Pretty much everything is online now. In fact, research shows that over 4 billion people make up the global digital population.
And with everything moving online, businesses have also turned to online platforms to market their companies or products.
A major element of any type of marketing is the content. Content marketing is an essential element to get people to know about your brand, organization, or product. It helps create buzz and know-how and thus establishes a customer base.
But creating the best content to grab the attention of potential customers isn’t always easy. However, there are some great tools for content marketing that can help smooth the process and allow you to create effective content marketing for your brand.
Here are our picks for the must-have tools for content marketing.
Tools for Content Marketing
Content marketing umbrellas a load of different elements and aspects. And therefore, there is no one size fits all.
In order to meet the different parts of a successful marketing strategy and create effective content marketing, there are different tools that you and your team can use and implement to put forth the best and most efficient content to get customers talking about your brand.
We will talk about some of the must-have tools for content marketing below. These tools can be used in the different elements of a content marketing strategy.
We will look at the tools for content marketing that fall into the following categories:
- Project Management
- Tools for Communication and Collaboration
- Tools for Analytics
- Content Optimization Tools
- Visual Content Tools
Let’s go through each category in turn and see which tools are content marketing must-haves.
Project Management Tools for Content Marketing
1. nTask
When you are coming up with a marketing strategy and creating content marketing you want to plan efficiently and then also track the progress of how the strategy is going.
What better way to accomplish both these tasks than with a project management tool like nTask.
nTask gives you a centralized platform where you can plan and execute your marketing strategy with your team being up to date alongside you.
Key Features:
- Task management
- Gantt charts
- Kanban boards
- Meeting management
- Communication tools
- Collaboration features
- File sharing abilities
Pricing:
- nTask offers a basic plan which is entirely free to use
- You can also opt for the Premium plan which costs $2.99/month, per user
- The Business plan costs $7.99/month, per user
Communication and Collaboration Tools for Content Marketing
While nTask offers the ability to easily communicate and collaborate with team members on the content you are creating. Here are some communication and collaboration tools you can still consider.
When creating content that will attract the right audience you want to try and get input from different individuals that can give you give you differing viewpoints and opinions to see what will work best for your campaign.
2. Slack
Slack is a communication tool that allows messaging features for team members. The tool comes with the option to have individual conversations or the option to create channels for easy group communication.
Key Features:
- Real-time messaging
- Team channels
- File sharing features
- @mentions
- Audio calls
- Video conferencing
- Workflow builder
Pricing:
- A free version is available
- The Pro plan costs $6.67/person, per month
- The Business+ plan costs $12.50/person, per month
- You can also opt for the Enterprise Grid plan, contact the sales team at Slack for a pricing quote for your company.
3. Evernote
Evernote is a tool that allows you to capture, organize, and share notes. The tool is great if you are looking for a platform to brainstorm and collaborate on your content with your team.
Evernote is great because the tool allows you to note down whatever you want and gives your team access to view or edit the work you put there. And being available on different devices allows easy brainstorming even on the go.
Key Features:
- Communication management
- Document management
- Document storage
- File sharing capabilities
- Customizable templates
- Full-text search
- Offline access
- Chat and messaging options
Pricing:
- Evernote offers a basic plan which is free of cost to use
- The Premium plan costs $7.99/month
- The Business plan costs $14.99/month, per user
Content Tools for Analytics
When creating content for marketing purposes you want to judge how your strategy, posts, or overall content is being received.
Without having tools to judge how the audience and potential customers of your business or product are engaging with your content you will be unable to judge whether what you are putting forth is efficient.
That is why software that provides analytics is important tool for content marketing.
4. Digimind
One such social media analytics platform is Digimind. The platform comes equipped with the ability to monitor your content and its performance across different social media accounts.
What’s more, is that with Digimind you can also understand your customers and potential customers as well as new market trends to stay ahead and create content that is up to date and will be attractive to those that view it.
Digimind offers a load of features and customization options making it a great tool to have in your toolbox to create content for your marketing campaigns.
Key Features:
- Sentiment scoring
- Social reporting
- Influencer identification
- Competitor analysis
- Follower analysis
- Content engagement analysis
Pricing:
- For pricing you can get in contact with Digimind’s sales team.
5. Google Analytics
As we mentioned digital analytics platforms are important to content marketing to give you the ability to track business metrics.
Another tool that can help you do this is Google Analytics.
Arguably one of the most popular analytics tools out there, Google Analytics is an easy-to-use, yet powerful tool that lets you set up behavioral events, track goals, and more.
Key Features:
- Referral tracking
- Site search tracking
- Conversion tracking
- Funnel analysis
- Keyword tracking
- Pageview tracking
- User interaction tracking
- Time on site tracking
Pricing:
- Google Analytics has a free plan
- You could also get Google Analytics 360. For pricing details contact the sales team.
6. Ceralytics
Next up is Ceralytics. This tool is a content intelligence platform that gives you marketers data. You can use this data to identify which topics are currently trending and which have the highest conversion rates.
Key Features:
- audience targeting
- conversion tracking
- content management
- editorial calendar
- categorization or grouping
Pricing:
- For pricing contact the sales team at Ceralytics.
Content Optimization Tools
There is no point in going through the trouble of creating and posting content if it is not optimized to get the interaction and response you need.
After all, the whole purpose of content marketing is to get potential and existing customers or users to know about your brand, company, or product.
