Conductor vs. Shorthand

Conductor has proven to be an effective tool for tracking our organic search visibility, researching trends and content topics, and beginning our optimization journey in the new AI-driven world of search. The platform is exceptional for collaboration and is easy to use. Having deeper integration of search-related AI data and tools, organic shopping, schema tracking, and suggestions would further improve an already excellent product offering.

Incentivized

Shorthand is ideally suited to visual stories where you have a good number of images and/or embeds or video to include. It is well-suited to long-form stories, where you wish to keep the readers' attention longer than usual. It can help to differentiate particularly important or intriguing stories from others on your website - and for this reason, it could be used as a premium content tool, perhaps for subscribers. It can also be used to showcase stories about awards you've organised, giving them special treatment. It is less suited to breaking news, or very time-sensitive news stories, as it can take some time to prepare, post or update shorthand stories. And it doesn't work well for stories with strong accompanying imagery

Incentivized

• Keyword research (includes related terms, types of terms, high ranking pages, search volume, and more)
• Content guidance and briefs (you can use built in tools to get specific optimization steps and create content briefs within the tool)
• Competitor research (compare how competition is ranking and track organic market share)
• Support (dedicated team support, regular check-ins, built-in requests for deliverables/support items, options for requesting work with partner organizations, excellent training materials, and live chat within the platform)

Incentivized

• Enabling visual storytelling with multiple pictures
• Embedding rich media within a story, including video
• Engaging readers for longer than average dwell times
• Making it easy to create striking article design without coding experience

Incentivized

• I would like to see a feature to manage the backlink disavow list through search console. If Conductor is able to add this, we may be able to drop one of our other tools and save some money in that area.
• Conductor has a lot of features and can be a bit overwhelming. It is a strength and a weakness, as it takes time to learn all that is available.
• Another feature I would like to see is more integration with GA, we leverage creating annotations in GA and it would be great to have those pulled into the Conductor dashboard automatically.

Incentivized

• Additional flexibility in how text is overlaid on pictures would be welcome so that there are more choices on what images to use with particular layouts
• Enabling users to control the path of text - for example, enabling runaround - could enable some excellent designs
• Adding additional section templates could speed up design
• More flexibility in caption placement would be helpful

Incentivized

Conductor enables high-value SEO activity. There are a lot of moving parts in SEO and I'm always open to products that fit our requirements, but Conductor has built a stronger argument for its value after we subscribed than it had when we subscribed -- that's rare.

I check features like the InsightStream every Monday to monitor any major losses or gains in performance. These are easily digested and save me tons of time searching for these insights manually. If there's anything "worth calling home about" I can easily add insights into a workspace and create a report to communicate these results. It's super easy to use Conductor with a team and across departments.

Always works when I've needed it

Incentivized

I have never known it to be down during my use of it. All you require is an internet connection to log in and you can use it on multiple devices. Adding ease of accessibility, there are simple ways to log in. I've also never known a Shorthand story to go down once live on our site.

Incentivized

Sometimes reports can take some time to load

Incentivized

Due to the integration with our content management software, there is a short delay on our site while it loads, which may cause some readers to drift away. However, I've seen other sites where it instantly loads articles, so I believe this to be down to the content management software behind our site more than Shorthand itself. Once that brief initial period is over, it doesn't require additional loading time.

Incentivized

It's been sort of off and on in the 2 years I've used it. The live chat has been really helpful many times, and they're quick to respond. We had different support contacts but they've all been good. I think they've recently changed the way they provide support that I believe will be more dedicated and hands-on

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Our in house SEO manager trained everyone. It was easy to learn and he was well versed with the product. Any questions we had he was able to answer or reach out to support to find the answer

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I definitely recommend their professional services for getting started. It got our account 90% of the way to where we needed to be in order to gain value from it. In fact, I'd suggest that with few exceptions (such as, you have a staff that is already familiar with the platform and doesn't need any help), the quick start services over the first 30-90 days should be a standard part of onboarding with any new client. It definitely got us to the point of gaining ROI from the solution and, in turn, will make it easier to justify renewal and continued investment in it.

Incentivized

We tried Surfer SEO before Conductor. It just felt like it didn't have enough to offer in comparison to Conductor. There was a shortage on everything that you could do in the platform and it felt like the lack of in-depth tools caused us to miss out on making sure our content that we're putting out is the best it could possibly be.

Incentivized

Many features

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As a web-based service, it is easy for users to log into from anywhere. Content can easily be shared, as you can set up teams that enable access to each other's work as required. And content can be reviewed by others before publication using the sharing function. You can also view how an article will look on different devices.

Incentivized

• The Live Edit feature in Content King has given me the ability to make changes on the fly without having to wait for developer time to make simple edits.
• I have been able to gain back hours of time that I previously spent on aggregating data across tools when preparing on-the-fly reports for management.
• Every morning my dashboard provides me with a new insight or answers a question I may not have even thought to ask. This has added to my workload, but it's also helped to become better at my job.

Incentivized

• Helped us create one of our top 10 most-read and most-shared stories in the last year
• Enabled us to elevate key pieces of content, boosting dwell time on our site
• But can also be time-consuming to adopt for some stories, meaning you need to choose well what stories really deserve the investment in time
• Boosted collaboration between teams via its ability to share, including offering the chance for others to preview content prior to publication

Incentivized