Content marketing takes a lot of time and effort. The days of writing a fantastic blog post, pressing publish, and watching your page views soar are long gone. Even if you write the best article ever, you’ll only get a few hundred views.
Content Marketing Tools Should Be On Your To-Do List
These tools can make your content appear as if you’re a large company (even if you’re a one-person operation) and provide you with all the data you need to grow your business. Check out the top 9 content marketing tools, which include graphic design tools, content ideation platforms, and analytics.
1. Canva
The two words you see above will be the first thing you see after creating your Canva account: Anything can be designed. Canva isn’t joking. Content marketers can create high-quality, on-brand graphics for their social media, paid ads, and articles using their full suite of graphic design tools. Canva also has templates for each type of deliverable, allowing you to make them brand-friendly with a single click.
Canva is essential for content marketers because it allows them to:
- Create high-quality graphics for their content
- Hundreds of templates are available for each type of deliverable
- Add their logo to each graphic with ease
2. AnswerThePublic
AnswerThePublic gives you a glimpse into what Google sees when someone types a new search term into the search box. Based on the keywords you search, you’ll get a massive (we’re not exaggerating) list of questions your audience has asked. For example, if you want to create content for ecommerce business owners that will persuade them to hire your agency to handle their marketing, you would type ecommerce marketing into Google. AnswerThePublic will show you everything people have looked up around that term, providing you with hundreds of content ideas that have been proven to be relevant to your customer avatar.
AnswerThePublic can be used to:
- Examine the questions that your customer avatar is posing
- Determine the most significant pain points for your customer avatar
- Create content that your customer avatar will enjoy reading
3. Quora
Quora, like AnswerThePublic, provides insight into the mind of your customer avatar. It’s a workaround for not being able to run focus groups because you don’t yet have access to your avatar. You’ll find hundreds of questions asked on each topic on this question and answer website. For instance, if your customer avatar is a SaaS company interested in running Facebook ads, you can use Quora to see what questions people have about Facebook ads. You can narrow your search even further by finding out what questions SaaS business owners have about Facebook ads.
Quora assists content marketers in the following ways:
- Determine the issues that their customer avatar is experiencing
- Create high-quality content that has been shown to answer their questions
- Increase the number of people who see their brand by answering questions on Quora
4. Google Trends
Google Trends is a free tool that displays what people are interested in right now. Based on trends and industry news, you can generate high-performing content ideas for your niche. In the graph above, for example, we can see that the best time to write about the iOS 14 update. This was the update in which iOS users were asked if they wanted to be tracked across platforms for each app using tracking on their devices. Now that searches for iOS 14 have dwindled, we can predict that the topic will perform poorly.
Google Trends can be used to:
- Check out what’s hot in your industry
- Enter that into AnswerThePublic or Quora to see what questions are being asked
- Create content (and repurpose it across your platforms) that answers the most common questions your customer avatar has
5. Hemingway Editor
Copy and paste your written content (articles, emails, copy, etc.) into Hemingway Editor to ensure that it is: readable for your audience, does not overuse adverbs, avoids passive voice, and is easy to read. These are the kinds of adjustments that will make your content stand out as pleasurable and fascinating to read, while also assisting you in avoiding run-on sentences and the usage of needlessly “large” words.
Hemingway Editor assists content marketers in the following ways:
- Write at the appropriate grade level for their intended audience
- Avoid using too many adverbs or passive voice in their writing to keep it engaging
- Make a name for yourself as a writer of high-quality, entertaining content
6. Grammarly
We’d want to express our gratitude to Grammarly for transforming us into true word wizards. Grammarly, in actuality, is spotting our ridiculous grammar errors and, on sometimes, rewriting our phrases to make them sound better. Our favorite feature of Grammarly is the opportunity to customize the type of edits you want based on your writing voice. If you don’t want your writing to appear extremely professional, they won’t try to make it so.
Grammarly can be used to:
- Correct any grammatical or spelling errors in your writing
- Improve the structure of your sentences
- Make changes to your content based on who you’re writing for
7. SEMRush
Let us now discuss SEO. We know you’re not hurling spaghetti against the hypothetical content wall in the hopes that anything sticks. You’re being strategic with your content, ensuring that it can bring in the traffic, subscriptions, and conversions you want. That is why SEMRush has remained a popular tool among content marketers. With SEMRush, you can increase the number of people who see your content and track the data that helps you attract even more people to see it.
SEMRush is excellent for content marketing for the following reasons:
- You can perform SEO audits and track SERP ranks on a daily basis
- Before you hit the publish button, optimize your content for search engines
- Examine your competitors’ website traffic and stats
8. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a content marketing tool that you should start using before you need it. Add your Google Analytics pixel as soon as you set up your website (or if you’re reading this and haven’t yet). When you are ready to begin content marketing, you will have months of data to work with and will be able to launch a great strategy as a result. You may use Google Analytics to check how many page views you’re getting, where your traffic is coming from, conversions, demographics, and so much more.
Google Analytics can be used to:
- Check out how much traffic your article is receiving
- Examine the click-through rate on various pieces of material
- Determine your primary traffic sources
9. Monday
It is now time to discuss organization. The other tools mentioned above have assisted you in creating fantastic content that your audience is interested in. Monday will assist you in ensuring that you publish all of your thoughts. Because there are so many moving components in content marketing, organization is essential for success. Monday allows you to create your editorial calendar, assign tasks to each team member, and add updates to each job to ensure it moves down the pipeline.
Monday is a favorite day for content marketers because:
- They can construct a shared editorial calendar with their colleagues
- Assigning tasks to team members eliminates the need for additional communication on a different platform (ahem, Slack or email)
- Adding updates to tasks keeps the content lead up to date on the status of each assignment and the project as a whole
Tools for Content Marketing That Are Worth Your Money
Make sure your content dreams aren’t just that. You can increase traffic and conversions, as well as generate qualified leads and expand your business. All you need are the necessary tools to assist you make your material look professional, as well as the analytics to ensure that it continues to address your customers’ questions.
To be sure it’s the right fit for your needs, try out each product with a free trial offer or by purchasing one month at a time.
