How MarketMuse Fits Into Your Content Marketing Stack

Recent estimates indicate there are over 200 content marketing related technologies plus nearly an equal number of SEO tools. Building a technology stack may seem a little intimidating with all these options. 

If you’re wondering where MarketMuse fits into your workflow, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s look at the content process starting at content strategy and going all the way through promotion. 

Do you use SEMRush? Then check out How to Get the Most out of SEMRush With MarketMuse.

Are you an Ahrefs fan? Read How to Get the Most out of Ahrefs With MarketMuse.

Let’s get started

Content Strategy and Planning

If you’re still using spreadsheets to run your content strategy, we understand. Old habits die hard. But if you’re assembling the data output from a slew of different tools, spreadsheets can be convenient. 

MarketMuse can function as your main content strategy platform or supplement your existing workflow. In either case, you can still benefit from our AI-driven insights. 

For example, you may have a list of keywords from which you want to derive a content strategy. MarketMuse can help you determine, for each term:

• Which existing pages on your site are related to the topic
• Whether it’s advantageous to update them or create new content
• The likelihood of success in pursuing that keyword

Turning your strategy into a plan within MarketMuse Suite is simple. A streamlined workflow means actions taken on topics and pages, whether that’s creating new content or optimizing existing pages, can be turned into plans complete with detailed notes.

No more site audits!

MarketMuse Suite keeps track of your content inventory, along with relevant metrics, on a continuous basis. This enables content strategists to create plans based on up-to-date knowledge of their existing content. Now you can see how each piece of content contributes to the bigger picture. 

Keep in mind; MarketMuse Suite is not a planner in the sense of an editorial calendar. So, you’ll want to keep whatever is currently in your tech stack to perform that function.

Keyword Research

Got a favorite keyword tool and workflow that you just don’t want to give up? That’s okay!

Lots of marketers base their content strategy on keyword research using search volume and keyword difficulty metrics. MarketMuse can analyze that keyword set and provide content insight you wouldn’t otherwise have, including:

• Personalized Difficulty Score (based on your site how difficult will it be for YOU to rank)
• Opportunity Score (a MarketMuse composite score that evaluates the urgency and overall likelihood of success for content on a particular topic)
• Content Score (a measure of content comprehensiveness)
• Average and target word counts for that search term
• Top pages on your site that are related to that topic

By the way, our personalized difficulty score is an industry first. Other keyword difficulty providers offers a general metric that applies to everyone, regardless of their niche. Only MarketMuse looks at your site and its content to determine how difficult it could be for you to rank for a specific search term.

Topic Analysis

No matter how big a keyword list you create, it doesn’t provide much insight into the topic itself. That’s the nature of keyword lists. So, you still need to perform a topic analysis.

Unlike other tools that give you “tons of information and ideas,” our AI-driven technology analyzes massive amounts of data to provide you with the most relevant information on any chosen topic. 

Remember, it’s not the quantity of data that helps. It’s quality.  

Our topic analysis helps you understand:

• What related topics need to be covered
• How much coverage is required
• What questions your content should answer
• How to turn your content into the best page on the web

Content Brief

The MarketMuse Content Brief is where insight turns into action. All the information contained in the topical analysis is bundled into a blueprint that gives writers a clear direction on how to create the best content possible.

Organizations that use content briefs appreciate getting A+ content on the first draft. But if you’re not using MarketMuse, you’re stuck building a brief manually. That can take hours to create. 

Content Creation & Editing

The MarketMuse Content Brief helps writers create engaging content, and your editor will love it too. Writers can use the brief to verify their content matches the quality requirements outlined in the brief. 

They can do this BEFORE submitting their piece to an editor. So your editor spends less time dealing with quality issues, and those that arise can be objectively identified.

MarketMuse doesn’t incorporate spelling or grammar checking. So, use one to avoid any embarrassing mistakes.

Content Optimization

Content optimization is radically different from SEO optimization. Those tools perform some basic SEO tasks such as:

• Detecting titles that are too long
• Analyzing metadata
• Finding broken links
• Creating sitemaps and optimizing permalinks

Here’s the difference between content optimization and SEO. SEO tools help address technical SEO issues. But they don’t understand your content or topic the way MarketMuse does. 

Our content intelligence platform analyzes your content to determine how to improve its depth, comprehensiveness, and intent alignment, helping increase its ranking potential.

Competitive Analysis and Rank Tracking

Rank trackers are great for those who obsess over their SERP position. They can tell you where you were, but not how to get to where you want to be.

For example, you can set a filter to only display topics with pages that are “within range.” These are pages ranking between positions 8 and 30 in the SERP. They’re “low fruit” in the sense that small improvements to content frequently bring significant gains in their place in the SERP.

Sort this list by any number of metrics including personalized difficulty score to quickly find the easiest opportunities.

With MarketMuse you can:

• Examine each page in the list to see what topics it ranks for
• Understand how well it’s doing
• Perform gap analysis to discover what improvements can be made
• Determine whether the existing content should be optimized (and how)
• Decide if a new page created to better serve the intent behind the search term

Whichever route you take (create new content or optimize the existing page) within MarketMuse Suite you can:

• Order a MarketMuse Content Brief
• Share it with a writer
• Have them self-verify the quality of their work before submission 
• Review their work 

Publication and Promotion

While MarketMuse is focused on creating content, even the best articles deserve some promotional efforts to help prime the pump. Fortunately, high-quality material makes promotion much easier and far more effective. Many tools can help with that, as you can see in this Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic. 

Summary

No one else can understand your website and its content like MarketMuse. It accelerates content creation, reinventing how marketers improve organic search rankings, drive expertise in their industry, and impact business strategy.

MarketMuse Suite, an AI-powered Content Intelligence and Strategy Platform, analyzes millions of articles on demand, uncovering gaps, and opportunities to empower marketers to craft high-quality content their audience loves and search engines reward.

Best of all, it’s perfect for any content marketers tech stack.