEO metrics like site structure and performance remain foundational. But AI Search works differently. Instead of ranking pages, language models compress and rewrite information across multiple sources. According to Ahrefs’ 2025 research, AI Overviews reduce clicks to top-ranking pages by 34.5%. In short, ranking well no longer guarantees visibility.

Visibility in AI Search depends on whether your content is structured clearly and rich with credible context. Two articles might rank identically on page one. The one with clear structure, schema markup, and direct answers gets cited repeatedly by AI assistants. The other rarely appears in AI-generated responses.

What works: Maintain traditional SEO foundations while adding practices designed for AI visibility — clear entity definitions, structured data, and question-driven content formats.

If the last few years were about experimentation, the next one should be about discipline. Use AI where it helps, skip it where it doesn’t, and focus on outcomes instead of promises.

Here’s to a 2026 with fewer breathless predictions and more proof that the work is actually working.

Ready to build AI workflows that actually help your team accomplish real work? Contently’s AI-assisted content platform combines generative AI efficiency with editorial oversight — so your team accelerates without sacrificing quality or brand safety.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

How do I know if my team is ready for AI adoption?

Assess your current content operations first. If your team has documented workflows, clear brand guidelines, and consistent publishing processes, you’re ready to pilot AI tools. If basic operations still feel chaotic, strengthen those foundations before adding AI complexity.

What’s the minimum investment needed to see results from AI?

Most teams can start with existing tools. Many content platforms now include AI features at no additional cost. The real investment is time: Expect to spend two to four weeks training your team on effective prompting and editing workflows before seeing consistent productivity gains. Budget for those learning curves.

How should I balance traditional SEO with AI Search optimization?

Treat them as complementary. Continue building topical authority, improving site performance, and earning quality backlinks — these fundamentals still matter. Layer AI-specific practices on top: structured data markup, clear entity definitions, and content formats that answer questions directly.

The post 5 AI Marketing Myths to Leave Behind in 2025 appeared first on Contently.

It’s hard to fault these reasons because there are an insane number of tools out there:

Insane graphic via MarketingLand

But the options are overwhelming for a reason. Each marketing technology platform—or martech, because why not—has a different strength for a different type of business. And it’s to every marker’s benefit to know how to use… well, maybe not all of them, but at least the ones in their vertical.

Here are some of the best martech platforms available in key categories, broken down for small, mid-market, and enterprise businesses.

Small Business

Content Management System (CMS)

WordPress

Yes, it’s what your niece uses for her blog. But WordPress isn’t just about blogging anymore. With a range of options from hosted to self-hosting to tons of unique plug-ins, you can tailor WordPress to your needs—including your budget—with ease.

And when we say “with ease,” we mean without the help of anyone who has a Ph.D. in HTML. And if you get tripped up, you can always call your niece.

Analytics

Google Analytics

Google rules the world for a reason. It knows everything that happens on the Internet. (Or close to it, anyway.) That’s why Google Analytics is such a powerful analytics tool, even though you don’t have to pay for it.

While other paid options offer more in-depth profiling, Google’s analytics product is so robust for small businesses that it inspires quotations like this from Christopher Penn of email marketing company Blue Sky Factory: “If someone tells you that Google Analytics isn’t enough for a small business, then frankly they have no idea how to use it properly.”

Email Service Provider (ESP)

MailChimp

In a side-by-side comparison of ESP features, MailChimp’s biggest advantage jumps right off the page: $0. For small businesses with fewer than 2,000 subscribers, that’s hard to beat.

However, should your company need to send more than 12,000 emails per month, increase its subscribers, or add more features like advanced merge fields and segmentation, the price climbs a bit.

Constant Contact

Right up there with MailChimp in terms of usability, Constant Contact may not be free, but it has affordable plans based on low subscriber numbers. Plus, all plans include an unlimited number of emails.

Though PC Magazine experienced some glitches when testing the product, small businesses can get a lot of great features on a budget out of Constant Contact.

