Rather than showcase every content marketing software that could work for agencies, we've hand-picked 4 innovative products that help agencies and their clients succeed.
As an agency creating content for multiple clients, your needs are different. You have to simultaneously drive better results than your clients could get on their own — while also working more efficiently so you can serve even more clients with the same amount of resources.
Not easy but the rewards are worth it. These tools will help with both aims.
What agencies should look for in content marketing software
Because your needs are different, so are your requirements. (Sorry for the software talk.)
You need software that gets better results for clients and saves time.
You might not be able to get all of the below in one tool, but these are the features that can really help content marketing agencies:
- Consolidated collaboration with content creators
- Faster, streamlined publication and distribution
- Evergreen social media posting
- Simple to manage different accounts
- Supercharges content promotion across all channels
- Helps drive more backlinks
- Reports on ROI
- Helps you determine what content performs best
Take stock of the software you're already using for your client accounts. To achieve all of the above, you might only need to add one or two of these new tools to your tech stack. But if you're using no content marketing software whatsoever and only basic social media software, then you might want to consider adding all 4.
Now let's take a look at the 4 tools that can help agencies get better results while saving time.
Content marketing software that agencies should try
1. StoryChief
What it is:
StoryChief is a content marketing platform that lets you write, review, approve, publish, and promote content all in one place. It integrates with WordPress and several other CMS so that once a blog post is ready to go, all you have to do is click publish and it instantly goes live on your client's site.
At the exact same time that you publish a blog post, you can also promote it. You can publish it to all of the popular social media networks, send it out in an email newsletter, add it to Medium and a LinkedIn post, and so much more.
Basically, if you've still got writers using Google Docs, then this tool will change your life. Get ready to save dozens of hours a month.
What makes it stand out:
- Streamlined collaboration
- Simple but effective content approvals
- One-click to publish anywhere online
- Integrated content promotion
- Multichannel reporting
Why it's great for agencies:
Think of how much time a business wastes when their content operations suck. Now multiply that by how many clients an agency has and you can see why agencies can get the maximum amount of value from StoryChief.
The more content you create and promote, the more time you'll save.
Plus, with that time savings, you can take on additional clients without making any new hires.
You'll also increase employee satisfaction because your team will appreciate the ease of collaboration and promotion. Old-school, manual processes are frustrating, so go ahead and ditch them.
2. BuzzStream
What it is:
BuzzStream is a content marketing software link building and digital PR tool that the best SEO and content marketing agencies in the world use. We found out about it from Siege Media, an agency that uses it for their clients.
A common offer from SEO content agencies is to provide backlinks with every post. Let's say you have a package that includes two blog posts per month, with one infographic and 10 quality backlinks per blog post. BuzzStream will help you acquire those backlinks.
The tool makes it easy to find email contact information for bloggers and digital publishers, create email templates, send emails automatically, and track backlink outreach success.
What makes it stand out:
- Built for backlinking and digital PR (a generic cold email tool means you're using the wrong tool for the job)
- Helps you find contact information for blogs and websites you want to reach out to
- Built-in database of contacts
- Email scheduling, reminders, and automated followups
- Backlink tracking
Why it's great for agencies:
If you're not already offering backlinking as a service, BuzzStream can make it easy for you to start. You can upsell clients into a more comprehensive content marketing retainer, and then utilize BuzzStream to save time on prospect research, email sending, email followup, and results tracking.
3. Cortex
What it is:
Cortex is a content marketing software that helps brands strategize and automate their visual content. With Cortex, you can get deep insights into what visual content resonates with audiences and why. Not only will the product deliver data-driven insights, but it also uses AI to create new content. You can automate social media content creation and scheduling so that all an account manager has to do is approve new posts.
You can use Cortex to understand the themes, subjects, colors, and messages that perform best with your audience. With most other software, you can view which posts are performing well, but you'll have to guess why. With Cortex, there's no guessing.
What makes it stand out:
- Insights into WHY certain visual content performs better than others
- Insights into when to post, and what distribution networks to focus on
- Content creation based on which visual trends resonate the most
Why it's great for agencies:
This social AI platform was built for brands and the agencies that serve them. Brands and agencies invest heavily in visual content. They employ the best designers and photographers. Using the insights delivered from Cortex, agencies can be sure they're devoting resources to the right campaigns. Now you can gauge how something will perform before even creating it.
Although the insights features alone should help agencies save on visual content creation, there's also the chance that the AI content automation will create usable posts. That would be a huge money saver too, obviously.
Not a content agency? That's fine. Check out our comprehensive list of the top content marketing management tools.
4. GetSocial
What it is:
GetSocial is a good content marketing software platform for tracking dark social shares and effectively distributing viral content. Dark social refers to shares of an article that can't be tracked. This typically happens when a user shares a link in Instagram DMs, Facebook Messenger, email, or a messaging app like WhatsApp. GetSocial has features that allow you to track these dark social shares. The platform also includes analytics and reporting to help you see the best times to post on social media.
An estimated 78% of social media shares are actually dark. This means that agencies and brands are properly attributing where a good portion of their content traffic comes from. Agencies and brands aren't aware of which posts are truly viral. They may wrongfully assume that a post that got the most tweets or Facebook shares is the most viral, while ignoring a post that got privately shared 4x as much in the same time period.
By measuring dark social shares and correctly attributing visitors, companies can also discover their best performing content, so they know which content deserves further paid promotion and should be replicated in the future.
What makes it stand out:
- Ability to track dark social shares
- Discover your most viral content (not just based on social media shares, but private shares too)
- Track ROI and results of content more accurately
Why it's great for agencies:
Agencies need to showcase the results of their content. Many agencies will report on the number of content views or reads and social media shares across major networks, but if you're not reporting on dark social then you're missing out the chance to showcase all of the success of a certain piece of content.
Viral content helps brands save big on content promotion and distribution, so if there are certain pieces that are getting shared widely, you need to know which ones those are. Discovering these can impact tons of decisions: which posts get more paid promotion, which posts should inspire future content creation, which posts should get more organic content promotion.
Plus, with features to discover the best times to post, agencies can re-promote the most viral pieces at the best times. Even better, you'll get alerts when a piece of content is going viral, so that you can take action and work towards even more paid and organic promotion for that piece. Basically, you can ride the viral wave instead of letting it pass by.
Key takeaways
Clients don't come to you because you create basic content using boring methods. They come to you because you have a winning process and can generate better results than they possibly could.
All of the above content marketing software for agencies are super innovative and results-focused. Aren't you?
