Starting an online community is an ambitious task. Not only does it require a community manager to wear many hats to ensure a strong foundation is being laid, but it also calls for a great deal of enthusiasm. It can be challenging and overwhelming to know what to focus on, what to prioritize, and how to fuel the community so that it takes hold and grows. Feverbee calls this stage in an online community’s lifecycle the Inception stage.
Read MoreFor Gianfranco Capozzi, Head of Esports, curating content is not just a “nice-to-have” tactic for his marketing strategy, it’s a critical component. In order to promote his online community and raise awareness around the ever-growing arena of esports, social media and content marketing have become necessary in helping his brand stand out in a competitive industry. Whether someone is an esports enthusiast or an occasional viewer or gamer, the Esports community aims to connect people to important information and resources on how to get involved.
Read MoreWe do a lot of listening at UpContent. It is a core element of who we are. Listening to our customers, listening to our partners, and listening to the conversations occurring around us. This listening has resulted in a great deal of internal conversation, and culminated in a reflection of how we approach the task of curating content. One of our proudest accomplishments as we have worked to provide you a solution that evidences our listening, is our interaction with you, the community of UpContent users.
Read MoreToday is the day! The brand new UpContent is live and ready for you to enjoy. We’ve come a long way in our journey and it’s releases like these that allow us to take a step back and reflect on how far we’ve come. Thank you for being a part of it and for continuing to support us as we work hard to provide the best content discovery tool we can.
Read MoreIn order for content curation to be truly effective, it should be treated like any other major aspect of your content marketing strategy: purposefully, with designated roles and tasks for those involved. However, given that curation as a strategic pillar is still in its relatively early stages of adoption for many brands, this structure and personnel support has not been widely discussed. Whether you are a Team of One responsible for developing and implementing a new content curation strategy in addition to your other duties or if you have multiple teammates assigned to tackle the job together, it can be helpful to outline an ideal process and set of responsibilities to make the most of your curation efforts.
Read MoreOne of the things we talk about as a team is how diverse our Curated Community is, both in user demographics as well as in the many uses of the tool. In the past, we highlighted small business owners and organizational leaders and how they prefer UpContent over other more expensive options like Buzzsumo. Today, we’re pleased to share another loyal user’s story and how UpContent plays an important role in his work.
Read MoreMany brands have already harnessed the power of curated content in various parts of their content marketing strategy: on social media, through email newsletters, and in blog posts. Through these efforts, they have helped to establish themselves as strong thought leaders and provided opportunities for their audiences to engage in more meaningful conversations. However, there’s one additional area in which curated content has yet to be included but contains some seriously untapped potential: your website.
Read MoreIt’s nearly impossible to talk about content marketing these days without mentioning content curation. Curation has emerged as a key strategy in the space, especially because it is applicable to all major components of marketing: social media, email, blog posts, and more. In fact, 82% of marketers are curating content and 41% indicate that it has increased the number and quality of their sales-ready leads. The increasing demand for relevant, engaging, and tailored content makes curation a necessity for successful brands, but the process can be both time-consuming and challenging.
Read MoreWhen content curation is implemented effectively, everyone wins. The brand, or curator, saves time that would have been spent crafting more original content, maintains an active and engaged presence on social media, and is perceived as a trusted thought leader–goals that support and enhance their other content marketing efforts. Additionally, the audience equally benefits by gaining access to more valuable, relevant content, written by a variety of sources–the reward for brand loyalty that keeps on giving.
Read MoreIt is with great excitement that we share some news. UpContent has closed our Series A round of funding, led by Topanga Partners, a private equity fund based in Pittsburgh. Through these efforts, we raised $2 million (USD) to accelerate growth and gain invaluable resources to support our team. Topanga Partners invests in early and mid-stage technology companies focused on product technology, software-as-a-service (SaaS), and digital platforms. This independent firm is an ideal fit for UpContent, as they bring a great deal of vital experience to the table and can also provide an objective view of our progress to-date.
