A content marketing platform effectively builds brand awareness, increases search engine visibility, and connects with your target audience. But how do you give yourself a competitive edge when it comes to content marketing? Your business can accomplish this by choosing the right content marketing platform that will help you achieve more remarkable results.
To help you with your search, I put together this list of the best content marketing tools that will enable your business to get the job done faster, easier, and more efficiently.
Best Content Marketing Platform Shortlist
Here’s the shortlist of the best tools that I’ll cover in this article.
- Buffer
- CoSchedule
- StoryChief
- SEMrush
- Ahrefs
- BuzzSumo
- Yoast
- ContentStudio
- Contently
- DivvyHQ
- Uberflip
- PathFactory
What is a Content Marketing Platform?
A content marketing platform is a system that helps your business plan, create, and distribute various content types from one place. These tools empower your brand to simplify your content execution strategy and go to market faster. An effective content marketing platform will provide your organization with an environment where your local and global teams can align content resources and tasks. It will enable better content production calendar and campaign schedule visibility.
With your content marketing team working together from one platform, they can leverage the system’s tools to measure your content’s effectiveness and get a clear campaign overview to help them track success and where to make improvements. The main goal of a content marketing platform is to connect with your asset repositories, such as a digital asset management system and downstream marketing systems, to optimize your content distribution and enhance personalization across all your marketing channels.
Overview of the 12 Best Content Marketing Platforms
You can use the simple overviews of each tool below to understand how each tool stands out from other content marketing platforms.
1. Buffer - Best for social media content publishing
Buffer helps businesses publish content on their social media pages directly from the web interface.
Why I picked Buffer: The tool provides a range of social media content publishing tools that are simple to use. With Buffer, you can schedule your posts and publish content to several social media networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook Groups, LinkedIn, and TikTok. You can use Buffer to drive meaningful engagement and brand growth by crafting different messages for each social network. The platform will publish your content for you to help you save time and showcase your work with automated reports.
Buffer is an excellent tool for any sized business needing a solution to help build their brand and connect with an online audience. The platform provides a suite of social media tools that are perfect for modern online brands that need to optimize their visual marketing, audience engagement, and analytics. Also, Buffer provides an artificial intelligence assistant that can help you generate ideas immediately and repurpose your existing content multiple times to help your business grow engagement across all your social media platforms.
Buffer Standout Features and Integrations
Features include customizable reports, multi-channel data collection, engagement tracking, brand tracking, automated publishing, content management, post scheduling, conversion tracking, social media monitoring, and customer engagement.
Integrations include ProjectManager, Desktop.com, Mailchimp, WordPress, Slack, Trello, Evernote, Google Drive, Zapier, Rebrandly, Typeform, IFTTT, and Zoho Flow.
Buffer costs from $6/channel/month when paid monthly or $5/channel/month when billed annually. Buffer offers a free tier that allows subscribers to manage up to three channels. The vendor also provides a free 14-day trial for paid subscribers.
Pros
- Top-notch analytics.
- Increases social media visibility.
- Automated publishing tools.
Cons
- Slow when uploading multiple images.
- Doesn’t support some hashtags.
2. CoSchedule - Best for coordinating content projects
CoSchedule provides tools that will help businesses coordinate their content projects effectively.
Why I picked CoSchedule: The software lets you coordinate all your content marketing projects and campaigns in one platform. CoSchedule specifically focuses on providing a centralized content calendar to help you plan what content to publish and when. CoSchedule includes an editorial calendar and features that will help you manage your social media, assign tasks, and have team discussions.
CoSchedule is suitable for any sized business that doesn’t need a full-blown marketing suite and is looking for a robust editorial calendar. The software helps you create a single publishing calendar that acts as your content blueprint for blogs, social media, emails, and other content types. CoSchedule also serves as an asset repository where you can store, index, and share your content assets.
CoSchedule Standout Features and Integrations
Features include an editorial calendar, publish scheduling, social media management, campaign management, multi-channel publishing, asset library, brand control, workflow management, version control, and asset sharing.
Integrations include Wrike, HoneyBook, Basecamp, Desktop.com, Mailchimp, Google Analytics, Asana, Trello, Evernote, Constant Contact, Zapier, Google Drive, and ActiveCampaign.
CoSchedule costs from $39/user/month when paid monthly or $29/user/month when billed annually. CoSchedule offers a free forever subscription tier.
Pros
- Effective content schedule recommendations.
- Drag-and-drop calendar tool.
- Perfect for managing multiple social channels.
Cons
- No alerts if a social account is unlinked.
