The holidays don’t just bring a rush to shop, the clamor of parties to fit your busy schedule, and a falling of snow. It is also a time for content marketing and creators to push as much as possible out before the beginning of the new year. Holiday season is overwhelming for content marketers across all industries. It brings more traffic, more conversions together with more rush and more work.
When there is so much to do, and so much content marketing to be done, it is important to have the right tools to help you out. These are perfect for anyone wanting to get through the holiday season without being entirely exhausted by overwork. They won’t help you with the Black Friday stampede, though.
Help with Content Marketing Ideas
#1. Buzzsumo
When you are looking for the right content to publish, it is important that you look at what topics are hottest right now, within your industry. Buzzsumo lets you do that, as well as watch competitors to see what is working for them.
It is a great content planning and curation tool, and usually features on any content marketing list on the web for a reason. My favorite part is that it shows you what platforms are circulating what the most, which makes it easier to target different networks.
#2. Contentop
Do you ever wish you could have a robot that wrote amazing content for you, on those days you just don’t have the creative energy?
Well, Contentop won’t do that. But what it will do is give you an artificial intelligence mentor that will give you a framework to work from, convert it into a first draft, and help you bring your ideas together into a better piece of writing. It cuts the time spent in half, and the result is stronger writing, with less effort.
Once you have an idea and the draft, it’s easier to go on to writing an article.
Help with Keyword Research
#3. Serpstat
Keyword research is the foundation of a solid content marketing process. It helps you understand what interests your audience and what content to create to help them. It helps you rank higher and it inspires you.
Serpstat is freemium tool helping you run a solid keyword research easily. You don’t have to be an experienced
Make sure to check out the following features:
- Run your best-ranking URLs and click to “Missing keywords”. This will show which keywords you should optimize those for. Alternatively, this will give you lost of ideas for useful follow-ups
- Run your core term to get it expanded and find long phases that will be easier to rank for
- Check out “Cluster research” for related keywords to expand your writing
- Check out “Suggestions” and from there “Questions” to find which questions in your niche users tend to type into the search box.
Serpstat is also an all-in-one
Help with Research
#4. Google Drive
Google Drive is obviously great for gathering, editing and preparing content from multiple writers, as well as sharing files and keeping everything organized in one place. But another benefit is their research tool.
You can search for and read about things right there in the doc, something I now do all the time to avoid becoming distracted by opening new tabs. There is also voice typing, so if you want to get your initial thoughts down and go back to clean it up later, it is pretty accurate in comparison to others out there.
#5. Evernote
Obviously Evernote is going to be the number one scraps gathering tool out there. It has been reliable for years, and they just keeps releasing and perfecting features. I don’t use it quite as much as I used to or professional tasks, but when I do it makes it so much easier to share snippets, information, links and images with multiple people.
Since everyone pretty much has it, or can quickly get it for free, it’s the perfect option for managing teams.
Help with Editing
#6. Hemingway
Hemingway always used to say that you should write drunk, edit sober. That might not be the healthiest advice he could have given, but the principle behind it is sound. Sometimes we spend so much time organizing over what we write that we end up wasting time that could be spent more productively.
Hemingway removes distractions, and pushes you to write your first draft without any edits. The editing comes later, once you have finished your first draft. It is a great productivity tool, especially for those who struggle with second guessing themselves.
Help with Managing Editorial
#7. CoSchedule
I used spreadsheets in Google Drive for my editorial calendar for years, and it was alright. But, it lacked so many features, and made things a bit harder to work with. CoSchedule was the solution, and I have never gone back.
It is a dashboard for your WordPress that allows you to plan, assign, write, publish and socially schedule content from right there in the calendar itself. It is easy to use, visual, more organized, and it cuts out the middleman. Plus, it gives access to your other writers, if you happen to manage a team.
Help with Promotion and Outreach
#8. Content Marketer
Content Marketer is actually three tools, and all of them can be useful. First you have a proven email template that sends from your Google mail account, and improves outreach. Second, you have an engagement tool that watches for any mentions of your content, regardless of platform.
Both of these tools are $9 per month, and worth getting. The third is a more expensive marketing platform that is content based, and monitors everything at once. It tracks down networking opportunities, influencers, and promotional avenues you may not have found manually. It costs $49 per month, and is great if you have more of a sales element to your content.
Do you know of any good tools needed during the holiday season to make content writing a breeze? Let us know in the comments.
Images: Author’s Own
