MadCap Flare vs. MarketMuse vs. Substack

MadCap Flare has its problems, but it serves our team well as an authoring software. This would not be the case if we needed to regularly collaborate on articles, as Flare is prone to conflict issues when another person dares to breathe near an open topic. When working individually, though, it's fine. I'd love to see improvements to design, performance, and stability, but Flare remains one of the best softwares on the market for our needs as an authoring team. MadCap Central is well-suited to internal reviewing when every member is comfortable with Flare (the errors it tends to introduce set aside). SMEs, though, tend to find it hard to use. It's cluttered, some styles don't render, and it just seems like a failed attempt to reproduce Google Docs. I'd love to see improvements there, to help get our SMEs to want to use Central.

Incentivized

As I am a content marketer, every day I have to fight to get top-ranked for my articles. So, SEO should be perfect. For my content side of SEO, MarketMuse is a lifesaver to me. It helps me to plan my content, get the score of my content, and the suggestion to optimize my articles. It saves my time and money too.

Incentivized

I think Substack is better for people who want to set up a personal-facing branded website vs people who just want to post random musings every so often. Monetization is better there than any other collective publishing platform as well as organic reach via email. Substack also allows you to build direct relationships with your readers via emails and own them 100% which is great long-term if you use it to pivot to another site or another form of writing/content creation. Substack would be less helpful for someone wanting to write as a part of a group, not individually, or someone who's unwilling to put their personal brand behind their content. It's less optimized for SEO (which other platforms allow you to do) and can be harder to curate content based on your interests (you really have to go in knowing what you want vs finding it on the fly).

Incentivized

• Single-sourcing
• Branching (GIT)
• Publishing and hosting

• Availability of content inventory on MarketMuse makes it easy to measure the quality of the content before uploading or updating it.
• With AI-generated content, I am able to write and upload content like a pro that has high-ranking keywords.
• Identifying key topics and subtopics while creating content to upload on the blog saves a lot of time.

Incentivized

• Because it has a very high Domain Authority ranking relevant backlinks in a published article will help make my store more searchable.
• Substack is very easy to work in. The toolset they provide may not be as extensive as other platforms but it is certainly enough to create a meaningful, interesting post.
• Substack is very focused on creating a community of writers that support each other. They run an ongoing email campaign that reinforces their focus on building a community of writers.

Incentivized

• I use it on a mac with windows parallel and it can be so buggy and laggy.
• I would love it if the software was entirely cloud-based, like Google Docs.
• Reviewing in Central is not a good experience, need better review functionality.

Incentivized

• Would be nice if the connect feature was domain swappable
• A better way to save and import queries would be nice
• Having some writing tool integrations would be nice

• editor is on the primitive side - it's wysiwyg, but missing some embed options
• integrate with google analytics
• percentage cut that Substack takes can become a burden as your revenue grows. Problems scaling.

Incentivized

MadCap Flare is in desperate need of an overall redesign. It relies heavily on dozens and dozens of tiny buttons that contain dozens of nested features. Clicking the wrong button can cause your software to freeze and crash. Building targets can be an absolute mystery, as far as all the files involved. It also has a tendency to freeze and crash. There's typically a huge learning curve for new hires who've never used it--nothing is intuitive.

Incentivized

The support I have received from all MarketMuse staff at each step of the process has been excellent. They are very friendly, quick to assist, and also provide really good training to teach you how to use their product. Additionally, their own blog is a wealth of information regarding different aspects of content marketing, from articles to video interviews.

Incentivized

MadCap software does offer quite a few more technical features than Google Drive, but the user experience is far inferior. Google Drive is much less buggy to work with, and it's much more accessible. MadCap only being available on Windows operating systems makes it difficult to work with teammates who may not have such a device available.

Incentivized

MarketMuse is more cost-effective than BrightEdge and does more for writers and editors that are strictly focused on content. It keeps people in one system after their first draft. Writers and editors do not need to go into multiple tools to look things up manually, saving valuable time. This enables them to produce more content more quickly.

Incentivized

Medium is not so good for running newsletter. I find the mail that a user gets is very easily readable. Also as a creator it's very easy for me to track the analytics and monetise my blogs unlike Medium. Blogger is a very old technology. The kind of integrations and the support for Markdown / different media is very great in Substack.

Incentivized

• We haven't measured this specifically

• Competitor research and keyword research has enabled us to determine the best content to improve our SEO.
• Improving the brand of our agency on search engines has enabled us to reach more buyers.
• Creating high-ranking SEO content has improved digital marketing in the cloud that turns prospects into buyers.

Incentivized

• I haven’t made any money from it
• Can be disheartening when you realise you’re putting in maximum effort for minimum audience

Incentivized