Chris Bowler believes that there really is only one way to take advantage of all the opportunities presented in the content marketing world: technology. “We need to keep up with all the channels that are exploding, and tech is the way to help us do that,” Bowler said during his Content Performance presentation, “5 Emerging Technologies That Will Revolutionize Content Marketing,” at the 2016 Content Marketing Conference. Bowler is the senior vice president over social media and content marketing for Razorfish, a full-service content management agency. Bowler argues that the future of technology in content marketing involves real-time discovery, content management systems that are more centralized, integrated publishing and more.
1. Content Planning
Bowler claims that planning great content requires more research than humans can necessarily perform without technological assistance. You could research topics and influencers, but this can change rapidly over time. He suggests BuzzSumo to do a simple analysis of content in your industry, identify influencers and curate content that is most likely to engage your readers. For a look into the future of current trends, Bowler recommends SpredFast. He notes that SpredFast is moving toward all-in-one service, with trends research, topic longevity and social recall. SpredFast uses real-time research into keywords used on various social media platforms to predict what will trend and what may fizzle out. You can use this intelligence to curate content that is more likely to retain relevance longer.
2. Content Organization
The world of content marketing keeps expanding, particularly for social media. Bowler argues that this situation creates a terrible mess for companies that are not prepared with a concrete plan. Without a schedule, he claims that businesses may not have any idea what the marketing plans are delivering and when. For better content organization, Bowler thinks that Percolate and Opal are the best choices. Percolate specializes in cross-channel workflow management, offering visual campaign planning and creative asset management. Opal allows you to create a visual schedule for all of your marketing campaigns, including social media, emails, news releases and more. It also integrates with other CMS platforms like SpredFast or Sprinklr.
3. Real-Time Response
Any marketing campaign that cannot change on a dime may miss out on trends that could become big within a day or two. Do you want to be at the vanguard of the trend, or one of the people who showed up a day too late? Bowler claims that software that tracks trending in real time can help you spot what is happening right now, as well as what may happen in the next several hours. He looks at them as “cultural moments,” which rarely last a long time.
He recommends SocialFlow to monitor the flow of readers on your social media platforms, to analyze your proposed content based on current trends to determine how well it may perform. The program also provides a comprehensive platform for social media ad promotion. Bowler suggests Digital Roots for natural language processing that can give you detailed analysis that is continually changing based on the introduction of new lingo. This linguistic study allows you to build a customized response list using the correct terminology at the right time.
4. Integrated Publishing
If you are still relying on manual publishing, it is time to move to a better CMS platform, Bowler states. He says it is absolutely crucial to centralize your social publishing. SpredFast Conversations offers publishing at scale that supports more channels, identifies best topics by influencers, with workflow tools that are easy to use. Sprinklr has comprehensive publishing, including paid media and the ability to upload content for approval, not just for publishing. Percolate is a truly integrated platform, managing all of your posts in various channels with an omni-channel digital platform, as well as helping you to discover and take advantage of upstream content that you may want to syndicate. This allows you to decide if you want to build spokes for a hub, or start inside your website and spread out to other channels.
5. Dynamic Visualization
At times, Bowler argues, companies want to see or show off how a particular campaign is working. This requires dynamic visualization, for people in the company or for your readers. If you use Tagboard, you get a content hub that monitors your marketing campaign with real-time search of various social media channels. Sprinklr acquired the digital brand visualization platform Postano to give you a full-service system. You can look at dynamic visualization for retail, web and events, with a large template library to create posts quickly. You also get Sprinklr’s CMS platform for management of social publishing, and Bowler claims that these two systems likely will be integrated together soon. The goal for your business is more custom content in smart modules that can change on the fly.
With the current system of content marketing management, Chris Bowler believes that “we are left with this really messy world.” Fortunately, Bowler sees a future with integrated systems, real-time analysis, trend management and scheduling to go with your CMS platform. It results in your ability to see, at a glance, when you should be publishing different kinds of content, giving you an edge on your competition and reaching readers before others do.