Here are some tools that can help you will content optimization.
7. Yoast
First up we have Yoast. Yoast is a content optimization platform that helps companies and groups optimize their websites to ensure that they are search engine friendly.
The tool can help you fix issues you may be having with your content whether that be technical SEO (Search Engine Optimization) issues or non-technical SEO problems.
With the help of Yoast, you can analyze your website and decipher issues that may be affecting your website’s functionality or search optimization.
Key Features:
- Keyword suggestions
- Backlink monitoring
- Competitor analysis
- Link building
- SERP rank tracking
Pricing:
- Yoast offers a free plan
- You can also upgrade to Yoast Premium which costs $89 for one website
8. Optimizely
Optimizely is a tool that can help you make the most out of your content marketing strategy.
With Optimizely you can analyze your site and identify ways you can improve on the website and the content you are posting.
The tool is great to solve common content issues. Optimizely will help you increase on-site time, reduce bounce rate, and create better content to make lasting relations with your customers.
Key Features:
- AB testing
- Experience management
- Landing pages/web forms
- Performance metrics
- Contextual targeting
- Behavioral targeting
- Customizable templates
- Real-time editing
Visual Content Tools
Not all content is written content. Whether you want to supplement your written word or are looking to pack a punch with an eye-grabbing picture or video, visual content is useful.
Here are some tools that can help with your visual content.
9. Canva
Canva is a tool that allows you to design beautiful imagery without the expenses of Photoshop.
The tool is easy to use and offers a range of templates and layouts to help you get started. The tool is perfect for adding that little bit extra to your content whether it be for your social media accounts or website.
Key Features:
- Social media graphics
- Library of fonts
- Layouts and templates
- Photo editing
- Customizable branding
- Stock images and illustrations
Pricing:
- Canva offers a free plan
- You can also upgrade to the Pro plan which costs $119.99/year
- The tool also offers an Enterprise plan which costs $30/month, per person
10. Pexels.com
Pexels.com offers high-quality stock photos for free. You can use these photos to help jazz up your social media posts or other content that you post.
The website offers a range of professional stock photos that are completely free and ranging in different categories.
Key Features:
- Option to download images
- High-quality videos
- New images by the thousands every day
Pricing:
- The images you use from Pexels are free of cost
11. Mixkit
Mixkit offers hundreds of stock videos absolutely free. The website is a great tool to add a video and interactive element to your content and posts.
The website has a load of videos to choose from with new videos being uploaded weekly.
Key Features:
- Stock video clips
- Sound effects
- Video templates
- Stock music
Pricing:
- Mixkit is a free gallery
12. Aprimo
Aprimo’s Digital Asset Management software helps modern marketing teams manage content planning, creation, and distribution all in one place. Specifically focused on improving content operations, Aprimo makes content and brand management simpler for teams with easy-to-use tools to organize, share, track, and maintain all of their company’s media assets and digital files.
Key features:
- Version control
- Digital rights management
- Automated content tagging
- Preconfigured, customizable workflows
- Task management and calendars
- Integrations with many common MarTech platforms
Pricing:
- For pricing contact the solutions team at Aprimo
FAQs
1. What is the importance of content marketing tools? Why do we need them?
Content marketing itself is important to connect with your customers, create brand awareness and generate more leads. Thus, to achieve this objective effectively there are various content marketing tools to boost and automate your processes.
With the help of these tools, you can create content that is not only audience-oriented but also brand-oriented.
2. How to choose the best content marketing tool?
For starters, your content marketing tool should align with the needs and requirements of your business. In addition to that, a great content marketing tool should be user-friendly with an easy-to-use interface. Moreover, it should have multiple integrations, focus on customer service, be budget-friendly, and have analytics and reporting features.
3. What’s the importance of project management tools in content marketing?
Content marketing is bigger than just jotting down words. It requires effective planning for its execution. Thus, a project management tool helps to organize your ideas in the form of a content calendar.
Moreover, you can assign tasks, check progress and watch out for any bottlenecks with a tool. With the whole team on board, you can generate new ideas, avoid repetition and automate your processes.
4. What is the best content creation strategy?
Content creation strategies vary according to the type of your business. However, there are still some generalized tips to create the best content.
Firstly, you should create a buyer’s persona. This will help you to create customer-centric content and drive more customers.
Secondly, you should do market research to know your competitors. Always try to stay ahead of them and provide unique solutions with your content.
Lastly, use a content marketing tool to boost up your processes and create effective content. They will help you save time, align your processes and create unique content.
5. What are some Content Marketing methods?
Content marketing is done to engage, attract and retain maximum customers. Moreover, it is also done to create brand awareness, drive traffic and generate leads. For achieving these goals, you can use various content marketing methods in this digital era. For example, videos, blogs, photos, articles, podcasts, advertisements, and other media.
All of these channels can help you to market your brand much effectively and boost your business’s growth.
6. What are the challenges of content marketing?
Producing great content can be challenging sometimes. Thus, some of the common challenges that most content marketers face involve producing high-quality content, understanding different buyers, choosing the right channels, and getting maximum traffic.
However, you can overcome these challenges by doing effective market research and using the right tools. For example, the use of an analytics tool can help you measure the success rate of your content and also to point out the bottlenecks.
Conclusion
We highlighted some of the best tools for content marketing to keep your team aligned on the work they are given. If you have any suggestions, or if I have missed any great tool, reach me out at frank@productivityland.com
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