Mid-Market

CMS

Sitefinity

According to CMS Critic, Sitefinity was “the first and only CMS” offering the three mobile development strategies of responsive web design, mobile websites, and mobile apps.

It’s also less technical than other CMS platforms aimed at larger companies, so you don’t have to be a developer or have one on hand to use it. CMS Critic also gives the technology props for its capabilities in e-commerce, multi-site management, and content personalization.

Drupal

If your cybersecurity concerns outweigh your need for simplicity (and, honestly, they probably should these days) Drupal offers plenty of flexibility with more peace of mind.

The platform has flexible hosting options and plug-ins, and while it requires more developer savvy to use, “Drupal leads the way when it comes to CMS security,” according to Entrepreneurship Life.

ESP

Campaigner

For more robust ESP needs than the low-cost options, Campaigner offers some more advanced features like multiple user capabilities and automatic segmenting that give you sophistication. It also offers the unique benefit of 24/7 phone support and was named PC Magazine‘s Editors’ Choice for advanced email marketing tools (although it’s worth noting that J2 Global, the company that owns Campaigner, also owns PC Magazine.)

Marketing Automation

Marketo

For mid-sized businesses with martech needs beyond a traditional ESP, a marketing automation platform can provide an all-in-one solution. Marketo, for example, offers ESP, social campaign products, analytics, native CRM integration, and business intelligence capabilities.

It’s one of the most comprehensive platforms of its kind, including just about every feature mid-market businesses will need.

HubSpot

In a side-by-side comparison, HubSpot and Marketo have a lot in common. The slight differences are that with HubSpot has more affordable entry-level plans, while Marketo ranks slightly higher on a number of quality criteria like campaign design and editing.

Marketo may have a few more bells and whistles, and be a more powerful platform, but HubSpot is still well received. Overall, it may be a friendlier option for growing, budget-conscious, mid-sized businesses.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Salesforce

Both HubSpot and Marketo integrate with Salesforce for customer relationship management. Universally acknowledged as the largest and most well-known CRM software, Salesforce offers ease of use, flexibility in the form of a widely customizable dashboard, and lots of functions, like lead gen tracking and sales forecasts, that track and analyze customer interactions. It also has a strong reputation for keeping all that customer data safe from security breaches.

Enterprise

CMS

Adobe AEM (aka Adobe CQ)

There’s no getting around the fact that Adobe’s CMS option is expensive—nearly every reviewer mentions the price, which frequently winds up in the millions. But for enterprises with deep pockets, the functionality can make Adobe CQ an essential tool for marketers.

In a Forrester analysis, Adobe’s software rated high for cloud deployment, native mobile app support, portfolio integration with marketing and commerce, testing, runtime architecture, and ecosystem support. As the report stated: “Adobe has built the best portfolio for companies with the greatest marketing need.”

Analytics

Google Analytics Premium

The standard Google Analytics could be enough for small to mid-sized businesses, but enterprise level organizations have entirely different analytics needs.

Google Analytics Premium offers more detailed data on customer segmentation and shopping behavior; it’s also integrated with both Google products and data from non-Google sources. Additionally, it promises hand-on support in the form of a dedicated account manager and ongoing training.

IBM Digital Analytics

Not all web analytics have to come from Google. IBM Digital Analytics (formerly IBM Coremetrics) offers comparative insights and benchmarks against industry leaders as well as a custom dashboard and actionable data.

The optional add-on IBM Digital Analytics Multisite fits into IBM’s Enterprise Marketing Management software.

Oracle Business Intelligence

Oracle offers a broad range of analytics features, including ad-hoc analysis, automatic scheduled reporting, profit analysis, and predictive analysis. Software analysis firm ITQlick calls it “the BI and analytics to beat.”

Predictive Analytics

Lattice Engines

Predictive analytics take data a step further—and into the future. Lattice Engines uses algorithms to recommend enterprise companies feature selection, data normalization, and predictive modeling. These powerful tools allow marketers to anticipate how consumers will behave, including what they’re likely to buy and when.