- Has a slow load time.
3. StoryChief - Best for multi-channel content marketing
StoryChief allows users to create and publish content across multiple channels simultaneously.
Why I picked StoryChief: The platform makes it possible to publish articles across channels such as WordPress, Medium, Shopify, and other high-level sites. StoryChief also allows sharing this content across social media channels and your email marketing platform. It’s a robust tool that enables users to schedule a lot of content in a short amount of time.
StoryChief works well for organizations that need a solution to improve team collaboration. It’s likely that you have multiple people working on creating excellent content. StoryChief makes it possible to ensure everyone is in sync while working by providing a content collaboration workspace that everyone can access no matter where they are.
StoryChief Standout Features and Integrations
Features include content campaigns, content calendars, multi-channel marketing, content collaboration, SEO copywriting, AI power mode, analytics and reporting, social media management, employee advocacy, and content data management.
Integrations include Desktop.com, Mailchimp, WordPress, Slack, HubSpot CRM, Zapier, HubSpot Marketing Hub, Wufoo, Shift, Medium, Webflow, Integrately, Drupal, and Easyflow.
StoryChief costs from $40/month. StoryChief offers a free 7-day trial for new subscribers.
Pros
- Built-in SEO guidance.
- One-click content distribution.
- Easy-to-use content workflow.
Cons
- Custom fields need improvement.
- Analytics is underdeveloped.
4. SEMrush - Best for discovering content ideas
SEMrush aims to help businesses find new content ideas.
Why I picked SEMrush: This tool helps you develop a content plan that will have excellent SEO potential by discovering popular content ideas, headlines, and questions. You can use SEMrush to create content based on the ideas you identify, optimize it, measure its impact, and make revisions and improvements. SEMrush helps you further by generating content briefs that provides actionable optimization tips to help you decide which ideas will be most effective based on your competition.
SEMrush works for businesses that need a professional solution to help manage their content operations. You can use the platform to identify a specific keyword’s search volume to help you see whether it’s worth targeting. After choosing a keyword, you can use SEMrush to develop an effective content marketing plan and collaborate with your team. The software will help you check your plan’s progress in real-time.
SEMrush Standout Features and Integrations
Features include project management, audience targeting, SEO management, brand management, data visualization, backlink management, data discovery, social media management, broken link discovery, and competitor analysis.
Integrations include Improvado, Renderforest, Desktop.com, Reportz, Google Analytics, WordPress, HubSpot CRM, Trello, Shift, Yoast SEO, GuinRank, and AgencyAnalytics.
SEMrush costs from $119.95/month when paid monthly or $99.95 when billed annually. SEMrush offers a free account that allows subscribers to manage one project and track 10 keywords.
Pros
- Excellent keyword research capabilities.
- User-friendly and intuitive.
- The platform has regular updates.
Cons
- Difficult to learn at first.
- Costly for some businesses.
5. Ahrefs - Best for content performance reports
Ahrefs provides businesses with in-depth content performance reports.
Why I picked Ahrefs: The platform provides powerful reports to help you analyze your content and see where it’s ranking compared to your competition. Ahrefs has reports that uncover your competition’s organic keywords, backlink strategies, and PPC keywords. With this information, you and your teams can create content that will rank on search engines.
Ahrefs works for any sized organization that needs help planning and optimizing its website and content for search engines. The software provides a site explorer tool that will allow you to enhance search traffic with your content. With this tool, you can access crucial information regarding your content’s ranking and how it compares to other relevant content.
Ahrefs Standout Features and Integrations
Features include competitor analysis, keyword research tools, keyword tracking, rank tracking, site auditing, data dashboards, and list management.
Integrations include Marketing Miner, GuinRank, Rambox, Google Search Console, AgencyAnalytics, DashThis, Desktop.com, Rank Ranger, Klipfolio, Pipedream, and SEO Review Tools.
Ahrefs costs from $99/month when paying month-to-month or $83/month when billed annually. Ahrefs doesn’t provide any free trial information.
Pros
- Understandable dashboard and interface.
- Extensive content research tools.
- It’s an all-in-one SEO solution.
Cons
- No free trial.
- Expensive subscription tiers.
6. BuzzSumo - Best for finding content influencers
BuzzSumo helps businesses find influencers who will most likely help share your content effectively.
Why I picked BuzzSumo: If you’re sharing your content on social media, BuzzSumo can help you find relevant influencers with a history of sharing similar content. The Top Sharers tool within BuzzSumo will pinpoint these influencers and reach out to them to find out if they’re willing to share your content to expand your reach. The platform will track your content’s performance and create in-depth reports to help you see if the influencer’s efforts are working.
