From content research to content creation and distribution, there are the best content marketing tools to do your job.
These tools will aid you when you run out of ideas, and ‘food’ and ‘cats’ seem to be the only viable topics you can expand upon.
So you’d better close that youtube tab and get down to business. This section contains tools that will help you answer “What the heck am I going to write about?”.
Contents
Content Marketing Tools for Research
Quora
Most of the time, good content is in fact just an answer to a question that seems to be troubling a lot of people.
If you play your cards right with content, your answer might be so good that it will drive traffic, leads – and why not, money, too!
So Quora is the place where people just ask questions. And the place you can give an answer to said questions.
Quora is your treasure trove if you are looking for hot topics. And of course, the place to distribute some pieces of content.
But more on content marketing tools for distribution a bit later.
Reddit is the front page of the internet and the best user-generated content platform – and for good reason.- and for good reason.
As far as Reddit is concerned we are going to get a little bit deeper. You might wonder why!
The fact is that Reddit was not meant for professional use at all. What we have here is an entertainment site that contains the so-called “subreddits” that probably cover any topic you might think of.
So someone might meet the ultimate chaos if he does not know how to handle this tool.
To begin with, what you have to do is type www.reddit.com/r/ (insert-topic-here).
For example, say you are looking to make some content for the medical field.
You will have to go to the medical subreddit, which is www.reddit.com/r/medical/
Then you can browse through some fresh content and topics which are upvoted or downvoted by the community.
From time to time, you will find many gems on Reddit. Here’s one from my archives:
So don’t hold back, target your topics, and read some of the interesting stories the internet has to offer.
Alltop
AllTop aggregates all of the top news and information in real-time. The editors of alltop.com carefully craft each topic with the best sources so you can get the latest news from the most trusted sources.
You will find popular stories indexed under various categories – ready for you to go through them.
You will also find certain categories besides News, such as Tech, Sports, Lifestyle, and Business.
Feedly
Moving on to actual tools, Feedly is a handy little fella.
Information overload is our current reality and Feedly wants to fix exactly that through 3 steps:
- Organize and read all your trusted publications and blogs in one place
- Train Feedly’s AI research assistant to filter out the noise
- Collaboratively research and share key industry trends
Compared to AllTop and other news aggregators, Feedly organizes content the way you want it.
Furthermore, Feedly supports more content platforms than News:
- Research journals
- Youtube channels
- Business & tech publications
- Leading newspapers
- Niche industry publications
- Twitter feeds
Content Marketing Tools for Visuals
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words.
A thousand words take about 3 minutes – and most people on the internet won’t give you 3 minutes.
This is why pictures and infographics thrive in this fast-paced binary world.
Here are a few content marketing tools that can help with your visual creating process.
Canva
Canva is a graphic-design tool made for non-designers. It uses a drag-and-drop format and provides. Besides the tool per se, Canva gives you access to photographs, images, vectors, fonts, and all the nice things you are going to need for your compositions.
Canva can be used for both web and print media design and graphics.
The elements contain some really cool graphic designs to use for your pictures. They are fun and professional at the same time.
If you have some time, invest a bit in this tool. After some sparring, you will be making perfect visuals in no time.
From business cards to infographics, Canva is currently the most popular all-around noob-friendly content marketing tool.
Visual.ly
Visual.ly is the place where you will find custom visual solutions for your creative needs.
This tool stands for simple, fast and affordable design that makes your content stand out.
The products are separated into categories such as infographics, micro-content, etc which makes it easier for you to find what you need.
As soon as you know what you want to get created you first describe your project to a Visual.ly representative. Then, you receive a quote.
Once you accept it, you fill out the creative brief and you will be matched with a creative team. Visual.ly’s creative roster is made of over 1,000 professionals – writers, animators, developers, and more.
Once the project is finished and revisioned, it will be delivered to you and you will get all the credit.
GIMP
GIMP, also known as “the indie Photoshop”, is a cross-platform image editor. The tool is available to more operating systems than just Windows and OS X, and it’s open-source as well!
You will also find many tutorials on GIMPS website, including beginner tutorials, photo editing, painting, and programming.
If you are a low-budget creator or you want to give it a try to become a designer without spending any money, then GIMP is considered to the best choice.
GIPHY
These days, whenever you see a GIF on the internet, it’s probably from GIPHY.
GIPHY is the biggest GIF platform. Just type in the keyword you are looking for in the search bar, and let GIPHY surprise you.
EDIT.org
This online graphic editor focuses on specific designs for small businesses such as restaurants, sports clubs, or any sort of establishment.
It has more than 20.000 free predesigned templates easily adapted to any company’s needs.
It’s also possible to modify their colors, images, logo, or size with a simple click.
What’s more, EDIT.org has a blog with many articles. You will find articles for every type of business, with ideas and recommendations to help the user develop successful designs and carry out a professional communication strategy.
The standard version is free, but in case of requiring branded packs or more storage, then the Premium version is more helpful.
Meme Generator
Looking to make a meme fast?
Then Meme Generator is the best place to do it.
Select one meme or upload one of your images.
Add top and bottom text, add a meme accessory if you want (deal-with-it glasses, etc), hit generate and your meme is ready!
Powtoon
If you feel like it, you can always take it a step further from just pictures. Powtoon is a tool many professionals use to make online videos and presentations – the easy way.