Marketing Automation

Oracle Eloqua

One of the top marketing automation platforms for enterprise businesses, Oracle offers detailed lead management capabilities, including two-dimensional lead scoring model, and has a relatively easy learning curve compared to platforms in its class.

Adobe Campaign

While’s Adobe Campaign’s learning curve doesn’t rate as highly as Eloqua’s, it does come with a wide range of features including the ability to integrate with most major CRM platforms. It also has the advantages of integrating with Adobe’s many other marketing solutions for enterprises already leveraging the Adobe Marketing Cloud.

The post 17 Platforms That Will Make You a Better Marketer appeared first on Contently.

Last week, several members of the Buffer team decided to pull back the curtain even further and invite readers to submit questions on a discussion thread. For one hour, Content Crafter Courtney Seiter, Happiness Hero Patrik Ward, Community Champion Nicole Miller, and Developer Tom Redman offered in-depth insights into how Buffer works and rocks the marketing world. They touched on everything from being a self-managed team and dividing into Task Forces to the future of their new Pablo app and content strategy.

The entire thread is worth a read, but in case you didn’t want to filter through it all, we’ve sifted out the top 10 nuggets of information from some of the best B2B marketers in the biz.

1. The benefits of having a virtual newsroom

Nicole: There are so many positives for us when it comes to having a remote team. Buffer has a history of being remote from the start, and now it allows us to hire amazing people from all over the globe. We have an array of tools that help keep us all connected. One drawback can be a lack of face-to-face time, but we are very fortunate to be able to go on retreats every five months and collaborate and bond in person.

Patrik: We’re also moving a lot faster now that we’ve adopted Task Forces (small, nimble teams of 3–4 people who assemble to complete a specific task and then dissolve), so there’s a lot going on at a given time.

2. Why transparency is so important to their team

Nicole: I’d say the biggest benefit (in my view!) of being a completely transparent company is the level of trust between the company and the community. Joel has said that the basis for transparency comes from being honest, and I believe our community knows and respects that.

Courtney: I would say that transparency almost becomes more important when things aren’t going well. When Buffer got hacked, transparency, in my mind, was the most crucial element of our response. And on a lesser scale, any time we face a challenge or obstacle, sharing it with others inevitably seems to surface people who have experience in that area and want to help us. It’s a really cool side effect of transparency!

3. Three tips for creating sticky content

Courtney: Lots of contextual links (not just to one’s own content). It’s pretty common to have a reader tell us, “I have 13 tabs open after reading that article!” If you’re working on what you want to be a really comprehensive, be-all, end-all piece, it makes sense to us to link out to the great work others have done.

Lots of informational visuals. We love visuals on the Buffer blogs, and specifically visuals that help a reader understand an element of the story very quickly or more in-depth. Charts, bits of infographics, lists, all those “extra” elements can offer context and continually draw the reader back in as she continues down the page.

Some very actionable examples of almost every tactic we describe. We want readers to leave a post of ours feeling like they have everything they need to go try these ideas on their own.

4. Why they use a team approach on social media

Tom: As most things at Buffer, this was a data-driven decision. A few months ago we did some customer research to determine what might be the best route here. We sought to find out if it felt best for our customers requiring support whether we had a single, dedicated team member work with them, even if it meant a bit longer between communications, or if they’d prefer to have potentially faster communication but with multiple people. We discovered through direct chats that most customers preferred the fastest response time, even if that meant chatting with a couple different team members, so that’s the route we took!

5. What content metrics they use

Courtney: We are not quite as metric-driven as we used to be, but we do look at a few elements.

• Social shares: This is our sort of one-glance metric to let us know how well a post is spreading. Posts that are shared widely also are great candidates for syndication with some of the major publishers we work with, like Time, Fast Company, and Entrepreneur, so we look at those numbers from that perspective as well.
• Click-throughs: My favorite Buffer metric! It’s always so interesting for us to see which social posts hit the mark and get lots of click-throughs and which ones we can workshop and try again in a different way.
• Traffic: We check Google Analytics maybe once a week or so (maybe a little less?) to make sure we’re on target traffic-wise
• Conversions: For this we turn to Looker, where we’ve got quite a few specific “Looks” that tell us things like which on-page CTA converts the best, which types of content convert the best, etc.

