Uberflip is either going to make life easier for IT workers or render them more expendable.
The Toronto-based startup that seeks to “empower” content marketers who don’t know how to code, has released a new product called Hubs.
Uberflip helps marketers, publishers, professionals, educators and corporations to produce effective content marketing experiences that can be distributed and tracked everywhere. The new Hubs product is taking that one step further, where marketers can take control of their content by creating a centralized, responsive and engaging front-end experience with no programming required.
“Content managers told us that one of their biggest challenges was showcasing their inbound marketing efforts on their site. They wanted to create a centralized home for their blog, social, video, photo, and PDF content, without having to involve IT time and resources,” said CEO Yoav Schwartz. “This content is updated daily and IT simply can’t keep up.”
Uberflip claims that by 2017, marketing directors will spend more on IT than IT directors themselves, as marketing becomes increasingly more technology-based. But, as Schwartz explained, often times IT is slow to adapt to marketers demands, which can cause brands to miss the boat on audience engagement. And while marketers spend a lot of time and resources on targeted content, “the infrastructure simply hasn’t existed to consolidate this content into a user-friendly and branded experience.”
So Hubs is connecting a brand’s Blog, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, Instagram and PDF content with a few clicks, creating a mobile, tablet and desktop ready experience.
When brands share a youtube video and subsequently try and lure users from one social network to another, Scwartz feels its “crazy”. “Instead users can tweet a link to that same video within their Hub, where all their other content from whitepapers to blogs is waiting to be consumed next. That’s how you build relationships with your audience,” he said.
Apparently, Hubs will not only lessen the burden on over-worked IT workers (or lead to their downsizing), but it will save the entire marketing efforts of a company tons of money. According to Content Marketing Institute, $44 billion was spent on content marketing in 2012.
“As that budget continues to grow, the challenge for marketers will be to justify that spend. Uberflip offers deep insights into which type of content engages your audience,” said Schwartz. “There’s no sense creating a video if you know an eBook drives more sales – we’re providing content ROI tools for the masses.”
In case you’ve never heard of Uberflip, here’s a video showing what its like to work for the company – words like “passionate”, “guru” and “gel with our culture” are all included. The video shows a loft space in King West, where employees are playing foosball and drinking craft beer (while working I guess). It certainly sounds fun.