Here’s a question to tax the gray matter of enterprising tech product managers and chief revenue officers: how do you get your newly-launched tech company to transform the 48 cents you have sitting in your bank account into well over $1 million in revenue in a few short years? If the answer clamoring for attention is “impossible”, Shane Snow, co-founder of the New York-based content marketing Contently would beg to differ, because that’s exactly what he and his two buddies achieved with Contently by linking brands to content-creating journalists.
From text to multimedia
Snow agrees that content marketing is an especially hot new space which everyone is clamoring to get a piece of, as any product manager in this part of the tech market can confirm. But Snow and his colleagues have pretty sound business antennae; they’ve realized that, as this form of marketing matures, brands want more than the written word for their content. That’s why Contently is expanding its roster of freelance journalists to include experts in multimedia messaging.
Snow explains:
“We’re getting more inquiries around infographics and videos and photos. There’s more than one way to tell a story. Often the best way to tell a story is not through the [written word].”
Top talent
The new multimedia turn at Contently now involves 100 professional content contributors, all of whom are proficient multimedia experts. They’re also all individually screened by Contently staff to make sure that they’ve already had multimedia work published in a top magazine, newspaper or online publication. Contributors now include a handful of small video companies, although around half of the 100-strong army of the startup’s content creators are established members of its original network.
Despite being demur about the brands which are about to launch new multimedia campaigns with Contently, Snow confirmed that the startup’s earlier multimedia offerings have been taken up by some commercially hefty clients, including American Express, GE and Facebook.
The new multimedia team is dwarfed in number by the startup’s network of writers, which is currently around 25,000 strong. But the caliber of the new contributors is enviable, with names like Emmy Award-winning journalist Karlyn Michelson and HBO documentary producer Matt Tyson included on the multimedia roster.
That, product managers, is how to go from 48 cents to $1m+.
