Over the years, Marketing has evolved tremendously. So has Content Marketing.
Content marketing demands energy and time to be properly managed.
To connect with the customers in this consumer centric era, the main challenge stands here is, whether the customers will buy their business story or message?
Providing valuable content to your consumers is not an easy task. Practically speaking, you can’t do everything on your own. You need to seek help from others or learn from others in order to grow.
With all other important business strategies on your plate, you need a helping hand to take care of all. Why not ease the pain by putting some smart content marketing tools to use for your aid? These tools must be deployed and consistently updated with content.
You just need to know and choose the right Content Marketing tools to work things out.
Content Marketing: An Overview
Contents
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” – Content Marketing Institute
Content is the core of marketing. It is present and future of marketing. It is more than advertising. It helps the business show its customers what the company is rather than just tell. And it all narrows down to Content.
The way businesses interact with their customers has drastically changed since the rise of digital media and social media. More interaction is possible today owing to technological advancements and their accessibility. Businesses and their customers have come closer with time.
Did you know Content Marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates 3 times as many leads?
Marketers of the digital era do not just focus on broadcasting/distributing messages. They believe connecting with the audience and providing the solution to their problems.
This ideology helps them build a strong relationship that lasts long with the customers. They give out advices, educate them with the usefulness of the product/service and promise to serve with complete dedication.
To achieve business goals with Content Marketing, you need to have a clear idea of what your business needs to accomplish and how content can help in doing so.
Content Marketing is not a short-term strategy. It focuses on disseminating content that is valuable, relevant and consistent to the audience.
The buyer has changed today. He is an expert and the one proactively reaching out to brands and businesses for help. With content marketing, you don’t just pitch your products or services, you provide valuable content that plays a vital role in helping them solve their issues.
Promised benefits of Content Marketing:
- Increased brand awareness
- Increased brand preference
- Greater reach at lower cost
- Increased sales
- Loyal customers
Importance of Marketing Tools
According to Content Marketing Institute study, only 42% of B2B marketers said they were effective in content marketing.
Marketing tools are technologically advanced helping hands for the marketers. They are precisely designed to automate repetitive processes, minimize errors, manage complex tasks, maximize efforts and analyze performance.
These tools are specifically designed to make work easier, improve efficiency & productivity, uplift brand/business presence and build a strong customer relationship.
There are a number of marketing tools available online from diverse markets to perform different tasks. Website analytics tools, social media marketing tools, SEO tools, Marketing automation tools and Email marketing tools are just a few to name.
You cannot build loyal followers and double up sales overnight. But you can definitely achieve set milestones with strategic planning and consistent efforts. Without question, content marketing, if done correctly, can produce great results for your business. It is a daunting task, but the rewards are worth time and efforts.
Here are 32 top content marketing tools that I strongly recommend to incorporate in your content marketing strategy for the best results.
These online marketing tools have proved helpful so far in driving lead generation, customer acquisition, customer retention, boosting sales and business revenue.
FOR IDEA GENERATION
BuzzSumo
With Buzzsumo, you can learn about the most shared content on the Internet. BuzzSumo also allows the marketer to narrow down the study by different parameters, such as by language, country, and type. Just pick your required filter and get started.
Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator
You shall never run out of business content ideas with Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator. Just give it what you are looking for in 3 keywords and it shall flood you with relevant and SEO-friendly blog ideas.
Google Trends
As the name suggests, Google Trends tells you what is new and trending around you on the Internet. It suggests you with the latest news updates and trending keywords with topics that people are curious about.
Portent’s Content Idea Generator
Writing great content is not everyone’s cup of tea. Neither is writing catchy blog titles. Portent’s Content Idea Generator is a popular content marketing tool that helps in giving great titles for publishing killer content that people will love.
FOR KEYWORD RESEARCH
Google Keyword Planner
No doubt, you already know about the Google Keyword Planner. Don’t you? This is one of the best keyword research tools all time. Globally used for keywords research to strengthen SEO & content strategy, Google Keyword Planner gives a comprehensive list of primary and secondary keywords to incorporate in content.