6. What their technology stack looks like

Tom: We use a lot of different tools and platforms, I’ll try to list off as many as I can think of. (Note: Tom listed 22 platforms. We’re including the first 10.)

• Gmail with heavy filtering and labels, currently working on a unified Gmail extension to provide even more power and flexibility across the team (working name is BuffMail). Our transparent email means we all get a lot of mail, and as the team grows, we need to find new ways of managing it.
• HipChat—we basically use this as our office. It’s used extensively every day!
• Sqwiggle, for rapid video chats and to feel like we’re physically closer to each than we are.
• Hackpad for product specs, getting advice, general thoughts, informal thoughts, formal thoughts, personal task tracking, just about anything you’d need to write down! We use Hackpad extensively.
• Trello for organizing Task Forces, features, to-do’s, generally anything involving a list.
• HelpScout for external email (support, hiring, etc.).
• SparkCentral for Twitter support.
• GitHub for code repositories, versioning, and, recently, issue-tracking.
• Jenkins for automated builds, running tests, and deploys (we have Jenkins hooked into HipChat for convenient deploys).
• Compose/MongoDB for database requirements.

7. What marketing automation they use

Tom: I believe we use MailChimp for our general mailing lists (Social, Open, Overflow blogs), and SendGrid for a number of transactional emails. We recently assembled a Task Force to review our transactional emails and I believe they changed some and added a few new ones! One example is the “hot tweet” email users now get when a tweet gets something like 10 times the average amount of reach.

8. How they’re beta-testing “smart” social technology

Patrik: We’ve recently started experimenting with a beta tool that analyzes your “best times to post” for each account and trying to take in as many factors as we can. I think that’s still pretty early and we’re really excited by the potential to make a feature like that super valuable, I’d be happy to turn that beta on for you if you might like to take it for a spin! On a related theme, we’ve started to look at making our content suggestions “smarter” by making them more aware of what you like sharing and then tailoring suggestions specifically to your interests. So I think there’s a lot we can do in the realm of smartly being available to help you with all aspects of social!

9. The future of their new Pablo app

Patrik: With Pablo, our main goal was to build a tool that made it easy to create awesome, engaging images quickly and in a way that fits with the overall Buffer experience. Canva is an amazing tool with a ton of options and features, I think I see Pablo as being an option for a lighter use where you might not need so many customizations. I’ve talked with customers who use Pablo for quick image generation and then turn to Canva or Photoshop when they need to create something a bit more involved, and I think it’s great that people choose the tools that fit them the best!

We’ve been very excited by the initial response to Pablo and while our early thinking was to keep it as a standalone product, we’ve started to change our minds and can definitely see the potential in having it integrated with Buffer more fully so that it can fit in with the natural flow better.

One thing that we’re working on now is offering the ability to paste a link into Pablo and have a list of images from that website suggested to easily create “teaser” images for any link, blog, or site.

10. What their content team is planning next

Courtney: Kevan and I talk about podcasting, doing more video, hosting webinars, all kinds of fun and different types of content we’d love to do. We are hiring right now and would love to grow the team so we can have a bit more bandwidth to explore these kinds of opportunities!

The post 10 Content Marketing Lessons We Learned From Buffer’s AMA appeared first on Contently.

It’s tough being a marketer today. You’re expected to be relevant, cool, and analytical to win over a global audience of fickle consumers. Fittingly, those who can conquer all three skills are called unicorns. As we head toward 2015, however, marketers who understand the tools at their disposal and create meaningful content don’t have to be anomalies.

Why is marketing underperforming?

First, let’s address the problem. The majority of non-unicorn marketers are playing a dangerous zero-sum game. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the average attention span of a human is now less than that of a goldfish—eight seconds, to be exact. Empowered by their shiny new marketing technologies, marketers are now producing hundreds of millions of emails, ads, and tweets on a daily basis, which, in my opinion, are only contributing to the attention deficit.