BuzzSumo is an excellent option for businesses needing a solution for content insights to help them create content ideas and monitor performance. BuzzSumo’s comprehensive analytics lets you see what content works best and where you need to make improvements. You can use the tool to find the words and phrases your target audience is searching for online and create high-performing content based on that information.
BuzzSumo Standout Features and Integrations
Features include brand management, audience targeting, conversion tracking, social media management, distribution management, influencer discovery, SEO auditing, competitor analysis, and keyword research tools.
Integrations include a powerful API that allows users to build custom integrations.
BuzzSumo costs from $119/month when paying monthly or $95/month when billed annually. BuzzSumo offers a free 30-day trial to new subscribers.
Pros
- Useful content analyzer.
- Conducts in-depth keyword research.
- Excellent content selection tools.
Cons
- Pricey for some users.
- Complex setup process.
7. Yoast - Best for creating optimized content for keywords
Yoast is a WordPress plugin that helps businesses write content for SEO.
Why I picked Yoast: This plugin is a popular tool for SEO that will help you optimize your content for a specific keyword. It focuses on ensuring search engines can find and understand your content. Yoast uses simple red, yellow, and green indicators that make it easy for you to determine if you optimized your content correctly or what needs more work.
Yoast is for businesses that use WordPress to build their website and want to improve their content’s SEO. The plugin can help you protect your content from scraper websites that curate content from across the internet using RSS feeds and publish them. Yoast solves this by adding a link to your content to tell search engines the original location of the content.
Yoast Standout Features and Integrations
Features include SEO auditing, content management, dashboards, word complexity, front-end SEO inspector, inclusive language analysis, estimated reading time calculator, schema controls, and keyword tracking.
Integrations include Blogely, WordPress, SEMrush, WooCommerce, Magento, ExactMetrics, Drupal, MainWP, BuddyBoss, WordPress VIP, Zapier, and Stackreaction.
Yoast costs from $99/year. Yoast offers a free version of the plugin.
Pros
- Easy to use and understand.
- Offers real-time content analysis.
- Shows Google search previews.
Cons
- Recommendations need improvement.
- Sometimes reads content wrong.
8. ContentStudio - Best for creating engaging content
ContentStudio helps businesses create and share engaging content at the right time.
Why I picked ContentStudio: With this content marketing platform, you can use its discovery, planning, publishing, and tracking features to deliver engaging content. The discovery feature in ContentStudio helps you find and analyze content that’s performing well in your industry. The planner tool adds structure to collaboration and teamwork efforts with a content calendar. The publisher feature schedules your content delivery, and the analytics helps you measure and report your content’s performance.
ContentStudio works for publishers, brands, agencies, and startups that need a solution to consistently share their best content and expand their reach. The software provides you with all the features you need to centralize your content marketing efforts across all your channels, such as social networks, blogs, and newsletters. To help save you time, ContentStudio also provides an AI Caption feature that will automatically create custom AI-generated content that is customized to your audience.
ContentStudio Standout Features and Integrations
Features include customizable templates, text editor, website management, audience targeting, brand management, publish scheduling, social media management, SEO management, editorial calendar, and customizable reports.
Integrations include WebFlow, Zapier, Shopify, Canva, Google Drive, Dropbox, Firebase, YouTube, Dailymotion, and Pocket.
ContentStudio costs from $25/month when paid monthly or $20/month when billed yearly. ContentStudio offers a free 14-day trial.
Pros
- Excellent user interface.
- Simplifies content creation processes.
- Robust content planning and publishing.
Cons
- The mobile app needs work.
- Not a lot of integrations.
9. Contently - Best all-in-one content marketing platform
Contently provides an all-in-one tool that gives everything a business needs to plan and create content.
Why I picked Contently: The platform is a robust, all-in-one tool that gives your businesses the features you need to plan and create content, engage with your audience, and optimize your content’s output for the best results. Contently uses a story idea algorithm that recommends concepts likely to perform well in search engines, so your content team can start generating content based on these ideas. The platform can keep your content team on track by providing a documented content strategy that stores and applies your content goals throughout every stage of the writing process. Contently can also help your organization stay ahead of trends with its search and social listening capabilities that show you which topics, formats, channels, and tone of voice will engage your audience.
Contently works well for larger enterprises that need a solution that will help their teams create, schedule, and publish content from one platform. If you need new content creators, Contently provides a creative marketplace with over 160,000 vetted writers, journalists, videographers, illustrators, designers, and other creators to add to your team. The platform handles the staffing, management, invoicing, and payment processes on your behalf so you can focus on creating compelling content.