Read MoreIn between shopping and buying gifts last quarter, we were also busy putting together some super exciting updates and we’re thrilled to be able to share them with you first thing in 2017. UpContent recently had one of its best months ever in November in terms of user growth, but you won’t experience any negative effects from all of the extra traffic and here’s why: Even with all of your holiday plans, you have been sending us feedback and we’ve been listening.
Read MoreI think we can all agree when I say: What. A. Year. What a year for our world, our politics, our businesses, and our own personal and professional growth. For as many obstacles as we have collectively faced, we sure have all managed to get a lot of things done! For our last blog post for 2016, we thought it would be fun to walk down memory lane and take a look back at how much has changed for UpContent over the past year and share a special message to all of you–our users and friends.
Read MoreThe team here at UpContent knows how hard it can be to find the right content for each situation–what appeals to one group may be off-putting or uninteresting to another. We want to make it easier for you to find content with just the right tone, so we have been training a new tool–nicknamed ArtClass–to help us out. It uses machine learning techniques to classify articles as news or blogs, and to drop less-engaging sites; when you tell us it missed the mark, it will learn how to avoid this mistake in the future.
Read MoreThe holiday season is in full swing! Though this is certainly an exciting time for the spirit, it’s a bit of an awkward time of the year for work. Projects are starting to wind down, clients are too busy and distracted to return phone calls or make any real decisions, and you tend to have less energy to maintain the momentum you’ve carried all year long. But that doesn’t meant the holidays are a wash!
Read MoreIf you’ve spent any time in the content marketing space recently, you’re probably well aware that content curation is a major topic of conversation. It appears that most people fall into one of two camps: either you’re totally gung-ho about content curation or you think content curation is killing the industry. At UpContent, we believe that, when done effectively, content curation can be a critical component to your social media strategy and help build stronger connections with your audience, but we also recognize that curation has earned a bit of a bad reputation over the past few years, a result of common misconceptions.
Read MoreTwo months have passed since our last product update, and we decided it was time to get back on track! We’ve been busy bees, and a lot of our work these past months will be revealed a bit further down the road, but there are a handful of things that we have already released and can’t wait to tell you about! Strut Your Stuff in the Topic Gallery UpContent users have created thousands of incredible topics across a broad range of subjects.
Read MoreWe’ve been talking a lot about our integration with Hootsuite these days, but did you know our standalone application is integrated with Buffer, too? We love how simple our workflow is from finding great content in UpContent to scheduling it seamlessly through Buffer–all in one place. While this process has become second nature to us, we thought we would break it down and share what topics we pull content from and how we share it on our social media networks for our audience.
Read MoreBetween our content source integration and numerous guest blog posts, it’s no surprise that we really enjoy working with Hootsuite, a leading social media management tool and an all-around awesome brand. When they invited us to sponsor their virtual conference, Connect via Hootsuite, we were all in. There was no way we could pass up the chance to participate in the world’s largest virtual social media conference! With over 25,000 registrants and a speaker line-up that included top thought leaders from Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter, we were honored and humbled by the experience.
Read MoreAfter working diligently on our Hootsuite content source app and Klipfolio integration, our dev team was excited to turn back to our own product and make some serious progress on our roadmap. This month, we launched some updates that we know will make a significant impact on both our team and our users in the long-term. Make Better Topics with the Query Builder Creating effective topics was one of our user’s biggest pain points, likely because our search algorithm operates differently from a Google search and users had a hard time articulating what they wanted to find in Boolean operator terms.
Read MoreContent curation has become an essential process for any marketer, thought leader, or social media influencer. However, now that there is such an overwhelming amount of content being created, shared, and repurposed, it is important to invest in an intentional curation process that will serve both you and your network, instead of simply contributing to the noise. Even with an intentional strategy though, current methods for curating content can be inefficient and time-consuming.
Read MoreWe know you’re implementing exciting content marketing strategies–but how are you keeping track of your results? Too often metrics get pushed aside because it’s difficult to know what data to track and it’s too time-consuming to compile all of this data into something digestible. That’s why we are thrilled that we discovered Klipfolio, a dashboard software that gives you visibility into your most important data and metrics. And we’re even happier to announce that we’ve recently integrated with Klipfolio to enhance your content marketing dashboards.