As Contently VP of Content Sam Slaughter aptly describes it: “Marketers are shouting into a hurricane.” So how can they get back on track?

Identifying the three vital marketing stacks

In 2015, developing three different types of stacks is going to be crucial for marketers who want to break through the noise and drive real business results.

The first is a technology stack, which is basically a club sandwich of software integration and customization that marketers and developers tinker with to create more logical and measurable campaigns—and lots of them. But even if you have all the necessary technologies, they still don’t play together well enough to quickly run a full campaign end to end. The fluidity needed to take a campaign from just a concept to the point where you’re calculating its final attribution of lifetime value (or even just brand lift) is simply not there yet, nor will it be in 2015. That’s why you need your other stacks optimized to bridge the gap.

The next key stack is the talent stack, which most marketers would agree could use a little bolstering. Specialists such as industry journalists, graphic designers, videographers, and website developers who can produce quality content at scale are almost as hard to find as that unicorn marketer.

Lastly, marketers need a professional services stack to help manage the madness. A unicorn can only be in one place at a time, so running world-class marketing programs at scale requires small vendor teams from agencies and consultancies that can fill in project management and knowledge gaps.

Optimize the stacks and win the battle

1. A smarter technology stack should help you reach a hyper-targeted audience by leveraging original content, distributing to your most effective channels, and measuring how your content is performing. Contently relies on a number of tools, including our own content technology platform, WordPress, MailChimp, Marketo, Salesforce, and a few smaller technologies to reach a targeted audience of 150,000 marketing pros.

2. A diversified talent stack should consist of full-time marketers (including creatives) and part-time freelancers who are all committed to your company’s content strategy. This talent stack should be able to compete with the biggest media publishers to create content quickly and win the battle for your audience’s attention.

3. A dedicated professional services stack should go that extra mile to ensure your most important marketing programs are running effectively. Though these experienced project managers, account managers, and consultants may come with a heftier price tag, the value they generate and the time they save you and your team will make the expense well worth it.

Final thoughts

In 2015, only relying on marketing technology just isn’t going to cut it, no matter how many articles or sales people tell you otherwise. To earn and retain customers long-term, you’ll need to start building a fantasy team to power your stacks. You don’t necessarily need a bunch of unicorns, but you do need a strong roster of engineers, marketers, and creatives working together in concert. Do that well, and you’ll produce ROI figures that will leave everyone looking at you like you just sprouted wings.

The post Stacks on Stacks on Stacks: Where Marketing Technology Needs to Go in 2015 appeared first on Contently.

I, Robot: How Marketing Automation Can Destroy Your Content Marketing Strategy

Are you at risk for getting improperly seduced by the marketing automation? Justin Lambert reports:

For anyone responsible for lead generation and nurturing, the idea of automating your marketing holds serious appeal. Just imagine a steady stream of qualified leads being sucked into the top of your funnel and automatically working their way down until they’re paid customers—all with little or no effort on your part. Amazing, right? And that, my friend, is part of the problem. Read it.

Instagram Video: The Love Child of YouTube, Vine, and Lil Jon

Lil Jon is bringing the art of the web series to Instagram in a series and it’s magical, writes Jillian Richardson:

Adidas Originals and Champs Sports are also getting into the short story game, but they’re not using Vine. Instead, they’ve launched a video series on Instagram targeting high school varsity athletes called Adicolor TV. If you’re not exactly sure what that looks like, it pretty much means professional athletes dancing, Lil John speaking his own personal language, and trippy visuals. The series of videos is an intriguing experiment in combining the frenetic aesthetic and appeal of Vine with the type of serialized storytelling usually found on YouTube. Read it.

4 Viral Parody Sites That Will Inspire Your Content Strategy

There’s little that people love more than a good parody; just look at how The Onion has been able to build an empire on the foundation of satire. Herbert Lui examines four that will inspire your content strategy and get you out of that boring-blog-post rut.

