Content creation and marketing cannot be understated as a solid business strategy in 2024. According to Showpad, content marketing can generate up to 3X as many leads as “traditional” marketing efforts—all while costing 64% less on average!
Creating, distributing, and marketing your content (be it blogs, video, social media, whatever) can be a hugely time-consuming task. That’s why many media creators rely on content automation software to carry some of the workload.
Content automation software can be used to automate certain tasks in the content management lifecycle. This saves creators precious time that should be spent on tasks that require human intervention, like strategy planning, substantive editing, and creative brainstorming.
In this article, I’ll go over some of the best content and marketing automation software on the market today. I’ll also outline what each does best, how you can use them in your content strategy, and provide a snapshot of the UI for reference.
Content Automation Software Shortlist
Here’s the list of the best tools that I’ll cover in this article.
- HubSpot - A complete content marketing suite
- Quark - Best for reducing content automation complexity
- DivvyHQ - Best for automating production workflows
- Pixlee - Best for community-driven brands
- Templafy - Best for internal content distribution
- Seismic - Best for creating personalized content
- Brightspot - Best for enterprise-level content management
- SharpSpring - Best for all-in-one marketing automation
- UpContent - Best for curating third-party content
- CoSchedule - Work management software for marketers
Comparison Criteria
What do I look for when I select the best content automation system? Here’s a summary of my evaluation criteria:
- User Interface (UI): I look for content automation software that has key features displayed front and center for distribution, marketing insights, and content analysis.
- Usability: I look for automation software with built-in learning materials, like tutorials or a knowledge wiki. Readily available customer service is a must!
- Integrations: I look for content software that connects to tools already in your tech stack, like chat apps, CMS, content calendars, social media, and productivity systems. Integrations may include tools like Google Analytics, Microsoft Dynamics, Slack, Facebook Ads, Asana, etc.
- Value for pricing: I look for content automation software with transparent and scalable pricing or subscription models. A free trial or demo is a bonus!
Content Automation Tool Key Features
- Content Creation Tools: Features that help you create high-quality content with the minimum of effort
- Marketing Automation: Helping you to spread the word on social media channels
- Email Automation: Options for sending content to subscribers on autopilot
- Multi-Channel Distribution: Expanding your reach by promoting content on multiple platforms
- Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Support: Leveraging technology to achieve continuous improvement
- Search engine optimization: Ensuring that content is optimized to rank in Google and other search engines
- Collaboration tools: Empowering team members to contribute opinions and ideas
- Competitor research: Evaluating publicly available content to identify opportunities
Indie Media Club is reader-supported. We may earn a commission when you click through links on our site — learn more about how we aim to stay transparent.
Overviews Of The 10 Best Content Automation Software Solution
Here’s a brief description of each content automation app to showcase each tool’s best use case, some noteworthy features, and screenshots to give a snapshot of the user interface.
1. HubSpot Marketing Hub - A complete content marketing suite
HubSpot is a popular marketing and content automation platform that helps businesses attract and engage customers. Based in the cloud, the software helps you to create content, convert traffic into leads, and turn leads into customers.
The marketing platform includes integrated blogging and content creation tools, with search engine optimization built in. You can also easily create landing pages or forms to build an effective sales funnel.
Thanks to the Marketing Hub, businesses can create a web presence quickly and start attracting customers fast. The world-class marketing automations ensure that no leads slip through the cracks.
This tool integrates with over 1000 software tools, including Salesforce.
HubSpot marketing automation costs from $45/user/month, and a 30-day free trial is available.
2. Quark - Best for reducing content automation complexity
Quark is a publishing platform that automates every aspect of the content lifecycle. Features include structured authoring, template design, review/approval, and component assembly. The software can be used as a standalone publishing system or in conjunction with tools such as Microsoft Office.
Content can be tracked, searched, updated, and reused as needed. Users can also create modularized components, then atomize, publish and repurpose them. Other features include omnichannel publishing and content intelligence.
Quark doesn't list any third-party integrations publicly.
This tool costs from $21.58/user/month. There is no free trial.
3. DivvyHQ - Best for automating production workflows
DivvyHQ helps agencies, media companies, and publishers create and distribute content. Based in the cloud, this software offers brand management, audience targeting, and conversation tracking features. Users can publish through multiple channels and take advantage of the in-built editorial calendar.
This platform provides various workflow features, from simple to fully automated. Workflow templates are designed for reuse, automating everything from generating tasks to assigning them to marketing team members. Dashboards are preconfigured for major content channels, including web, email, social, and SEO.
DivvyHQ integrates with WordPress and key social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
The software costs from $39/user/month, and a free 14-day trial is available.
4. Pixlee - Best for community-driven brands
Pixlee helps brands to manage and scale their user-generated content, influencer marketing, social media marketing, and reviews. They can collate on-brand content from social channels such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter. They can also aggregate content from influencers, ambassadors, and employees.
Users can access top-performing content quickly using search, smart tagging, and AI recommendations. They can then publish on key, social, marketing and ecommerce channels. Campaign-level marketing analytics provides insights into influencer and content marketing campaigns.
This tool integrates with all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
Pixlee offers customized pricing on request.
5. Templafy - Best for internal content distribution
Templafy provides centralized distribution and intuitive user access for company document templates, content, and technology. Based in the cloud, it helps companies manage and update digital assets through a single interface.
