Contently vs. Percolate, now part of Seismic vs. Skyword

It's helpful for top of marketing funnel writing that we can sometimes lose sight of because we are so ingrained in the product day to day. Contently is also helpful for long written pieces and ebooks that will take a significant amount of employee time to put together. I avoid using Contently for mid to bottom funnel marketing writing because my team will often have greater insight into the product function or use-case or product release, making them more adroit to the tone of the written piece and able to produce the content quickly.

Incentivized

Very useful for the management, planning, and programming of all social networks, as well as marketing campaigns. One of the best tools to make life easier for community managers and automate daily tasks such as content publishing. It is my favorite for managing my clients' networks.

Incentivized

It's a great platform for freelance writers to use because everything - the brief, deadline, notes, edits along the way etc, are all in one handy location; which is easy to access. It's great to get picked up by one client, following the recommendation of another too. It's almost like a networking site in this respect too, where companies get matched or paired with the right writers.

Incentivized

• Consolidating my work in one place to make my work life easier
• Contently is unique from other content marketing organizational tools in one key way. It hands you a network of freelance professionals eager for delegated work.
• You can search through a database of professionals to find the perfect person for your given project. Find individuals in your budget offering the exact skills and experience you need.

Incentivized

• You can schedule all the planning done for each social network, with the date and time you want to publish, without any inconvenience.
• It has many templates of campaigns and content for social networks, which facilitates the work and the workload of designers and community managers.
• The management of the marketing campaign is very efficient, as it monitors the progress, performance, and progress of the campaign also presents a complete statistical report that helps to improve the plans and strategies used.

Incentivized

• SEO
• Editorial Calendars
• Analytics

Incentivized

• There are only two layouts you can choose from. I wish there were a few more choices for this, as the options are simple, but lacking.
• Sometimes when I paste a link, it doesn't pull the correct picture or description from the page. It has pulled weird things I've never seen before and I have to go back in and manually fix them.
• The option to purchase a domain without the .contently at the end?

Incentivized

• Data is a mess. So unreliable. Takes so much time to create a concrete report.
• There is no ability to export anything. No calendar PDFs, no data Excel sheets, nothing.
• No paid management functionality.
• Hated their listening tool abilities relative to other tools I've used.

Incentivized

• It would be useful to see historical versions of copy that you have uploaded rather than the latest, edited version.
• In some programmes the rules are a bit too prescriptive ie set word counts with not too much variance. Similarly, sometimes you have to almost 'shoe horn' key words into the copy in order to hit the number required. This can make the text sound repetitive and less creative journalistically.
• Not quite sure what the readability scores bring to the party?

Incentivized

As we have grown to implement Percolate with more and more people within our company, we have also run into more features we'd like to see in the app. The Percolate team has been extremely understanding about these requests, and even visited our offices to sit and listen to exactly what we are looking for. Assuming these new features make it into production with them, we'll definitely stay with Percolate for the long term

Easy to set up approval flows, but not always necessary to follow all the requires steps

Incentivized

I'm giving them a 10, but honestly, I've never reached out to them. I do see them putting out regular content on social media, so they might be responsive to questions there as well as regular customer support. In their posts and communication, they do seem to value their community, so hopefully, they have good customer support. And I've seen them asking for pitches from their community to publish well-paid articles during this stressful coronavirus time, and I really appreciate that.

Incentivized

Very responsive to our requests. Always make themselves available. We also have a standing weekly status with their team, which keeps us on the same page.

Incentivized

Rarely has a company shown this much support during implementation. This almost got to the point where it was too much hand holding. Sometimes, social teams just want the keys to the car so they can drive it themselves instead of waiting on someone to drive along with them...

I also opened an account with Skyword in 2019, which is a similar service. The person that recommended it was a travel writer, and since I've done that as well, I thought it might be a better fit. To this point, I've received no work from it either, and don't hold out a lot of hope. As previously mentioned, where I think Contently does well is by giving you an online portfolio, additional resources like a blog for learning, and a rates database for publications.

Incentivized

Three major areas separate Percolate from the competition in my POV:

• They view themselves as truly, an all-in-one SaaS model. Other large, enterprise platforms, like Sprinklr, have the old a la carte approach to their platforms. Everything is extra. Every new addition or component comes at a cost and does not automatically update your license. Percolate has a different approach. If it is an update and it is good for the platform, you should get it. Therefore, they update the tool OFTEN and always evolving the functionality.
• Which leads to my next point, Percolate wants to build the best-in-class social content management tool, period. Therefore, they are not chasing ways to upcharge you with new functions and modules. They focus on their core product and make it better and better.
• Lastly, the pricing is simple and easy to understand. The cost is the cost.. no hidden details. Good luck getting that transparency with platforms like Sprinklr or Radian6.

Incentivized

SkyWord distinguishes itself by its efficiency and the capabilities it has with web design and management. It also has a strong variety of content production capabilities like video, social media, etc. Our procurement team has found SkyWord to be fair when it comes to prices, and this showed when we evaluated them against competitors.

Incentivized

• Contently contributors have produced some great inbound marking posts and creative materials saving our marketing team significant time allowing them to focus on more strategic plans for the business.
• The amount of time Contently has saved our internal creative writing staff has more than paid for itself!

Incentivized

• Percolate has made it much easier to communicate between teams and has provided a return on investment in that area in particular.
• Percolate also helps save time because you are able to schedule social media posts across channels easily.
• It has also been an easy way to work with remote team members, which is very helpful.

Incentivized

• Significant month-over-month organic traffic growth
• Elevated click-through rates from email marketing
• Increases in site visits from social

Incentivized