Content curation is, without question, a key component of any effective content marketing strategy. Thus the news of Livefyre, a suite of real time apps for publishers, joining forces with brand storytelling platform Storify, is a big deal.
Targeting brands and businesses interested in enterprise-level storytelling and content curation, this marriage of Storify and Livefyre aims to create a new solution in what they’re calling “the world’s leading social curation company.”
The acquisition (the first for Livefyre) makes sense when you consider the two companies’ specialties—and how they might be better together. Storify is a digital storytelling tool typically used by journalists (as well as businesses and other users) to amplify their voices and create meaningful narratives. Livefyre powers real-time conversation and social curation to help users not only build engaging experiences, but also their digital communities.
“By joining Livefyre, we’ll become part of a larger company with more resources, a strong technical infrastructure and experienced enterprise sales team,” according to Storify. “Storify will be able to give journalists, bloggers, publishers, brands and agencies even more of the features they’ve been asking for. Together with Livefyre’s StreamHub, we can offer a complete suite of products to help our users do much more. We believe our united products are a perfect match, offering the best social storytelling, curation and user engagement tools anywhere.”
Of course, most digital mergers (and mergers in general) aren’t just driven by the need to offer greater functionality—there’s typically a connection to increased revenue, too, and according to one hypothesis, that’s the case here. As PandoDaily’s Hamish McKenzie suggests, the Storify/Livefyre decision may have been partially motivated by native ads.
“Livefyre CEO Jordan Kretchmer says brands are already using Storify to create content, and that Livefyre can amplify those pieces of content by syndicating them among its media partners,” Hamish writes. “For instance, Chevy might create a Storify story about its new line of cars, bringing together tweets, YouTube videos, and Instagram photos supplemented with extra text and a headline. A publisher that users Livefyre might then accept money to publish that piece on their websites.”
We think this is a terrific move—and a smart one. And it’s also nice that the companies are keeping (at least for now) Storify’s free social storytelling product, which gives smaller users the opportunity to use the product (and get hooked). The new VIP product will be incorporated into Livefyre’s enterprise toolkit for those who want to make a bigger investment in their content marketing strategy.
We’ll keep an eye on how Storify and Livefyre continue to evolve—and if we end up testing out some of the new features, we’ll keep you in the know. In the meantime, we’d love to hear from you. Are you already a Livefyre or Storify user? If so does this make either platform (or both) more attractive to you? And doesn’t this merger just make perfect sense? We’d love to hear what you think.
Shelly Kramer is a 20+ year marketing veteran and CEO of V3 Broadsuite, a marketing consultancy, and the President of Broadsuite Media Group. She’s also a founding partner in Futurum, a research and analysis company, and a founding partner in XVA Labs, a company focused exclusively on helping brands navigate the process of digital transformation as it relates to corporate culture.
Shelly is a brand strategist focused on digital transformation, and delivering integrated marketing solutions for clients. She’s an expert at lead gen, omnichannel marketing, all things tech-related, content strategy and execution, connecting social media to business initiatives, and helping clients leverage the web for growth and profitability.
Research conducted by Onalytica throughout the course of this last year named Shelly as #42 on their list of Big Data: Top 100 Influencers and Brands for 2016, #38 on their list of Content Marketing: Top 100 Influencers and Brands for 2016, #38 on their list of Future of Work: Top 100 Influencers and Brands for 2016, and #66 on their IoT: Top 100 Influencers and Brands for 2016 list. This recognition indicates that when it comes to all things related to technology and how it powers business today, she brings a wealth of experience to the fore.
She was also recognized as one of MediaPost’s Top-100 Social Media Power Influencers, 2015 Edition, and has been recognized by Forbes on a number of occasions, most recently as one of the Top 40 Social Selling Marketing Experts and Top 50 Social Media Influencers.
Shelly is part marketer, part tech analyst, part futurist, and all geek, with a propensity for numbers, and producing results. You can find her on LinkedIn and Twitter.