4 Ways Your Brand Can Become a True Thought Leader

Thought leadership is a much-maligned buzzword, writes Huge’s John McCroy, but we’ve yet to come up with a better term. And it’s something brands need to master:

The best thought-leading marketers continuously build their brand through stories and events, giving life to their brand’s value across a vast ecosystem of paid, owned, and earned channels. GE lives for innovation. IBM brings its smarts to the planet’s biggest challenges. Google realizes the most powerful marketing and advertising insights through its data. You see these brands’ stories wherever you look.

That ubiquity doesn’t happen naturally—it’s earned through telling great stories. Here are four critical factors to establishing a successful thought leadership presence for your brand. Read it.

3 Amazing Pieces of Anti-Hipster Content Marketing

Want a great marketing campaign? Just make fun of hipsters, says Julia Kupper:

You see them everywhere; you probably know one, and you might even be confused about whether or not you are one. Our generation’s subculture of “hipsterdom” is pretty flimsy in comparison to other post-war styles, such as the hippie, punk, or grunge movements.

Besides displacing hard-working families and old-times residents, the urban-based hipsters haven’t accomplished much in the way of rebellion over the last decade. So it comes as no surprise that people have started to dislike this kale-eating, grandma’s-sweater-wearing kind. And brands are no exception. Read it.

The post Content Catchup: Lil Jon’s Social Media Love Child, and More Must-Read Stories appeared first on Contently.

Just kidding. It’s all about content — especially when you read between the lines. Fifty seven percent of marketers plan to increase their content management spend in 2014; unsurprisingly, 57 percent also plan to increase their social media marketing spend, as content management and social media marketing are intrinsically linked. After all, a big part of social media marketing is managing a constant flow of short-form and long-form content.

More surprising were the social channels that marketers plan to adopt in 2014. My top three guesses would have been Instagram, Snapchat and Tumblr … probably because I’m a 26-year-old who just read Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book. Instead, these were the top 5 results:

• Google+ (18 percent plan to introduce in 2014)
• SlideShare (17 percent plan to introduce in 2014)
• Blog (17 percent plan to introduce in 2014)
• Podcasts (17 percent plan to introduce in 2014)
• Pinterest (16 percent plan to introduce in 2014)

Surprised that Google+ topped that list? It’s all about the long-hyped impact of Author Rank on search results. Of course, Google+ can only improve your SEO results if people share your content there, and with that social network being a ghost town it remains a very difficult proposition. (Unless, of course, you have some sort of large-scale employee-sharing scheme.)

The three other areas that marketers plan to increase their spend will impact brand publishing efforts as well, although they touch on many parts of a brand’s overall marketing plan.

Data and Analytics (61 percent): This is an area that impacts every aspect of marketing (BIG DATA holler back!). But it’s also a very important part of optimizing brand-publishing efforts and getting eyeballs on your content.

Email Marketing (58 percent): Email remains one of the most effective ways to distribute branded content, and if you want people to open your emails, you better be sending them something compelling.

Marketing Automation (58 percent): Marketing automation tools are going to be a big part of the way that brands get eyeballs on their content in 2014 — mostly through content-rich native ads on social media platforms like Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram.

This is just an examination of the survey through a content-focused lens, but there’s no doubt that marketers are poised to invest heavily in content in 2014. The entire survey is worth a read; check it out.

Contently arms brands with the tools and talent to become great content creators. Learn more.

The post Most Marketers to Increase Content Management Spend in 2014 appeared first on Contently.

Of course, all that jabbing tires marketers out, and that’s what’s driven the rise of social marketing automation. Tools like HootSuite, Buffer and Nimble let you schedule your jabs, and now, Google wants to build a bot that the search giant says will do all your jabbing for you. Google’s new patent describes a bot that can replicate a person or brand’s voice, posting updates and replies on social media for them.

This may sound like a dystopian nightmare or a marketer’s dream world, depending on who you ask. But it brings up a lot of big questions about what the role of automation should be in the brand publishing age.