Powtoon is one of the most popular video content marketing tools out there. And, as it promises, you can get professional-looking results in just 20 minutes. This is made possible with its ready-made templates, working in a drag-and-drop fashion.
Everyone can make marketing videos!
Uberflip
Uberflip is a content experience platform, created for enterprise-level customers.
You might be wondering what exactly a ‘content experience platform’ is and what Uberflip actually does.
Uberflip is a scalable way to create frictionless personalized experiences around your content that shape and influence the buyer journey.
Now, you still might be wondering what Uberflip is.
And you’d be right.
So here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdHv9DzjYw8
Content Marketing Tools for Editing/Proofreading
Grammarly
Probably the #1 online checker right now, Grammarly detects punctuation and what else -grammar- mistakes in your texts.
This content marketing tool helps you keep your writing mistake-free – for free. However, Grammarly does have a premium version.
The premium version features suggestions for better readability, vocabulary enhancement suggestions, and genre-specific writing style checks. It also features a plagiarism detector.
Readable
The secret of writing in an easily-readable way is not really a secret.
Small words, small sentences, and small paragraphs are some of the basic rules of writing. Using active voice than passive voice helps, too.
Readable helps you with these aspects, and then some more.
Accordingly, it will check your readability score, your text quality, tone and sentiment, and keyword density.
Content Marketing Tools for Distribution
Content creation takes time. It’s a shame when you’ve spent so much time creating your content but you get no traffic. It’s as if you never created it in the first place.
Content distribution is as important as content creation – if not more so.
So here a few content marketing tools to help you with your content distribution.
CoSchedule
CoSchedule is more like a content marketing platform than a content marketing tool.
Its purpose is to provide you with a single place for all your content marketing, blogging, and social media promotion.
The first time you log in to the app, you might get a little bit discouraged by the interface, but things are not as complicated as they seem.
Once you get used to it, it’s actually quite a simple tool.
You have a calendar area, connect your social media account and you just schedule your posts as you please and see necessary.
Buffer
Quick, easy to use, but above all a huge booster to the effectiveness of your distribution.
Buffer is one of the most popular distribution and content marketing tools out there.
You can publish your content for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn – all from one simple dashboard.
Also, Buffer is all about transparency. So much so that they’ve uploaded al their salaries on the cloud.
From customer service to the CEO, anyone can take a look at the salaries of Buffer employees.
Would you like to see it? Here it is!
MailChimp
Mailchimp is probably the most popular email marketing tool in the market.
From eCommerce, and retail, to mobile and web apps, and from agencies to new businesses and startups, startups, Mailchimp has many features that will help you understand your audience, and reach them when it matters most.
Trough Mailchimp you can send email campaigns to your subscribers. After you build your email list, that is.
Also, you will be able to create your custom automations.
With more than 300 app integrations, Mailchimp becomes an amazing tool, with which you can do miracles once you get the hang of it.
Content Marketing Tools for Performance
At this point, you’ve created your content and distribute it to your audience.
I think you’ve done a great job and you should probably move on to the next content piece.
Not so fast.
How is the content you made performing?
And, most importantly, do you know how to track its performance?
Here are some content marketing tools for tracking your performance.
Google Analytics
Why would a content creator ever need to get their hands on Google Analytics?
Well, because you need to measure your content effectiveness!
Imagine that you have a blog and this is where you publish your articles, infographics, and whatnot.
Here are a few things that Analytics let you know immediately – from its easy-to-learn dashboard:
- How many read your blog / specific post.
- For how long do they stay on a page or post.
- Where did they find your post
- Does your audience mostly engage with your content from their smartphones or desktop?
- Who exactly is your audience? What’s their age, gender, and location?
Now get this: Let’s say that you wrote an article last year which you think performed well because it had a high engagement in social media and communities.
Apart from the sum of your social media metrics, how can you know if it performed well in general i.e. it got organic traffic from Google.
Also, how does it perform now? With Analytics you can answer these questions and also make the next step.
So, if we say that your post in our example used to perform well last year but it doesn’t anymore, maybe it’s time to update it and publish it again!
That way, there’s a high chance that you bring it back to a better position in Google SERP.
In general, Google Analytics is gold.
Kissmetrics
Whereas Google Analytics is all about web analytics, Kissmetrics is about behavioral analytics.
It believes that your site is about people, not sessions, and that’s what your data should also be about.
Kissmetrics’ mission is to help you understand the actual user behavior of your visitor. Accordingly, with Kissmetrics you can further than page views, bounce rates, and time-on-site. Now, you can tie data to a real person and see a user’s full customer journey across any device.
KissMetrics mainly focuses on SaaS companies and eCommerce stores.
For Saas, Kissmetrics offer the analytics you need to:
- Convert more trials into paying customers
- Reduce churn
- Generate more revenue per customer
- Measure monthly recurring revenue by cohort
- Lifetime value by customer type and get better as you go
eCommerce are all about sales, therefore Kissmettics help you with:
- Easily integrate with Shopify
- Optimize your checkout funnel
- Increase new and repeat purchases
- See lifetime value by category
- Report on subscription revenue
Conclusion
So, content marketing does not end with content creation.
Content marketing is also about marketing your content.
And, hopefully, you know have learned some of the best tools to do that!
