Fortune 1000 company Citrix has partnered with Ann Arbor-based ContentOro to create an informational hub for small businesses on Citrix's file-sharing and collaboration website
ShareFile.com.
ContentOro built the Small Business Center for ShareFile clients who are business owners and managers. The site features 260 pages in 24 sections with information and advice on a variety of topics for businesses that are just getting started, including how to raise capital, how to negotiate a lease, or how to build out a go-to-market strategy.
ContentOro provides that content through a partnership with John Wiley and Sons, a large global publisher. Wiley's print content has already been thoroughly edited, so ContentOro can repurpose it for web content more quickly and cheaply than paying someone to research, write, and edit new content.
ContentOro CEO and founder Bob Chunn says he is planning other projects with multiple Fortune 500 companies soon, building on good word of mouth like the referral that brought ContentOro to Citrix's attention. Chunn says one of his first paying clients of 2016 was Redford-based national chain Pet Supplies Plus, and he has been using that project to show other major clients what ContentOro can do.
Chunn says major companies don't find short, "clickbait"-style articles valuable. Instead, they want to provide information that is authoritative and trustworthy.
"We're working to bring content in line with what these powerful companies want to show their customers," he says.
Consumers respond well to the higher-quality content. Chunn says ContentOro's metrics show that visitors to pages built by ContentOro stay three times as long and view four times as many pages compared to content elsewhere on a client's website.
Chunn says he feels his mission is, at heart, a "noble" one: free and equal access to information currently contained in print books.
"Our technology allows the content to be used on the internet and allows search engines to find it," he says. "Everyone, regardless of income or status in life or where they happen to be located, can have access to that information now."
Sarah Rigg is a freelance writer and editor in Ypsilanti Township. You may reach her at sarahrigg1@gmail.com.
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