Content Marketing Tools
Content Marketing Tools
The content market landscape is rapidly growing and is estimated to be worth $412.88 billion by 2021. This marks a shocking growth of 217.3 billion from 2016 to 2021. But why are businesses investing in content marketing compared to other forms of marketing? It’s cheaper and produces better results. It costs about 62% less than traditional methods of marketing while producing three times the leads.
While content marketing tools won’t replace a solid content marketing strategy or skilled content marketers, it can make life a lot easier. Software tools can provide insight to produce better content and help make the process more efficient.
With dozens of content marketing apps and software out there, you’ll be able to find a tool to help with anything you’re looking for. Luckily, we’ve compiled a list of the top ten best content tools so that you can add them to your marketing arsenal.
What are Content Marketing Tools?
Content marketing tools are applications or software designed to make your job easier as a content marketer. App developers are becoming more creative and have engineered software to solve your daily content marketing problems.
Content marketing tools allow you to measure and track your progress. Accomplishing your marketing goals isn’t possible without a tool that can track results.
For example, using a tool such as Google Analytics can help you track website visitors and conversion. Or, if you’re looking to accelerate your growth, there are content marketing tools that make life easier. A tool like Clickfunnels allows users to build funnels using a drag-and-drop platform.
But do content management tools make a significant difference in results? The answer is yes. A tool like Hootsuite can outsource all of your social media postings so that you can schedule content in advance.
Another example is software like Hot Jar, which analyzes how traffic visitors interact with your website and allows you to see exactly how users are engaging with your content on each page.
As a marketer, you’ll see immediately what needs improvement. Content strategy tools can turn a failed marketing campaign into a successful one.
Must have tools of the trade in Content Marketing
1. Hubspot
HubSpot offers an array of useful content marketing features such as pop-up tools, chatbots, live chat, a powerful form builder, one of the most powerful CRM’s available today and a WordPress plugin. HubSpot is usually known for its CRM software to help sales teams.
However, it’s quickly turned into a full-service content marketing platform for blog creation, building your SEO, and even social analytics. In addition, this software allows you to send automatic email campaigns to your customers and leads.
Popular companies using Hotspot:
- Subaru
- Suzuki
- University of Southern California
- Trustpilot
- Accenture
2. WordPress
WordPress is the premier tool to host and create a website. Hiring programmers and developers can be incredibly costly. Instead, WordPress has a template system and plugin architecture that enables anybody to design a fully-functional and highly converting website.
Whether you need a website for an online store, portfolio, blog, or contact page, it’s easy to create one using WordPress. It also seamlessly integrates with social media platforms, email marketing tools, and project management apps.
Popular companies using WordPress:
- Target corporation
- GoDaddy
- Toyota
- Staples Canada
- IBM
- Sony Music
- TechCrunch
- The Walt Disney Company
- Microsoft Corporation
- Mozilla Corporation
3. Slack
Every marketer needs a way to communicate and organize their projects. Slack is a collaboration and workplace communication tool that is designed to help teams effectively work together remotely. This collaboration tool allows users to organize chats based on specific projects or categories.
For example, you can organize your team by department. For instance, you may need to create a chat for each of the following categories, content production, content editing, social media growth, blog, email marketing, customer service, etc. You can also create new chats to introduce team members in different departments and monitor chats or for Specific clients and projects.
Popular companies using Slack:
- Airbnb
- Shopify
- Instacart
- Stackshare
- Lyft
- Robinhood
- Dropbox
- BuzzFeed
- AMC Theaters
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4. SEMRush
One way to achieve your content marketing goals is to analyse your position in the marketplace. Google sends a lot of traffic your way if you’re able to optimize your website for technical compliance and search engine rankings. With SEMrush, content marketers can perform the following:
- Run an SEO audit to determine search engine ranking
- Research keywords for you to dominate in
- Gather content ideas for you to increase your organic traffic
- Create content and retest it with their specific content planner tools
Without SEMRush, you’d be spinning your wheels guessing what your audience is looking for.
Popular companies using SEMRush:
- ENVOL
- Creative Mettle
- Fidelitas Development
- BrainstormForce
- Eminence Organic Skincare
- Deloitte
- Quora
- Forbes
- Boohoo
- eBay
5. MailChimp
Depending on your niche, email marketing can be a critical component of your content marketing strategy. Email marketing enables you to connect with your prospects and create a more exclusive relationship with your prospects or customers.
MailChimp is an email marketing tool that enables users to build, send, and analyze email marketing campaigns. You’re able to create automated sequences based on an action taken. For example, if a visitor subscribed to our email list, we’ll create a sequence of emails to convert them from a cold lead to a loyal customer.