Employees get easy access to approved assets, with real-time updates distributed through one centralized platform. Admins can create a secure workflow encompassing document creation, collaborative editing, signing, distribution, and storage.
The content enablement platform can support any number of employees worldwide, helping them deliver connected content to teams located anywhere. All updates and rollouts can be managed by the content owners.
This tool integrates with major business platforms such as Microsoft Office, SharePoint, Office 360, One Drive, and Google Drive.
Templafy offers customized pricing on request.
6. Seismic - Best for creating personalized content
Seismic makes it easy to create customized content in seconds for mass distribution. You can create customized sales content, pitch books, proposals, fact sheets, and other collateral. While always staying on brand, you can cascade messaging, brand, and other updates.
Content can be mixed and matched to craft targeted assets that tell the right story for each prospect. You can pull customer data from your CRM to create tables, charts, and other materials. The system allows you to create thousands of documents at the push of a button for purposes such as end-of-quarter updates.
This tool integrates with major platforms such as Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce.
Seismic offers customized pricing on request.
7. Brightspot - Best for enterprise-level content management
Brightspot offers you an intuitive publishing process, flexible workflows, and collaboration features. Out of the box, the software supports content types from articles to live blogs. Team members can upload, use, and reuse videos, images, and documents.
Content management is supported with unified, intuitive data modeling, query, and persistence APIs. Rich debugging tools facilitate quick fixes to problems. The software also features automatic database management and automatic application user interface features.
This tool integrates with many popular software tools, including HubSpot, AWS, Mailchimp, and Google Translate.
Brightsport offers customized pricing on request.
8. SharpSpring - Best for all-in-one marketing automation
SharpSpring aims to replace mass email blasts with conversations that lead to conversions. This is accomplished with personalized messages and automated campaigns that respond to user behavior. Thanks to the built-in analytics, you can time every message accurately and notify your sales team of promising leads.
The dynamic forms tool autocompletes fields for known visitors to improve conversions. Using the visual workflow builder, you can engage leads at critical points in their buying journey, score them for quality, and factor in natural lead decay. The VisitorID feature helps you identify many more visitors, while behavioral-based tracking shows you understand what motivates each click.
This lead management tool integrates with most major CRM applications.
SharpSpring costs from $449/user/month. There is no free trial.
9. UpContent - Best for curating third-party content
UpContent aims to offer a better way to discover, collaborate, and distribute third-party content that's relevant to your audience. The software analyzes millions of articles monthly to find content likely to resonate. Thanks to integrations with tools you use every day, UpContent helps you distribute content efficiently.
You can create approval workflows that match your organization's needs and build automated rules for hands-free content curation. Using UpContent, you can also place handpicked, third-party content on your website. The simple, easy-to-read card layout keeps readers engaged and on your website for longer.
This tool integrates with popular social tools such as Hootsuite, Buffer, and Soxco.
UpContent costs from $15/user/month, and a free trial is available.
10. CoSchedule - Work management software for marketers
Coscheule is a content scheduling and management tool that allows marketers to organize their work.
Automation feature options include a marketing calendar that helps you schedule and share content. You can see everything in one place, share progress and see exactly what your marketing is accomplishing.
With the digital marketing suite, you get a family of agile marketing products for coordinating teams, projects, and processes. As a result, you can manage marketing requests, maximize resources and eliminate bottlenecks.
The headline studio assists in creating better headlines. The software scores headlines based on proven data and provides intelligent suggestions for improvement.
This tool integrates with popular tools such as Google Calendar, Asana, and Google Analytics.
Coscheule costs from $29/user/month. A free plan with limited features is also available.
Other Content Automation Options
Here are a few more that didn’t make the top list.
- Wordsmith - A natural language marketing automation platform that transforms data into narrative
- Active Campaign - A marketing tool with a built-in content manager
- IFTTT - Advanced automations to cut down on repetitive marketing task issues
- Mailchimp - Email marketing automation focused on easy-to-use email campaign features
- Zoho Campaigns - An email marketing suite
- Tailwind - A sophisticated content scheduler
- Salesforce Pardot - A full suite of marketing automation tool options
- Articoolo - A marketing automation solution for small business content creation
- Netsuite - Designed to automate the entire marketing process
- Freshworks CRM - Context-driven content engagement
- Elink.io - Automated creation of multiple types of content
- Article Forge - Creates SEO-optimized content fast
- Grammarly - An advanced grammar and style-checking program
What Is Content Automation?
Content automation is a way to remove manual intervention in everyday and recurring content tasks. You can automate everything from content creation (AI writing tools) to distribution (single click, multichannel publishing). Content automation can save you time and effort so that you can create more content, fast.
Only you can decide what tasks are best left to your team and what tasks can be handed off to marketing automation software!
What Do You Think About This List?
Content automation is just one way to speed up your content output and marketing efforts. If that’s appealing to you, then content automation software is the way to go.
Now it’s your turn: Do you use any content creation or marketing automation tools? What marketing automation platforms are your current favorite, and why? What automation platform do you think should be added to this list? Sound off in the comments!
You may also like to check out our article on the best content creation software. And for more digital content creation tips and tricks, subscribe to the Indie Media Club newsletter.
Content automations can reduce your marketing effort, forming a key element of your marketing strategy. Be sure to make the most of them!