How Contempo Works with Publishers and Users: Social Content Distribution
Contempo matches content from hundreds of publishers with the best possible social audience.
Our social amplification platform, Contempo, is the latest entry into the social media content distribution arena. We built Contempo as a service that helps match the right content across hundreds of publishers, to the best audience, out of millions of users and on various social media platforms.
We routinely get questions about how Contempo works from publishers and social media professionals alike. Rather than responding to each one individually, we thought addressing the question here would relieve any confusion and provide a clear answer to anyone interested in this question.
Social Media users use Contempo to find and share the best and most engaging content with their audiences
There isn’t any secret to our business. With Contempo, we have created a truly open content discovery marketplace where social media professionals and hobbyists who have a sizable following can find content that their audiences will genuinely enjoy.
Our basic value propositions are to:
1. Connect social media content curators with great editorial content for their audiences;
2. Help publishers and creators find the best possible audience for their content; and
3. Reward Contempo users for the time and effort they put into creating, growing, and engaging their social media audiences.
The business started simply enough. We helped George Takei grow his audience on social media because we were producing Allegiance, George’s musical about his time in the Japanese internment camps. We discovered a very simple but important thing: by testing content before it was posted, we could make sure George and his team shared material that his audience responded well to and generally enjoyed, as measured by the resulting engagement data. Over time, we’ve learned how to replicate and improve on this testing process and used it as the basis for the machine learning technology that powers Contempo today.
Thanks to its AI-powered recommendation technology, Contempo can organically surface the best and most engaging content to its users who share it with the audiences that will most appreciate it. It’s important to note that unlike many influencer “pay-to-play” programs, publishers have absolutely no say in what Contempo users share with their audience, or when. The content selection remains solely at the discretion of the content curators. There is no “post this, and we’ll pay that” quid pro quo at work here. Publishers cannot pay for and acquire traffic — they can only offer their content on the platform and hope it resonates with our users.
As our content testing process has improved over time, many of our early users have experienced significant organic growth and engagement. Through these accounts, we have shown that finding the right content for an audience adds real value — and for content creators and publishers, engaged audiences generate real revenue. Publishers understand this value and are typically willing to share a portion of their direct ad revenue with Contempo and its users based upon the engagement we together drive to their content.
The common misperception is that we are an “influencer marketing” company; we are not. In fact, we add value very differently from influencer marketing companies. For example, in a “pay-to-play” influencer marketing scenario, a brand or company would tell the influencer to “post this beer commercial,” “endorse that skin cream,” or “write about those vacation spots and we’ll pay you.” The payment and all details are negotiated upfront and the influencer has little-to-no say in what or when something is posted. If they want to be paid, they agree to the directive.
Conversely, Contempo takes a fully organic approach, allowing users to choose great editorial content that they think their audience will enjoy. We may recommend content to you that we think will work well based on trending data and on what we know about your audience, but as a Contempo user, the choice is always yours to use what you like or think your audience will connect with most. If you choose well and it is, indeed, a good match, publishers will happily share with us — and you — a part of the value that they derived from the resulting engagement.
It’s a win-win for everyone. Our platform creates value for publishers, for our users and their audiences, and even for the social media platforms that want their users to have the best content experience possible.
If you want to learn more about our story, we invite you to visit our website. If you manage a social media channel, we invite you to try Contempo, the revolutionary service for social content distribution.
