No matter how much time you spend building your content marketing strategy, without the right platform to execute, it may flop.
It happens all the time when brands fail to distribute, monitor their data, or even maintain consistent formatting across their blog. You'll see lackluster results all because you haven't streamlined your process.
Of course, there's no perfect one-size-fits-all platform that'll work for every business. When you choose a platform, you need to ensure it has the specific tools you need.
In this article, we'll look at some of the top content marketing platforms to help you find the best fit.
Content Marketing Platforms Worth Using
Content marketing tools all serve a particular purpose for engaging with your customers. Most of those available specialize in one particular step of content marketing, such as planning, research, or distribution.
The ones included in this list do it all.
Rather than jumping from app to app, consider these three all-in-one solutions, so you can spend more time focused on marketing rather than finding the right tool for the next step of your process.
What You Want From Your Platform
In general, the best all-in-one content marketing platforms are going to offer three things.
First, they'll have tools to help you generate a strategy. Whether that's through keyword research, content calendars, or topic suggestions, you'll have a native option for developing your plan.
Next, they'll have content creation tools that streamline your processes. From outlining through publishing, the best platforms provide a solution that limits the amount of jumping around between resources.
And finally, the platform should give you the ability to track all your data, comparing traffic and engagements over time.
You may have other tools for handling specific pieces of your process, but an all-in-one solution will include these three offerings. Anything extra is a bonus.
So, without further adieu, here are the content marketing platforms you should check out for your own brand.
1. Hubspot
Hubspot is well known for its influence in the content marketing sphere, and its platform is compelling proof of that. With so many tools within the company, they offer one of the best all-in-one content marketing platforms on the market.
Hubspot provides fully integrated blogging, allowing you to create, edit, and format your content, then update directly onto your website. The tools also present keyword suggestions and on-page SEO advice based on your work.
You can plan out your campaigns with their content strategy tool. This software is specifically designed to assist in finding the right topic clusters for your brand. Additionally, the strategy tool is integrated into the content software, so you're able to discover topics based on your own site's relevance.
With the platform's marketing analytics, you can track the quantity and quality of traffic headed to your site. Data is collected for each page, and the tool also shows which traffic source is most effective for bringing in visitors, contacts, and customers over time.
Hubspot's platform offers file management, allowing you to access your images, videos, and CTAs to add them anywhere within your document. Files are searchable, and you can organize them into as many folders as you need, so finding specific items is never a problem.
An additional bonus is that Hubspot's content management is fully integrated with their customer relationship manager (CRM). This means your marketing and sales teams can work as one, accessing the same data in real-time.
Hubspot offers one of the most comprehensive platforms around. If you want every tool located in the same place to manage your content marketing strategy successfully, Hubspot is worth your time.
2. StoryChief
StoryChief claims to be the "content editor of the future," enabling brands to collaborate more effectively and reach a broader audience.
The platform allows publishing across nearly all websites, as well as to content hubs like Medium. Additionally, content can be shared across social networks and customized to the specific channel. You can also publish to your MailChimp email campaigns, creating a more extensive distribution with significantly less work.
Since adding the Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) to their suite of solutions, you can now track all your data through Google Analytics. The information is presented within their site, allowing you to monitor views, clicks, time spent on page, and even actual reads of your content. This data can lead to valuable insights you can put to use immediately.
In addition to their data integration, the platform's content calendar can connect with Google Calendar, Outlook, and Apple Calendar, so your company isn't forced to use another system. Everything can be managed from StoryChief's native calendar or managed through the provider of your team's choice.
StoryChief has partnered with Zapier to build various automations that benefit their users. By integrating with the applications users are already familiar with, StoryChief cuts down on the amount of onboarding required and gets your time producing fast.
3. Curata
Curata's software assists in all aspects of your content marketing strategy.
Through their analytics tools, customers can quickly identify what content is best for each stage of the buyer's journey, see how that content is performing, and assess author performance. But, perhaps the best resource is the ability to generate customized reports based on a wide variety of data. This makes it easy to monitor goals as they change with different campaigns.
Curata's editorial calendar planning tool is fully customizable as well. It also allows users to incorporate data into the production process by offering insights as you strategize.
For content production, Curata provides workflow templates that help streamline your process. Since ongoing work is presented on a single page for easy viewing, you can also tell where all the content is in the workflow and judge the task load of your team when assigning new projects.
Picking the Right Platform for Your Content Marketing Solution
Whatever tools you need for your content marketing efforts, these platforms are sure to provide you a solution. Still, if one of their native tools isn't working to your liking, feel free to find a specific tool that will.
At Lean Labs, we use Hubspot as our one-stop marketing solution. And as a Hubspot Partner Agency, we think everyone should consider it as their company's content marketing platform of choice. We believe it so much so that we've created a free eBook to help get you started. Download our Hubspot Savings Guide to learn how you can save 60% on your first year of service.