What They Are and Why You Need Them With the amount of marketing technology available via the Internet, it is easy to become overwhelmed. When sorting through the array of tools available to you, it can be hard to know where to start and which ones will prove to be useful. Fortunately, different sites, apps, and programs offer different services you can utilize to have a well-rounded content marketing program, something that is needed in order for any marketing campaign to truly stand out against the competition.
Tools that Keep you Organized In order to best keep up with your marketing efforts, organization is key. Programs and tools designed to help you create everything from elaborate calendars to detailed lists are under this category to help you keep everything else in order. That being said, it’s not a bad place to start.
1. Time Doctor is an accurate time tracking and time management software that helps you get a lot more done each day. It is a web-based solution that provides time tracking, computer work session monitoring, reminders, screenshot recording, invoicing, reporting tools, integrations and so much more.
2. Pinterest An avid lover of Pinterest, I only have good things to say. You can use the site to bookmark and organize all your online resources. Any inspirational ideas, any articles you can review later for new information, and any other information you deem important can be plastered onto boards designated for different categories. Best news? If you don’t want the world to see it, you have the option to make a Secret Board that only you—and those you invite—can see.
3. Google Calendar This is a tool that helps make scheduling a whole lot easier. Creating deadlines for every part of your content writing and marketing (new ideas, writing, editing, and publishing) has never been easier.
4. Evernote You can create notes, and a notebook to organize them. You can access your account anywhere at anytime, on mobile phone or computer. You can even choose to share notes—but only if you want to. Think of it as a digital planner you can never lose.
5. Remember The Milk An app that combines everything. Access Twitter, Evernote, Outlook, Google Calendar, and Gmail all in one place. You’ve already used Evernote and Google Calendar to keep things in order; this app allows you to consolidate your organization further.
6. Harvest An important tool to help you keep track of scheduling, and particularly deadlines. It comes with software that will help you make business decisions regarding your time, and which tasks it is spent on. A program designed to help you prioritize and organize your time? Worth it.
7. Wunderlist Think of an elaborate to-do list. Wunderlist helps you create lists to evaluate your marketing strategies and ideas.
8. MindNode When it comes to generating ideas, MindNode will help you organize the chaos brainstorming can create. It can help keep track of what’s working and what’s not, and assist you in fleshing out your ideas more fully and completely on Apple products.
9. IFTTT With the slogan “Put the Internet to work for you,” you know it’s a tool that could prove helpful. Based on ability to create connections of the “if this then that” statement, you can create custom recipes that combine a “trigger” and an “action” for a desired result.
10. Trello A tool that allows you to organize everything under the sun on cleanly designed cards. You can share your ideas with coworkers and get immediate feedback, knowing which ideas should be pursued first.
11. Pocket Another app that helps you keep track of over 300 other apps. Like Pinterest, you can save an assortment of articles, videos, and anything else you can imagine, all in one place to use later.
Tools that Help Generate Content Concepts After getting all of your information in order, you can start to search for inspiration that will lead to great content. Finding sites that put a focus on the sharing of information can be a big help with this part of the process.
12. Quora A social networking site that operates on a questions, answers, and the discussions that ensue. This can help you to get new ideas from potential customers and fellow industry experts alike, as well as understanding trends and what your consumer wants.
13. Twitter So popular that people have started slashing hash tags in front of everything in hopes of generating interest under whatever desired topic they can concoct. You can search trending topics and see honest, unfiltered thoughts from potential customers, getting closer to find out what they want.
14. Reddit Full of subreddits dedicated to every topic under the sun, Reddit can grant priceless information from a variety of users. Again: honest, unfiltered thoughts and discussions that can prove invaluable.
15. Feedly An RSS site that allows you to stream content from blogs and websites in your home feed.
16. Alltop Content drawn from an assortment of popular and highly regarded publications and categorized under different topics.
17. Pulse An app that functions as an RSS feed from a variety of different sources based on the users’ topics of interest.
18. Trapit Just for the iPad, Trapit presents personalized content on your feed based on your interests. An added bonus? Trapit actually learns from your feedback and utilizes it to find better content just for you.
19. Paper.li A site that allows you to click through online newsletters and newspapers, and they have a “newsstand” section that highlights the staff’s picks on different topics.
20. Inbound.org Search for content from the community of inbound marketing from other markets like yourself, with the content being monitored and supported by the community itself.
21. SPUN An app designed only for the iPhone, it has an incredible collection of content offered on the web, including from sites like YouTube, Tumblr, and online blogs.
Tools that Help Create Content You’ve got the ideas, now you have to actually create the content itself. The following tools can help you do just that.
22. Google Keyword Tool A great tool to use while researching keywords, it can help you find the most profitable combination of keywords to use to get the most eyes on your content. Especially when it comes to the headlines of articles or web pages, it’s a great tool to utilize.
23. UberFlip Add audio, video, and widget elements to your PDFs to make content on them measurable and interactive, both of which are great qualities when considering content.
24. Issuu A tool that allows you to create lookbooks and online magazines that can be either free or paid, but always beautiful and professional.
25. Thinglink A site that allows you to tag images with links to just about anything, including video, text, music, Twitter, Facebook, and shops. Readers can provide commentary and follow channels of content they find interesting, and—even better—can share them on social networking sites or via email.
26. Meme Generator Looking for something to lighten the mood? Memes can be the way to go. This tool allows you to customize a meme, and to evaluate which ones are currently popular online.
27. PowToon Getting bored with just plain old boring content? Use PowToon to create animated videos, adding an elevated quality level to the great content you’ve already got.