Popular companies using MailChimp:
- Channel.io
- Glovo
- Barogo
- Oxylabs
- TransferWise
- Postmates
- Paralect
- RazorPay
- Standford University
- Boston Globe Media
- Duke University
6. Canva
Hiring graphic designers on your content team can be quite expensive, and learning how to use Adobe Photoshop effectively may take a long time to learn.
Canva makes creating beautiful designs easy without needing to learn graphic design skills or coding. It comes with dozens of available layouts and has templates to fit all types of sizing.
For example, you can size your designs to fit social media posts, blog cover photos, infographics, and more.
This is a must-have for all content creators who don’t have excellent graphic design skills.
Popular companies using Canva:
- Merrimack College
- Ignited LLC
- Sierra Club Corporation
- University of New Orleans
- Canal Barge Company
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7. Hootsuite
Most businesses need to stay on top of more than just one social media platform and social channel. It’s best to engage your audience on the different channels where they are active on a daily basis.
Hootsuite enables brands to manage all of their social media accounts with one platform. Users can schedule their posts in advance to help systematize their posting process.
In addition, users can track all mentions of their brand on social media. You’ll be able to follow competitors and access all of your social media accounts on one platform!
Popular companies using Hootsuite:
- Airbnb
- FreshBooks
- IBM
- HP
- University of Mississippi
8. Grammarly
Even if you’re a native American speaker, everyone needs Grammarly in their life. Grammarly will analyze your writing to ensure it’s grammatically correct and fits your writing style, whether you prefer a casual or professional tone.
It’s still important to hire editors on your team, but everyone makes mistakes. With Grammarly, you’ll never worry about mistakes again. Check all of your team’s copywriting and content writing through Grammarly.
Popular companies using Grammarly:
- University of Denver
- Sunlight Supply Inc
- Flex Jobs
- Zeno Group
- HomeAdvisor
9. BuzzSumo
Never publish content without knowing the competition and demand for it. BuzzSumo is a marketing platform for users to research effective content. With this tool, you can view which content is performing the best and which competitors dominate each topic.
You’ll see data in granular detail such as backlinks, social shares, influencer reports. Never run out of content ideas again!
Popular companies using BuzzSumo:
- Wix
- BuzzFeed
- Warner Music Group
- Hustis Electric Car
- Active Campaign
10. Yoast
Yoast is a plug-in on WordPress that enables users to improve their SEO. It optimizes the content for a particular keyword, previews and edits URL slugs, meta descriptions, and even suggests relevant internal links.
Being ranked high on the search engine requires your content to meet high technical SEO standards. Yoast improves your content readability and ensures your technical content is optimized for the search engine.
Popular companies using Yoast:
- Klaviyo
- Elementor
- WooCommerce
- Voce Communications, Inc
- Preston’s College
Guide to choosing the best content tool for you
Here are several factors to consider when selecting the best content marketing tools for your business.
Budget: How much will it cost for the initial investment and ongoing cost to keep the software running. Softwares will range based on how many features you’ll need.
For example, with email marketing tools, the bigger your email list, the more you’ll need to pay.
Easy to use: The learning curve should be easy enough for your team members to use. For example, Adobe Photoshop gives advanced features for editing content; however, it can be quite difficult to use. In contrast, Canva is ideal for beginners.
Integration: Many platforms should integrate with social media and email marketing tools. For example, WordPress integrates with most apps from social media to project management softwares.
Support: Ideally, you want software that has 24/7 support. Sending email tickets and waiting a few days for a response can be disastrous for your business.
Reporting and analytics: Every tool needs a way to track your progress to gauge whether you’re receiving an ROI on your investment.
In our opinion, one tool isn’t enough. There are so many aspects to content marketing that you’ll need to delegate each task effectively. Your team should utilize different content marketing solutions that specialize in the following:
- Research and content creation
- Project management and collaboration
- Content promotion
- Marketing content management
- Email marketing
- SEO optimisation ideas
- Competitor analysis
- Optimization and Analytics
Check this New Content Marketing Tool
In 2021, many marketing platforms plan to release new features to enhance the user experience. For example, MailChimp releases its AI and smart technology by analyzing the marketplace and providing recommendations to your email marketing.
A few examples include: subject line helper, send-time optimization, product recommendations, and even recommend campaigns to send targeted customers who are more likely to purchase.
A new tool for 2021 that could be on the rise is Plannuh. It’s an organizational tool to help your CMO and CFO work together.
This is an all-in-one software that lets you manage marketing plans, campaigns, goals, budgets, and ROI for full-transparency.
Summary
Doing content marketing manually without any tools is simply inefficient and less productive. The best marketing teams use a data-driven approach to ensure every aspect of their content marketing strategy is tracked and automated. But with dozens of content marketing tools available, which ones are right for your business?
If you’re a business that relies heavily on SEO rankings or wants to improve your search rankings, we’ve written many articles on learning the basics of them.
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