Contently vs. Worksuite

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

I think Shortlist is well suited for a simple company that doesn't need to pull much data from their employees (the BI tool is only available for the high-spend accounts although it seems absolutely ridiculous that any company paying for any platform would be unable to pull data on their own people in the system). Shortlist is great for what it does, it just seems to be limited. I think the groups feature is quite cumbersome and often it seems that the "upgrades" made are not actually an upgrade, but a hindrance. For example, the IM style sending of messages within a project, but not within other areas to send messages. It just leads to typing issues and is in a place that would never be IM style.

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

• Shortlist allows us to pay our freelancers without having to personally manage the back end paperwork of payroll
• Shortlist handles all the year end tax paperwork creation and distribution

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

• Shortlist only allows for minor customizations to their platform. It would be great if each company could create their own view/usage set for the system.
• The help chat box needs some work for sure. It takes days for someone to respond if they ever respond and often there is nothing they can do to remedy the issue at hand.
• Payments should be able to be made every day, not just on Fridays.

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

30-40% of the time there is no response when you contact the chat/help feature. 30-40% of the time if they do respond, it is to say they can't do anything about the issue. Maybe 20% of the time the chat is actually helpful, but that seems like a high estimate when I think about my experience asking for support.

Incentivized

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

We've never found another platform that does exactly what Shortlist does in terms of payments, taxes, project management, and on-boarding. We use other sites to source our new vendors (like Indeed, craigslist, etc...) but ultimately we direct all those applicants to our onboarding in Shortlist. I wish some of the more "minor" platform issues we've had over the last year were fixed sooner (or fixed at all) but it does the job!

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

• Overall shortlist has helped us because we don't have another way to collect and accept bids, create project information, and conduct payments and contracts with vendors.
• The negative side is the extremely time consuming nature of navigating through the platform. It takes hours of team members' time to complete simple tasks.

Incentivized