28. Visual.ly A tool that enables you to create beautiful visualizations of data from experts and designers. There are seemingly endless infographics created for marketing inspiration, all there for you to take advantage of.
29. Resize.it An online tool that allows you to resize images you’ve got, bringing them to the perfect dimensions for you to publish it alongside your content!
30. Embedded Tweets Use this to add live tweets to your content, engaging with your audience and providing opportunity for interaction in response. This can also enhance the credibility of a topic, and enables your viewers to follow the original Tweet author and interact with them, all in one place.
31. GIMP Another great tool to help you create visual aids to go alongside your content. And visual aids can be crucial: almost half of people tend to be more receptive to information presented visually as opposed to plain text. Added bonus: it’s free!
32. Utrak Polls are a great way to get customer interaction and opinions all in one, and Utrak allows you to create simple polls to go alongside your content.
Tools Help You Write Content One of the most important parts of the process, how you write the content is crucial to its success. Need help writing your content, or just want some help editing? The following tools have got you covered.
33. Textbroker A service designed to help with content creation, offering quick turnarounds on everything written, as well as a large database of writers.
34. Lingospot Software that provides automated content marketing, updating your content through your different web properties. You get to choose the level of the software’s involvement on each page, as well as creating continually refreshing topic pages.
35. Brafton Offers marketing ranging from content marketing, social media marketing, and search engine optimization. It analyzes and evaluates your content to help determine if it will stand the test of social media and if it will work with your desired audience.
36. Compendium A helpful tool that enables publishes to complete every part of the content production process from one dashboard. You can easily plan, create, market, and evaluate your content marketing all in one place.
37. Skyword A tool that comes equipped with an endless number of writers and varying levels of creation services, Skyword is also partnered up with Thomson Reuters for business intelligence and Bigstock Imagery for pictures.
38. XYDO You can use XYDO to help create and distribute content to meet your needs as you see fit, utilizing only popular and important content. It works well with MailChimp, which is discussed in the next section.
39. Contently A site that connects you with professional writers, handling the payment transactions and editorial process.
40. NewsCred A tool that offers a wide variety of resources consisting of articles, videos, and images created to assist in content creation and strategy, along with information about the processes involved in using content owned by other parties.
41. Shareist Designed to help relatively small businesses, it’s an editorial program that will assist with the content marketing cycle in totality. In essence, the platform helps find content from every far-reaching edge of the web, adding everything from text to links to videos on your site. Any of this content can be put to use just about anywhere, including eBooks or newsletters, to help your marketing campaign.
Tools Help You Distribute and Successfully Market Your Content You’ve organized your ideas and resources and you’ve created your content, and still the process isn’t over! You have to distribute and market your content in order for it to be profitable and lead to an increase in business. Just as with every other step of the content marketing cycle, there are a great deal of incredible tools to keep this portion from being too overwhelming, so worry not!
42. Promoted Posts (via Facebook) With daily and monthly active users sitting in the hundreds of millions, getting your content featured in a Facebook advertisement or post is a great way to get it seen by a lot of people quickly. It’s pay-per-post, and though the content will be seen by both fans and non-fans, the content will have high levels of exposure it’s worth every penny.
43. Bundlr A tool that allows you to create topic pages with articles, tweets, and visual aids that you can share with everyone in your network. You can easily capture content from the Internet as you browse, making it easy to collect valuable information quickly.
44. PRWeb This program can assist you in sending SEO focused press releases regarding your most valuable content to an unbelievably large audience. How large is that audience? It consists of roughly 3 million monthly visitors, 250,000 news subscribers, and 30,000 journalists. The program helps you distribute the information as well as evaluate its success.
45. Buffer A tool that allows you to control when you want your content to be posted on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for optimal marketing potential. Not only does it help you keep control of your schedule, it makes the distribution and streamlining process quick and easy.
46. Tweriod Similar to Buffer, Tweriod helps you find the best time to send out tweets of your content, putting you in front of a larger and potentially more relevant audience.
47. Slideshare A program used to create decks that draw attention to a product, resource, or service on a website.
48. Inbound Writer This tool will assist you in keeping an eye on the topics you’re interested in, as well as to gain a better insight to your readers by providing information about the content they’re looking for now.
49. Followgen An important tool that all content marketing strategies can use in their arsenal, Followgen finds your target audience on the social web for you. A crucial part of marketing is getting the right information in front of the right people, and this tool will help you do just that.
50. MailChimp Referred to above, MailChimp is designed to give ease to email marketing campaigns. They can even help generate an emailing list if you don’t have one yet!
51. Yoast An SEO plug-in for WordPress that will help elevate your site—and the content you’ve worked hard to create and put on it—amongst search engine rankings. SEO strategies are always evolving and can be hard to keep up with; this program makes it significantly easier to keep your websites in line with the best techniques to stay towards the top.
52. Growave
Growave is the all-in-one marketing platform that helps Shopify brands reach their audience, engage users and increase conversions with ease. It’s an entire ecosystem with all the most needed in eCommerce features.
A great tool that automatically creates stunning catalogs with personalized templates for you. You can offer discounts and apply more wholesale features and let your customers order directly inside the catalog page to capture every sales opportunity!
Need a solution for lack of social proof? We are extremely good at this. Use our Photo Reviews, Advanced Wishlist, and Loyalty & Rewards and 10+ features complement each other in an ideal way. It combines solutions for the lack of not only social proof but also for the absence of repeated purchases and customers’ engagement. Growave makes things easier – you can manage everything from our all-in-one app’s dashboard with the most dedicated support team.
By Ana Gotter
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