Contently Standout Features and Integrations
Features include audience targeting, brand management, editorial calendar, publish scheduling, distribution management, conversion tracking, social media management, portfolio screening, and project management.
Integrations include Mailchimp, WordPress, Zapier, HubSpot Marketing Hub, Pardot, Wufoo, Shift, Marketo, Adobe Experience Manager, Drupal, Eloqua, and Outbrain.
Contently offers custom pricing upon request. Contently provides a free demo to help you understand whether the platform is right for you.
Pros
- Exceptional account success team.
- User-friendly and adaptable.
- Great for content collaboration.
Cons
- Managing the calendar can be complex.
- The initial setup is complex.
10. DivvyHQ - Best for content automation and AI
DivvyHQ is an all-in-one platform that lets businesses automate repetitive content marketing tasks with AI.
Why I picked DivvyHQ: The software is a content marketing platform you can use to develop content strategies, organize work, create new content, and measure results. DivvyHQ helps businesses with these processes by providing an AI and automation system that takes over specific parts of your content workflow. It simplifies various repetitive tasks, such as content calendar changes, style guide recommendations, content editing, workflow creation, and reports.
DivvyHQ is suitable for mid-sized businesses and large enterprises that need a solution to help ideate, plan, and produce significant numbers of content. DivvyHQ integrates with over 1,000 marketing software that will help your business upload and publish content quickly from the platform. The platform uses a real-time dashboard that allows your teams to monitor workflows and see updates automatically.
DivvyHQ Standout Features and Integrations
Features include content analytics, collaboration tools, content management, automation and AI, content planning, content templates, brand management, editorial calendar, social media management, and conversion tracking.
Integrations include Microsoft 365, WordPress, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Box, Google Drive, and Microsoft Outlook.
DivvyHQ costs from $89/user/month when paying monthly or $79/user/month when billed annually. DivvyHQ offers a free 14-day trial for new subscribers.
Pros
- Manages multiple high-volume projects.
- Simple scheduling features.
- Easy to move content in the calendar.
Cons
- Overwhelming at first.
- The user interface needs improvement.
11. Uberflip - Best for personalized content
Uberflip helps businesses quickly create personalized content experiences at scale.
Why I picked Uberflip: The platform provides multiple options for content marketing professionals, but one of its top features is its ability to personalize content for your audience. Uberflip provides a content destination feature that enables you to engage your audience with a custom message. The software allows you to manage this content on your blog posts, whitepapers, videos, ebooks, and other content forms.
Uberflip is suitable for sales teams of any size that are looking for an account-based marketing solution to increase engagement and revenue. The software helps your business focus on providing relevant content your audiences want, allowing you to convert more prospects into customers and customers into brand ambassadors. Uberflip provides AI recommendations the tool will embed in your content to keep them engaged and on your website longer. The AI technology uses buyer intent and machine learning to give personalized content recommendations to your audience.
Uberflip Standout Features and Integrations
Features include demand generation, account-based marketing, customer engagement, sales engagement, sales tools, lead capture, content management, brand management, analytics and reporting, personalization tools, and AI recommendations.
Integrations include HubSpot, Disqus, Vidyard, Mailchimp, Google Search Console, Brightcove, Eloqua, Pardot, Marketo, Google Analytics, Wistia, Bombora, Hotjar, and Drift Chat.
Uberflip offers custom pricing upon request. Uberflip provides a free demo to help you understand if the platform is right for you.
Pros
- Easy to navigate interface.
- Customizable content journeys.
- Excellent reporting and analytics.
Cons
- Steep learning curve.
- Difficult to manage multi-language content.
12. PathFactory - Best for real-time content consumption data
PathFactory helps businesses better understand content consumption performance by providing intelligent content experience data.
Why I picked PathFactory: The software’s Content Intelligence Platform helps you accelerate your buyers’ journey with intelligent content experience data. PathFactory provides insights to help you focus your content marketing where your audience spends the most time. PathFactory uncovers which content is performing the best so you can replace poor performers with the best content. You can get the most out of your audience by giving them everything they need in real-time.
PathFactory is an excellent choice for mid-sized businesses and large enterprises that operate in the B2B space. The platform’s AI features help your business reduce friction by developing real-time content journeys. PathFactory can help you and your team understand how many leads your content generated as well as how qualified the leads are.
PathFactory Standout Features and Integrations
Features include lead scoring, progress tracking, engagement monitoring, customer segmentation, campaign personalization, lead nurturing, brand management, multi-channel publishing, conversion tracking, and audience targeting.