Read MoreOne of the best things about being a small team is the ability to connect one-on-one with our users. Whether it’s through our live chat or email, we are lucky to connect with people who are doing incredible things with their businesses. A few weeks ago, we received an email from a small business marketer named Clementine Holman. What initially started as a minor support question quickly evolved into a more meaningful conversation about more affordable and small business-friendly marketing tools.
Read MoreWe’re thrilled to announce the launch of UpContent for Hootsuite content source! With this new integration, we help to address the soul-sucking challenge that marketers worldwide endure in their relentless pursuit of engaging and relevant content to take immediate action–driving more meaningful conversations. HOORAY! At times like these it is important to take a step back and reflect on how we arrived at this point. Thinking back to the genesis of UpContent in 2013 (which, at the time, wasn’t enough of a thought to even warrant a name) as a way to assist our account managers who provided content marketing as a managed service and became frustrated at how much time it was taking to identify great, third party, content.
Read MoreWhen a technology product comes together and is finally ready to be released into the wild, it can often be delayed by the difficulty of settling on a reasonable pricing model. There are so many questions and variables to consider: *Should we offer our product for free? If we do, how will we pay for it? How many plans should we offer? How much would people be willing to pay for that feature?
Read MoreIt is with great excitement that we introduce the newest member of our Board, Mark Holder. Mark’s extensive experience developing strategic partnerships and go-to-market strategies for startups makes him a natural fit to assist us in commercializing UpContent and continuing to grow Community Elf’s content marketing managed services. Originally from Southern California, Mark currently resides in Victoria, British Columbia with his family. Mark recently joined Checkfront, a leading online booking platform, as VP Partnerships & Growth, and is active in the Victoria startup community through VIATEC, an association dedicated to serving innovators and entrepreneurs.
Read MoreIt’s always a treat for us to get to sit down and talk one-on-one with our users, but it makes us smile extra big when we connect with someone from the local Pittsburgh area. We had the pleasure of speaking with Jim McKenzie, a Global Project Manager at Philips Respironics, who has been using UpContent for his work with the Pittsburgh chapter of Product Development and Management Association (PDMA). Though Philips Respironics is an internationally recognized company and there’s always a great deal of buzz surrounding them, Jim explained that when it comes to social media, the company has set a clear expectation that engaging online should occur outside of company time.
Read MoreWe’re big into curating content around these parts, in case you haven’t noticed. We believe in it so much that we built a tool to make it easier and more meaningful. Even though UpContent gives you everything you need to make discovering and curating a more efficient part of your workflow, there’s still an art behind deciding which pieces of content to curate and when. Before you start sharing random content, it’s important to create an intentional content curation strategy that will help you establish goals that measure the success of your efforts.
Read MoreWhen you really break it down, it takes a lot of technology to run a technology product and the team behind it. There’s no replacement for a whiteboard and marker, a pen and paper, and good ol’ fashioned note taking, but we certainly embrace the various apps and software available to make our work lives a little easier. The UpContent team prides itself on being technology agnostic–a term that simply means we are generally unbiased toward the use of different technology tools to solve various problems.
Read MoreLast year, I threw my first annual Cinco De Mayo party. I was unemployed and had plenty of time to put together a party of epic proportions. We had tons of food, decorations, and, of course, a variety of mixed adult beverages to enjoy. It was also the first time I was able to use my “big” backyard (hey, I live in a city, ANY backyard is big) to its fullest capacity and invite people over to experience it.
Read MoreThough podcasts have been around for as long as we’ve had digital music, it took quite a long time for the vast majority of the public to catch on to the medium. But that was before Serial. Nowadays, podcasts are just as mainstream as blogging and video. Given society’s mobility (and short attention span), podcasts are an ideal alternative to content that must be consumed while looking at a device.
Read MoreIf you’re an active member of Twitter, you’ve probably seen a Twitter chat in action on your newsfeed. Whether you’re new to this form of engagement or have only taken part once or twice, there are probably numerous reasons you’ve held back from incorporating them into your marketing strategy regularly. For one, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by Twitter chats, both by the number of participants or their rapid speed.