There’s no doubt that marketing automation tools can go a long way towards keeping marketers jabs on schedule, freeing them up to work on that big right hook. But it doesn’t come without risks. Automation risks turning brands into a behind-the-cycle, lifeless broadcasters, and removes them from what Meridian apps CMO Jeff Hardison calls the ultimate, idealistic approach to marketing: high-touch.

In sectors like retail, e-commerce, hospitality and consumer technology, a high-touch approach to social media can serve as an essential ingredient in the brand’s overall communications plan. AT&T has built a lot of good will thanks to its customer service on Twitter.

In his book, Vaynerchuk talks about how his original YouTube tasting series for WineLibrary.com worked because it was natively crafted to the platform and constantly incorporated user feedback and interaction. Vaynerchuk is a big believer in the power of one-on-one communication. The WineLibrary Twitter has an extremely high ratio of “at replies” to broadcast tweets. This is what Vaynerchuk calls “scaling one-to-one.”

When you compare Vaynerchuk’s warm and friendly approach to the dry thought leadership-driven approach of some business-to-business IT companies, it’s pretty stark. Many of the big boys’ feeds are rich with links to brand-produced content, but there’s almost zero customer interaction, seemingly by design. Vaynerchuk might say that they’re forgetting that they’re allowed to jab with both hands.

Should marketers automate social media activity just because they can? “Marketing automation was designed to reduce overall headcount in the sales and marketing department, but that doesn’t mean it translates well into social media marketing automation,” says Kent Lewis, founder and president of Anvil Media. “The two are different beasts, although they can play well together.”

Planning in itself isn’t the problem, in Lewis’ mind. Rather, it’s planning well. “Just because you are planning out conversations in advance, doesn’t meant they can’t be heart felt, humorous or profound,” he says.

Lewis believes the future of marketing automation will rely on making it an inherently human process, and that means adapting the way you would in a real-life conversation. “This may mean not over-building conversations at the start,” he says, “and taking more of an adaptive, real-time approach to better meet the needs of prospects.”

They key? Lewis suggests hiring a good writer or team of writers to create content that is timely, relevant, unique and approachable.

The underlying message is clear—put the tools of automation in the hands of highly skilled writers, editors and customer care professionals to help them tell better stories and engage with more people. But don’t confuse the tools with the work that needs to be done. And follow some classic sci-fi advice: Don’t hire a machine to do a human job.

The Content Strategist is our brand’s story. What’s yours? Let us help you find the answer.

The post Google Dreams of a Bot That Will <br>Take Over Your Brand’s Twitter. <br>Should You Let It? appeared first on Contently.

Pitchfork Opts Out of the Pageview Rat Trace (Digiday)
User experience and revenue are two equal forces that are sometimes at odds.

Is it your profits that tell you whether you’re cultivating a great multimedia experience? Here’s one brand that’s putting its foot down in favor of its readers.

How We Grew Crazy Egg to 100,000 Users with a $10,000 Marketing Budget (Neil Patel)
When you’re just starting up, you need to make the most out of a shoestring budget. The key to growing your business on a small budget?

Press, SEO, business partnerships, and conference presentations. The key to growth is distribution through content, people, and technology. Here is Crazy Egg’s amazing story.

3 Ways to Come Up with Popular Blog Topics (TOFU Marketing)
Blogging is your most powerful customer acquisition tool. If you’re not writing as often as you can, you may be missing out on a powerful networking opportunity.

There’s a powerful force, however, that holds even the smartest business leaders back — writer’s block. Here’s TOFU Marketing’s guide to brainstorming better blog topics.

What You Need to Know About Marketing Automation (Search Engine Watch)
In the audience engagement world, email marketing is a powerful tool — but are you leveraging this resource as much as you can?

Marketing automation is key for reaching your segmenting demographic groups, targeting the right users, and sending emails at just the right time. Be data-driven and as efficient as you possibly can. Automation is key.

The post UX Wins at Pitchfork, Tight Marketing Budgets, End Writer’s Block appeared first on Contently.