Integrations include Marketo, Vidyard, 6sense, Terminus, HubSpot, Pardot, Oracle Marketing Cloud, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Brightcove, Wistia, Google Analytics, Drupal, Sitecore, and Allego.
PathFactor offers custom pricing upon request. PathFactory provides a free demo, as well.
Pros
- Top-notch customer service.
- Excellent engagement insights.
- Straightforward onboarding process.
Cons
- Some reporting functionalities are complex.
- Can be challenging to find some features.
Other Options
Here are a few more options that didn’t make the best content marketing platform list:
- Mention - Best for understanding audience perception
- HubSpot Marketing Hub - Best for creating quality blog content
- Percolate - Best end-to-end content marketing platform
- monday.com - Best for content project collaboration
- Upland - Best for aligning content strategies with customer journeys
- Ceros - Best for creating interactive content experiences
- Hemingway Editor - Best content editor app
- Acrolinx - Best for keeping content on-brand with AI
- Curata - Best for content curation
- Meet Edgar - Best for managing social media content
- SparkToro - Best for audience research
How I Selected the Best Content Marketing Platform
Perhaps you’re wondering how I selected the best content marketing platforms for this list? To build this top list, I evaluated and compared a wide range of content marketing platforms with positive user ratings.
After determining my long list of top choices, I further honed my list by using the selection criteria below to see how each platform stacked up against the next one. I also drew on my years of marketing experience to pinpoint the features that add a lot of value.
Selection Criteria
Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best content marketing platform for this article:
Core Functionality:
Every content marketing platform will be unique in its own way but they must cover the following basic functionalities to be considered for this list.
- Provide tools and features for creating and editing content; this includes text editors, image and video editors, and templates
- Facilitate the distribution and promotion of content across various channels, like websites, social media, and advertising platforms
Key Features:
Here are some of the common features that a content marketing platform should have to help you achieve your business goals:
- Content Calendars: This provides a complete view of all your content projects and assets and their timelines that are easily accessible by your team.
- Content Planning: Your plan is the action you take from your strategies, such as ideation, planning, production, distribution, and analysis.
- Project Management Tools: The content marketing platform you use should help you manage projects on a dashboard, so you can resolve questions and concerns.
- Custom Workflows: Each content strategy you implement will have a different workflow and involve various parties, and the tool you use should create transparent workflows that everyone can see and access.
- Central Idea Repository: Your team and other stakeholders should be able to use the content marketing tool to deposit topic ideas and develop them to determine if they should be a part of your content calendar.
- Automated Content Creation & Editing Suggestions: These platforms should use artificial intelligence to help with content creation, editing, and style guide analysis.
- Content Analytics: This is critical to help you understand your content marketing’s ROI, and it should tell you which topics, formats, and marketing channels have the most audience engagement.
- SEO Tools: Built-in SEO tools will help you target specific keywords so you can create content that focuses on the keyword so it will rank high on search engines.
Ease of Use:
All tools will require a settling-in period, and your results could be affected if the platform you’re using is too complex or too simple in scope. Keep in mind that multiple stakeholders will be using the software, so it should consider the wide range of experience and expertise levels. I look for tools that provide users with tooltips, actionable recommendations, and educational resources to help your teams use the solution to its full potential.
Software Integrations:
You’re most likely already using other systems to operate your business’s daily tasks. It’s possible to implement new software to replace these tools, but it’s also good practice to ensure the content marketing platform you choose will work with your essential systems and current marketing software stack. I look for content marketing tools that will integrate with other vital software, such as email marketing solutions or customer relationship management platforms.
Value for Price:
Considering the software’s initial investment and any additional costs to implement it and keep it running is crucial. Some platforms may require additional training, support, or license fees, and you should always consider these costs when choosing a content marketing tool. So, I look for platforms that provide clear pricing and multiple payment options to fit your needs.
People Also Ask
Here are a few popular questions answered for your convenience.
What are the different types of content marketing?
What are the benefits of content marketing software?
What is the easiest content marketing platfrom to learn and use?
Other Marketing Software Reviews
Marketing professionals use various software, including the content marketing platforms I listed in this article. Marketers have many requirements to perform their tasks effectively, and you can find software to fulfill them. Other marketing software to consider include:
The Takeaway
63% of marketers state that content marketing helps their business build loyalty with their existing customer base. So, you can see how implementing this software in your company can benefit you. There are many content marketing platforms that will help your business create, publish, and distribute content and measure its effectiveness.
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