Content marketing forms a crucial part of the marketing strategy for about 88% of B2B marketers. If you are part of that 88%, then you would obviously be aware of its innumerable benefits. If you are a part of the other 12%, then it’s only a matter of time before you will figure out its significance. But the question is how do you kick it off if you haven’t done it before.
But don’t worry, there is a wide range of marketing tools that can get things going for you. So, regardless of whether you have just incorporated content marketing into your marketing strategy or you have been doing it for quite a while, check out these 7 content marketing tools that can work wonders for you by optimizing your time and efforts.
1. Grammarly
When it comes to content marketing, incorrect spellings and grammatical errors are absolute sins that you should stay away from. Regardless of how hard you market your content, you would never be able to build a dedicated and committed audience if it has spelling and grammatical errors.
Unfortunately, most normal spell-checkers often fail to detect grammatical errors or take the context into account.
That’s why you need something as powerful as Grammarly. You can use it for free to identify spelling errors and basic grammar mistakes. The premium version would allow you to work on other aspects like overused words, better word usage, squinting modifiers, and much more.
Also, you can continue editing your content from whatever tab you are working in without going to the Grammarly site by installing Grammarly for Chrome.
Of course, it wouldn’t identify all your writing errors, but it is worthwhile to proofread your content via Grammarly before posting it.
P.S: This post was checked by Grammarly….ssshhhh!
2. Canva
Imagery is an integral part of content promotion, but hiring graphic designers for every piece of imagery would eventually burn a hole in your pocket. Also, Photoshopping your way through it may take forever.
Luckily, there is Canva, which makes it easy to produce impressive images by using a simple and streamlined interface. Canva has got pre-built layouts and templates, which allow you to take your pick based on the platform that you want to post it on.
For example, the template for Instagram is sized specifically for Instagram, while the template for a social media banner is sized for a banner. You can also drag and drop elements into the tool.
From creating eye-catching images for your social media accounts to crafting images that you can add across all your content, there is no limit to what you can do with Canva.
And guess what, it’s all free!
3. BuzzSumo
The success of your content marketing strategy depends a lot on your coverage of the content that is trending in your industry. Also, your knowledge of what your competitors are writing about and how they market it goes a long way in ensuring that they don’t leapfrog you in the long run.
To that end, BuzzSumo acts as a great leveller as it reveals to you the topic that you should be writing about.
BuzzSumo provides you with ample insights into what type of content gained maximum traction across different social networks. Also, you can find the most popular influencers in your industry and reach out to them.
BuzzSumo would alert you every time your competitors post some new content, and with competitor analysis, you can assess how your content is performing against their content.
Also, your keyword search will give you a list of the top-performing content, which makes it an excellent tool for scheduling and editorial planning. Therefore, you can use it to plan your next blog and the keywords you should target.
After you have got all your ideas sorted with BuzzSumo, you can use this next tool to organize them.
4. Evernote
Content marketing can often be very chaotic, and keeping things organized can often be challenging. After all, there’s always so much content flying around that keeping them all stored in one place is not easy.
Don’t you wish that you had a better way to keep everything organized and a place to put your ideas where you could access them whenever you wanted?
This is where Evernote comes in handy. You can access it via all devices and makes up for an excellent place to keep all the information that you found through your research. You can save anything on Evernote and access it later at any time through your computer or smartphone.
Also, you can access your notebooks in offline mode and find text or images captured previously. Moreover, you can sync notes across devices, add annotations to images, and more.
Since you now have an organized set of ideas and content that you can work with, you should try boosting your online presence with this next tool.
5. Kred
Content marketing is much more than dishing out tons of content in the hope that people would read it. You also have to connect with influencers who can augment your message on different social media platforms. And this is where Kred comes in.
Kred analyzes Facebook and Twitter activity to measure your influence so that you can reach out to the right influencers who can have the maximum impact on your business. Since it also allows you to develop your own “influencer” status, your online presence is also significantly amplified.
Kred is the ideal platform for trust and credibility building. When people know who you are, they will be naturally inclined to engage with you, and the chances of them clicking on your content would also increase substantially.
But brand building is more of a team effort than individual endeavour. So, try out this next tool, which can help you manage your content marketing team without breaking a sweat.
6. Trello
Content marketing often requires the involvement of an entire team of content creators, SMO experts, and SEO executives, and things might get a little haywire at times.
Say hi to Trello, which can take your teamwork to a whole new level with cards, lists, and boards. Trello is a great tool that can help you schedule all your content marketing activities from research and writing to posting and sharing.
It has a simple layout, which makes it easy to get going and stay focused. With Trello, you can keep track of your to-do lists and set coloured labels according to priority.
You can comment on a card to update all your team members. It also allows you to leave messages for other members of your team and share content with them- all in one place.
This ensures that everyone who is part of your content marketing strategy stays in the loop.
7. ClickFunnels
If you have an online presence, you should have a sales funnel irrespective of whether your clients are online or offline.
A sales funnel is the journey that potential customers go through from being a visitor to a lead. These leads later become sales, and deploying a funnel increases your company’s average order value.
Now you can begin from scratch to make a funnel. But since this post is about helping you save time, you can simply use ClickFunnels without knowing how to code.
ClickFunnels has an easy drag-and-drop concept that helps you piece together a funnel within hours, creating a sales funnel that converts quickly. If that isn’t enough, it has got templates to make this process even quicker. And guess what, these templates have been designed based on what has worked for other companies previously.
With ClickFunnels, you will have the formula that can help you achieve exponential results by launching your landing page to the world. Also, it will help you enhance your customer conversions as you can tweak or adjust the images or colours of the underperforming pages in your sales funnel.
Conclusion
Regardless of how good your marketing plan is, you will need at least a few content marketing tools to support it, boost its impact, and maximize your success. Whichever tool you use, make sure to review them from time to time and find out if they are delivering the desired outcome. You may consider adding some of the tools mentioned above or using a combination of all of them. The key is sticking to a plan and knowing when to do away with it.