Creating content is an essential part of any marketing efforts today, and this is not an easy task. Your writing has to be engaging, clear, smart and funny, give some new perspective and unique view. Challenging, right? And don’t forget the research, editing and visual part of it. After that the amazing content you’ve created has to be seen, thus distributed as widely as possible. All of this may seem rather overwhelming, but you are not alone in this struggle. For people like us, fortunately, numerous extremely helpful services have been created to faciltate content marketing.
The life of a content marketer is divided into several stages: topic and niche research, content creation and editing – the text, visuals, videos, etc., and content curation. Here is a list of extremely useful tools that simplify each of the tasks described.
Tools for Content Creation and Research
inPowered
inpowered is an excellent tool to discover the most shared and the most read content in your niche. Content discovery is free. Paid features include distribution of content to various audiences and social platforms, and its curation into smart native ads.
Alltop
Explore the most popular stories that are relevant to your product or niche. Content is indexed in dozens of topics for every taste: Work, Health, Culture, Tech, even Zombies or Bacon. Use it as an unlimited source of inspiration!
Hubspot Blog Topic Generator
The Hubspot Blop Topic Generator is simply genius tool will give you awesome blog post topics suggestions after you fill in just 3 terms you want to write about. Another similar tool is Content Ideator – it will give you existing titles and you simply use those as an inspiration for your own.
Editing Tools
Grammarly & Correctica
These free tools will check for grammatical errors and misprints before you press “publish” or “send”. Paid pro versions offer more advanced proofreading.
Professional Editing Service
If you want your writing to look expert and be polished, giving it to the professional editing or essay writing service will be a good idea. Experienced writers and editors will do all the boring proofreading work and improve the writing style.
Headline Analyzer
According to statistics, 80-85% of people will read only the headline. If they are not interested, they will pass and read something with a more appealing title. So, the headline importance can’t be overestimated. Fortunately, if you are not titling genius, the headline analyzing services can save the situation. The service scores your headline quality and rates its ability to drive social shares, traffic, and
Tools for Content Curation
ContentGems
This ContentGems tool makes it easy for a content marketer to discover and share curated content and expert commentary across social media and product website. You will have access to more than 200,000 RSS feeds of news websites, blogs, and social media pages. The tool enables you to curate relevant content for your topic simply using the keywords. Of course, you can share the comments and content to your website and numerous social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, G+).
Scoop.it
Scoop.it allows you to source and distribute content to all your channels (even newsletters) in several clicks. My favorite feature is its daily update. You receive a newsletter with top relevant articles on all the topics you follow.
If you choose a free version of this tool, you will be able to post content on 2 of your social media accounts. You can monitor only 1 topic for free, and the lowest cost for multiple topics is 11$ per month.
Paper.li
Find fresh, relevant and popular content collected from almost 1.5 million websites using Paper.li. Extremely easy way to find, schedule, publish and distribute your content across social media and the web. All necessary services are free of charge, but there is also a Pro version with no ads and even more features.
Creating Visual Content
No secret that visuals and photos attract people more than plain text; and they are shared more, too. Well chosen visual will make your content more emotional and expressive.
For social media photos and videos are essential. In Twitter, Facebook, leaving aside Pinterest and Instagram, visual content gains more than twice as much engagement per post than just text (according to Bufferapp). Visual content becomes a key part of most content marketing strategies, and you need it, too. Here are some tools you can use to enrich all your content distribution channels with appealing visuals.
Google Fonts
Google fonts is a huge directory of free fonts. Just pick the one you like, click “Use” and get the HTML code that can be implemented on your website.
Haiku Deck
Originally, Haiku Deck is software for presentations creation, but you can use it for wider purposes and create wonderful visuals using their great collection of beautiful fonts, images, and layouts.
The Noun Project
The Noun Project is a huge library of tons icons created and uploaded by contributors. There is an option of a free account with which you can use icons giving credit to the creator, and in order to have them royalty-free you can purchase each for $1.99. In case you need dozens of icons regularly, you can subscribe for a Pro plan.
QuotesCover
This QuotesCover app will turn any text (quote) you paste into a visually appealing picture customized for your awesome Pinterest, Instagram or FB account and even for prints!
Giphy
Use Giphy to search for the most relevant GIF to make your content more emotional, funny and engaging. You can use free extensions for browsers (Chrome and Firefox) for fast and convenient search.
The tools and resources listed above can help you create content and make it visually pretty. Still it is only up to you to know your customer and understand the needs or problems he or she has and how the product solves them. And the best way to know that is listening to your audience. Only brands which not only upload information to their audience but also listen to feedback can succeed in creating engaging and valuable content that people love. And which is also important, the content people are willing to share.
Have fun with those tools and produce amazing content!
Images “ Handwriting of Content Marketing word in notebook on the wood table / Shutterstock.com“
________________________________________________________________________________
Tweak Your Biz is a thought leader global publication and online business community. Today, it is part of the Small Biz Trends stable of websites and receives over 300,000 unique views per month. Would you like to write for us?
An outstanding title can increase tweets, Facebook Likes, and visitor traffic by 50% or more. Generate great titles for your articles and blog posts with the Tweak Your Biz Title Generator.