Read MoreIt’s no surprise that a lot goes into launching a product. Even though it may not seem as obvious, the same (if not more) effort goes into launching new features within a product as well. Back in January, we released a suite of new UpContent features that we are thrilled about (and, frankly, relieved to see completed): the creation of user profiles, the ability to share topics, the addition of the relevance graph view, and the update to our influence filter.
Read MoreHave you noticed that it’s both an increasingly exciting and challenging time in the content marketing space? It seems like there are so many opportunities that manifest from publishing and curating content, but there are also so many more obstacles that make standing out and being original difficult. Believe us, we hear you because we’re in the struggle, too. But we’re pretty excited to share that there is an area of content curation that is largely untapped and could be a big differentiator for thought leaders.
Read MoreIf you curate and share content to social media, you’ll likely know there’s a ton of great content out there. But you’ll also likely have noticed the not so great content too. Like a gold prospector, it’s your job to sift through the rocks (bad content) to find the bright, gleaming, glorious gold (great content). In content marketing terms, it’s all about finding the articles that’ll boost your following and industry influence.
Read MoreAs anyone in the tech industry knows, it takes a lot of time and elbow grease to gather feedback from users, choose what areas of your product to improve and build upon, write and implement the code, test the new features, fix the bugs, and then share the outcomes with the market. After releasing UpContent as a Hootsuite integration in spring 2015 and then introducing the product as a single application a few months later, we have since been working on our first big release of new features.
Read MoreThough every social media platform offers a unique opportunity for brands and individuals to interact with specific audiences, Twitter is a front-runner when it comes to engaging with a targeted audience in real-time, establishing your credibility as an industry influencer, and participating in social listening. Because most of UpContent’s users live on Twitter, we knew that we needed to have an active presence on the platform. In the last few months, we decided to invest in building an intentional Twitter strategy to grow our audience–and consequently our user base–and to identify and build relationships with potential integration partners.
Read MoreGreat design is absolutely essential for any tech product to succeed. That’s why we’re truly grateful to have Kyle Grady as our Lead Product Designer. Since starting as a UX/UI Designer in April 2013, he has headed up two redesigns, illustrating his dedication to continuously improving both aesthetic and user workflow. He has flourished in his new role, bringing fresh perspective and confidence to his designs, and UpContent is so much better for it.
Read MoreAs we near the release of our newest iteration of UpContent, you will notice a prominent omission from the content set – social media and video content. The root of this decision traces back to the reason we created the product – to find the best content to enter into the conversations you want to have, faster. We have spent much of 2015 listening and analyzing the behavior of our current customer base to better understand how UpContent can be valuable to you, both as a professional tool and a method for personal consumption.
Read MoreDoes this sound familiar? Your alarm goes off and you immediately reach for your phone. First, to silence that awful sound; second, to check for notifications and scroll mindlessly through your social media feeds until you convince yourself to get up (or you’re going to be late). Sure enough, you come across one of your favorite bloggers and click on a link they shared about their favorite iPhone apps. Before you know it, you’re downloading three new apps and excited about the possibility of boosting your productivity.
Read MoreIt’s an exciting time to be a part of the UpContent team. In the last month, the team has doubled in size and the momentum has tripled as we’re nearing the end of the year. Though the product has been in development since May 2012, UpContent has really only been “on the market” since mid-year. We’re thrilled to say we’ve graduated from the “beta stage” and are transitioning through what we call the “foundation stage.
Read MoreTools are only as effective as the user’s knowledge of using them. By learning how to best use our search tool, you will get the most out of your content discovery experience and eliminate the barriers to finding the stuff that matters most. Why You Should Invest in Strong Topic Creation One of our UpContent users, Sadie, was having trouble receiving the content suggestions she needed. Sadie was very interested in learning more about women in science, but because one of her search queries was simply the word “women,” she was receiving numerous results that lacked the specificity she needed.