LongTailPro
Use this tool for learning about highly profitable keywords. It helps marketers like you search for keywords that are mostly used.
SerpStat
SerpStat is a simple tool that allows you to download popular keywords for creating a valuable piece of content for your audience. Also, with the huge data of most searched keywords, you can get an idea of what people are searching and what they inquire about. You can use this insight of queries to create personalized content for your prospects.
Ubersuggest
Get the list of most searched keywords fast and easy with Ubersuggest.
FOR CONTENT CURATION, CREATION & OPTIMIZATION
BuzzSumo
If you are looking for a thorough insight on most searched content, then BuzzSumo is a pioneering content marketing tool just for you. For optimum analytics-driven insights, BuzzSumo is the tool strongly recommended by industry experts.
It gives a complete insight of the highest ranking, most social and most influential content trending on the web that matches your search terms. With the aid of analysis on HubSpot, you can improve your content quality in order to get your website/blog/brand discovered among the top search results.
Pinterest Boards
Pinterest is a great opportunity for businesses. It helps to discover ideas and content around it.
It helps in introducing the business or blog with the whole new audience. Pins on Pinterest get multiplied every time your content is liked or shared by anyone. Wouldn’t you want this for your business?
Trap!t
Trap!t is great for research purpose when you start to write. It drowns you in the pool of resources for acquiring information. In addition, it also helps in social selling by efficiently organizing the company’s social content.
Curata
Find, curate, publish and optimize valuable content for your website or blog with Curata. This content curation tool helps in enhancing brand’s visibility with useful information.
Listly
Make fun listicles on Listly. The lists made on Listly can be further shared on all social media channels for promotion. It helps to collaborate, curate and share content from one platform.
Grammarly
Rated number one grammar checking tool, Grammarly is trusted by many. This free grammar checker improves the quality of the written piece by detecting and eliminating grammatical errors.
Copyscape
Being a content marketer, how can you not know about Copyscape. I bet you already do. Copyscape is a popular anti-plagiarism tool used to ensure uniqueness of the content. This plagiarism checker prevents you from publishing any kind of duplicate content which may further lead to copyright issues.
Evernote
Evernote helps you get organized, work smartly and remember everything. This cloud-based note-taking tool is proving to be a great asset for content marketing optimization.
Suitable for content creation and curation, Evernote helps you pen down every single thought or note your mind comes across. It has gained accolades for accessibility as it is mobile-friendly, comes very handy in a smartphone.
Trello
When you work with many people on the same project, you need to be organized and in sync with the team in order not to wreck the process out results. In this case, Trello can be very useful for you.
A Trello board is a list of lists, filled with cards. You can put these cards to use by assigning every card a certain activity. You can add members, comments, labels and deadlines to every card to manage and prioritize activities. It is a great tool to work with your team.
TrenDemon
Maximize your content marketing ROI by putting TrenDemon to use. It is globally applauded as one of the best online marketing tools. Real-time content analysis and performance tracking also possible.
FOR PICTURES
Shutterstock, Pixabay & Pexels
Shutterstock is the most popular photo stock site. You can get a variety of stock photos, royalty-free images and vectors on this website. Create an account and get started!
Pixabay is another similar platform from where you can get high-quality images, vector graphics and videos for free.
Adding to the list, Pexels too is a great website where you can find high-resolution images to make your content package visually appealing.
Visually
You need a creative, Visually gives you one. This online platform helps content seekers to find a suitable designer for their project. You can order for visual content, video clips, and infographics as per the requirement. Registration on the site and placing requirement request is quite easy. Go check it yourself!
Easel.ly
Easel.ly is for those businesses that have strict budget concerns. Don’t worry if you cannot hire a professional designer for your business, you can still market your content in the best possible visually appealing manner. Use Easel.ly!
Create and share visual content by choosing from thousands of templates.
FOR CONTENT SHARING & PROMOTION
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is the most widely used social media marketing tool of 2017. It helps you schedule posts for all your social media networks.
