NewsCred evolves into an ultimate resource for content marketers

If you want to build a shed but only want to visit one store, you go to a Home Depot. If you want to build your own publication from scratch, you might want to check out NewsCred.

NewsCred began as an improved version of the newswire services offered by the likes of the Associated Press, but with less of the red tape since it isn’t the one producing all the content. NewsCred syndicates content from tons of reputable online publishers (The Economist, Bloomberg, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, TheNextWeb, New York Times), stock video and photography services like Shutterstock, and research firms like Nielsen. The startup also has an active Newsroom group that consists of over 300 seasoned freelance journalists that can be assigned to produce original work without having to share a cut of their pay. NewsCred’s service has seen lots of success from well-known brands interested in doing content marketing, and as of today the startup is improving its tools to help make that process easier and more effective.

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More specifically, the company is upgrading its recommendation engine to help suggest the best content to use based on each brand or content marketing campaign. The new engine will help predict in real-time how a piece of content is likely to perform on social networks and overall content consumption.

“We’ve always provided only high-quality content, but now it’s more a matter of helping brand marketers find not just the best content but the best performing,” NewsCred founder and CEO Shafqat Islam told VentureBeat in an interview. “We’re now able to look across the social web to see how [NewsCred-licensed] content is performing and how people are responding to it on an individual article level.”

Islam explained that a brand marketer client like Huggies, for example, wants content for dads about how best to manage work, life, and your kid. “There might be 10 relevant articles in our system that pop up, but what we can do is show how each of those are getting shared, determine if each article resonated with the audience, and if it’s for the right audience.”

Islam said the service has made great strides as a content marketing solution, licensing out 1.2 million articles per month and providing analytics and collaboration tools for marketers. The company is even seeing growth for original content sourced through NewsCred increase by 20 percent every week.

Founded in 2008, the New York City-based startup has raised a total of $46.8 million in funding to date.