Read MoreWriting is hard work. Researching content to inform your writing takes a lot of time. Every aspect of content marketing takes patience, resolve and focus. Who has time for that? Anything that makes the content marketing process just a little bit easier is worth its weight in gold (unless it’s intangible and weighs nothing, then you can just assume it’s worth a lot). Content curation seems to be a big buzz-phrase in 2015 – and if you ask us, it certainly should be.
Read MoreWhy do you have a content marketing strategy? One reason is likely so you can boost your website’s SEO. Another could be to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. You could also just really love writing. There are multitudes of reasons for having a content marketing strategy, but a lesser known and used goal is to get on the radar of industry influencers. When you write content for your brand, you are likely citing other articles to support your points.
Read MoreFace it, your life is governed by rules, written and unwritten. What influenced you when you got dressed for work this morning? Did you choose clothes based on a written uniform code or cultural norms? Did you brush your teeth this morning because you wanted to, or because it’d be unacceptable to have bad breath all day? Even the most basic things you do in life are influenced by some kind of rule.
Read MoreUpContent and trendspottr both offer a similar service, but vary in the execution. Both tools say that they deliver the right content at the right time – and they both do, depending on the type of content you are looking for. Both tools allow you to create a topic, as you would in a search engine, and both provide relevant results. The difference lies in how the results are delivered and filtered: UpContent is a content discovery tool.
Read MoreWhen you hear stats like ‘82% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content’1 – a few thoughts may come to mind: “Wow, I really need to do more content marketing” “Well, curation is off the table if I need custom content” “How am I going to create so much content??!!” “Maybe that stat doesn’t apply to my company… I hope!”
Read MoreAs a child, hide-and-seek was probably one of your go-to games. There’s something about the thrill and suspense of finding somewhere in the shadows to hide, and then waiting impatiently to see if you’ll be discovered. Take a second and think about where you would hide, right now, in the location you’re in, if you were playing hide-and-seek. Got a place? Now, fast-forward back to reality and stop day dreaming :).
Read MoreYour ambitions are noble. Your content is out-of-this-world fantastic. Everything’s perfect, right? It might be. But, are people reading your content? Can they find it? Your Content Strategy Answer this question. Your purpose for putting out a bunch of content is so you can… what? Make it look like you’re working hard (you are, right?) Make your site more visible Be useful to your audience Establish your brand as a thought leader I’m willing to bet that you answered at least B, C or D, if not all of them.
Read MoreThe Evil Let’s dive right in. Content marketing can be viewed as evil. Yes, I said evil. Why? Well, to do content marketing right, you have to put out a lot of content in the form of blog articles, white papers, ebooks, case studies, reports, infographics, etc. Creating all of this content often requires more time than you have, leaving little room for implementing the rest of your marketing strategy (of course, using a content discovery tool to help curate some of this content can free up some of your time!
Read MoreSearch engines make everyone’s lives easier. For instance, they can help you self-diagnose that the rash on your arm means you have cancer. They can help you find the best place to buy an antique chair you’ll never sit in, and of course, they will readily tell you the last person Taylor Swift wrote a song about. In fact, there is very little Google cannot help you find. But search engines, like Google, do have a few major flaws.
Read MoreWhy is content marketing important? Knowledge is power. And what is one thing that most consumers want besides money? Power. Over 73% of US consumers research items online before making a purchase. (http://www.godigitalmarketing.com/shopper-research-state-consumer-buying-habits-national-blog/). Many start the self-education cycle before even knowing they are going to make a purchase. For this very reason, it is imperative for brands to provide a constant source of informational, educational and enlightening content for their audience.
Read MoreUpContent and Filtr8 each offer the ability to aggregate content from the web, but they focus on distinct use cases for deriving maximum value from each. UpContent is focused on the marketer who needs the right content, at the right time to effectively interest and engage their audience. It also caters to the knowledge leader who needs an efficient way to stay up-to-date with their industry and have discussion topics readily available.
Read MoreUpContent and Content Gems each offer a similar service: they provide content to users who are looking for information or who need content to curate. But each company approaches the issue a little differently. Both solutions focus on the marketer who needs the right content, at the right time to effectively interest and engage their audience. They can also cater to the knowledge leader who needs an efficient way to stay up-to-date with their industry and have discussion topics readily available.
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