Where are the LinkedIn content marketing apps?

The increasing popularity of content marketing has seen corresponding growth in the number of software platforms. There are numerous offerings, all procuring, ordering, curating, stacking and measuring content. Everything, in fact, except producing it… although software engineers are making an effort in that direction, too.

This week’s launch is by Lithium, which provides social media management tools. Its latest product – Lithium Reach – has its roots in the acquisition of Klout in 2014. As anyone who’s used Twitter knows, Klout produces an index of the top sharers and producers of social media content.

Lithium’s new product effectively takes the Klout algorithm and uses it to discover the best content in any particular field and analyse what is popular and on trend. That is probably a major simplification – and we admit we haven’t used it. On the other hand, it looks very similar to BuzzSumo, which we do use and find pretty useful.

Much of this type of SAAS-based software is made courtesy of Twitter and Facebook et al exposing their API and allowing developers to produce applications. For non-programmers, an API is basically a way of providing data to another program. Twitter is especially generous in this regard as anyone who has created a Twitter bot would know.

The one social media channel that is a little more difficult is LinkedIn. Yes, products such as BuzzSumo do take LinkedIn likes into account. And yes, it does have an API – but last year it locked it down and shut out third-party developers. The only four that are available cover user authentication and allowing companies/users to share profiles/content through LinkedIn.

LinkedIn took the decision to limit its API due to displeasure at how developers were using them. Or, in the social media platform’s own words, “not delivering value back to LinkedIn”. Yet compared to Twitter or Facebook, LinkedIn could be accused of isolating itself. Maybe one reason why it is putting out lots of research on content marketing.

We may take it for granted, but the ability to use third-party applications to measure effectiveness at social media is crucial for many companies looking to plan and distribute content.

Where are the LinkedIn marketing apps? is part of Content24, the blog for London content marketing agency FirstWord.