It publishes content fast. You can also quickly respond to messages, brand mentions, and comments across all your social channels. Also, it helps in tracking the performance of campaigns executed so far.
Buffer
This is yet another content distribution tool useful in managing social media effectively.
Great for content sharing and scheduling, Buffer helps you share, schedule and tack performance of your content on various social channels.
Outbrain
If you are looking out for a peaceful solution to manage all your social media networks, then Outbrain is your savior.
Outbrain makes content publishing and distribution easier. You can use this advanced digital marketing tool to amplify the audience for your content. It could be any type of content, say, video, infographic, blog or other. It exposes your valuable marketing content to a bigger and highly relevant set of audience.
Yoast
Yoast is one of the best SEO tools available online. This search engine optimization plugin for WordPress helps in boosting your blog website and its content in Google and Bing. It is a great tool for attracting a considerable number of visitors from search engines as well as social media. It also assures an increase in reader engagement.
FOR COMPETITOR RESEARCH
Ahrefs
“Track your backlinks, keywords, brand mentions and know what your competitors are doing.” – This is how Ahrefs describe itself.
Ahrefs is an innovative competitor research & SEO backlink checker tool. This tool is designed to study and monitor your niche competitors. It tells all about what competitors are doing and how. What makes them stand out and with what impact, everything. This study eventually helps in understanding the trend of search and improve search traffic.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo helps you discover and understand influencers. If you are into influencer marketing, this is a tool you can probably not miss to try out. By studying the influencers on BuzzSumo you can extend your website’s reach considerably. Moreover, Influencers have an audience that can drive traffic to your website or blog.
FOR ANALYTICS
Google Analytics
This is the widely used Analytics tool. It is a free tool that will help you understand what your audience likes and what not. You can take help from Google Analytics to assess the performance of your efforts and put it to use for optimum website optimization.
Google Analytics gives deep insights on how much traffic is your content getting, what content is performing good, where is your traffic coming from and last but not the least, what keywords are working wonders for you.
Tweriod
Tweriod is one of the best tools recommended to keep your Twitter social media marketing all in place. Trust me, Twitter marketing is quite a challenge in itself. It requires a lot of follower study. Not just this, you have to be correct with the tweeting time as well to hit the right audience with right impact. That’s where Tweriod comes into play. It suggests you the best time to tweet.
This content marketing tool is efficient in analyzing your tweets as well as your followers’ tweets.
Kissmetrics
As it describes itself, Kissmetrics is a platform for behavioral analytics and engagement. This content marketing tool helps a business learn about how and what people respond to the website and products.
It tracks every activity of people that they perform on the website. This customer intelligence tool is precisely designed to help marketers increase overall engagement, retention and conversions.
Cyfe
Cyfe is a great digital marketing tool to assess your content’s performance (both organic and paid), be it on website, social media, blog, etc. It is a comprehensive analysis with metrics such as followers, likes, shares, etc. all at one place.
HubSpot
HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales software. You can totally rely on the tools offered by HubSpot for monitoring and creating effective blog posts, landing pages and other content-marketing campaign initiatives.
This platform and its effective tools help a marketer to generate leads by managing marketing processes with proficiency.
With its message-scheduling feature, HubSpot helps in publishing content seamlessly to all your social channels. In addition, you can also track the performance of your social posts with its social-media analytics. Isn’t it great? Everything at one place, manage-post-analyze!
Final Words
Some of these best Content Marketing Tools will definitely prove helpful to your content marketing campaigns.
Finding difficulty in choosing the suitable tool for you? You don’t need to try every tool listed here. It is suggested that you identify what your content marketing specifically demands. Then, shortlist the ones fulfilling the criteria. Once you have the list of shortlisted ones, you can study each one of them and take your decision. The task can be a little tiresome, but totally worth it.
In case some of your significant tools made a miss in the list? If yes, then do share them in the comments below, what your business found as an effective marketing tool in your content strategy.
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