15 Powerful And Easy To Use Tools For All Content Creators
If you think of your business as a rocket, content is the fuel that moves it forward.
Content marketing is as old as storytelling and marketers have been telling brand stories using content for hundred of years.
Thankfully, it has gradually evolved with the advancement of technology with several tools to perfect the various formats of content. Content marketing has proven to be one of the best ways to help promote businesses both big and small
Here are cumulated resources to help make your journey as a Content Marketer easier.
BuzzSumo
In order to know what content to dish out to your audience, you need to know what is popular. Buzzsumo is a powerful online tool that allows any user to find out what content is popular by topic or on any website.
It's an important marketing tool that allows you to find out what works best in a certain area. It can provide a more sharpened focus and direction in your content writing.
Google Trends
Google Trend is a free powerful tool that every marketer should leverage. The site provides data and graphs on the popularity of specific searches on Google and YouTube.
More uses of Google Trend:
- Identify seasonal trends to create content on time
- Find relevant topics that are trending and capitalize on them
- Use Google trend to plan your social media calendar
- Use Google trend for keyword research
- Find Niche Topics by region
Portent’s Content Idea Generator:
One of the most tasking job for content marketers is finding a headline that best resonates and catches the attention of your audiences. By inputting your content keywords or terms on Portent Idea Creator, it generates several headline ideas. Some are catchy while some won’t make so much sense. But it will help you through the process of brainstorming.
Quora
With over 400,000 questions on Quora, one might begin to wonder why it's necessary to spend expensive money on consumer surveys.
Questions and answers provide deep insights into what the consumer thinks and the problem they face. For Instance, seeing a question like “how to get more followers on Instagram” can inspire you to create content around that.
It is also a way to generate brand awareness for your brand as Quora has 300 million visitors monthly. You can position yourself as a thought leader and drive more visitors to your website by answering questions and demonstrating how your product or services solves their problem.
Reddit is very similar to Quora.
It is a veritable gold mine of information relevant to your area of expertise, your audience, and your business. The number of subreddits(communities built around a particular topic or idea) on Reddit is so vast, it’s impossible NOT to find a community that matches your audience and its interests.
No matter what community you join, you can sort posts in a dozen ways to find the information you need. The best way to check and see if a sub is right for you is to sort by “Top — All Time.” You’ll quickly see what the community is all about.
Google Docs
In 2018, I lost all documents containing all my researched content ideas, audience insights, and other important information because my laptop crashed.
For a second, imagine that.
Can be painful, right?
It was a painful experience!
Unlike traditional business tools, Google Docs is accessible from any device with an Internet connection. No matter where you are, as long as you have access to your email details. It’s completely free to use and It supports collaboration in business too, as documents and presentations can easily be shared and edited by multiple people.
Grammarly
No matter how perfect we write, we make some grammatical errors or omissions in our writings and this is the gap that Grammarly bridges.
Grammarly is a perfect tool for all content marketers to ensure articles, blogpost, and other content is accurate and easy to read.
It helps you detect some common writing issues, like repetitive words, overuse of the passive voice, and more. No more embarrassing typos or grammar mistakes.
Canva
You will agree with me that Image is an integral part of content marketing. They are required for social media posts, blog posts, infographics, or slides.
According to Neil Patel, blog posts with images get up to 9 times more views than posts without images.
One of the challenges many content marketers face is efficiently and quickly creating images, but Canva is that platform every marketer needs to save the day.
Canva is a graphic design platform that allows you to quickly and effortlessly put together design collateral such as, social media graphics, portfolios, presentations, newsletters, posters, brochures, menus & more!
This platform is available on both desktop and mobile. If you have zero knowledge of design, don’t fret as there are hundreds of templates, colors, fonts, illustrations, GIFs, to choose from.
Giphy
GIF, which is an acronym for Graphics Interchange Format, was introduced back in 1987 by Steve Wilhite of CompuServe as a new way to present a moving image.
GIFs can be used to garner attention more quickly and increase sharability, but also enhance prospects’ experiences with your content and provide educational content in an accessible way.
Joe Puglisi, Senior Creative Strategist, Buzzfeed puts GIF this way:
“If a picture is worth a thousand words, a GIF is worth 10,000. GIFs are a mini-vehicle for storytelling, capturing emotions, and communicating them in a concise way that words and pictures alone cannot.”
If you've not started using GIFs in your content, you might want to start now.
Unsplash
The importance of clean, quality images in distributing contents online can never be overemphasized.
With 550,000+ images on Unsplash, using one of these pictures will help convey your messages clearly and catching your audience's attention. Their image database is packed full of stunning images you can use on several platforms.
Pexels
Pexels is another free stock photo platform you can download quality images from. You can use and modify the images for free for both commercial and personal use without attribution.
Freepik
Freepik has a paid version but having an account gives you access to 10 free pictures a day.
Type in your keywords into the search bar to start sorting through all available images. Scroll through the pictures and click on any you find interesting.
HemingWay App
Hemingway app is a free writing tool that analyzes your writing and gives you suggestions on how to improve it. Yellow highlights point out common errors and complex structures, so it’s recommended to shorten or split them. Red highlights point out complicated and dense sentences that make your content difficult to read, so consider editing them. The Hemingway app also detects passive voice or adverbs usage that weaken your message.
These corrections will enhance your writing because you’ll notice negative patterns and know to avoid them in the future. More importantly, the Hemingway tool will help you deliver clear and concise content that is one of the main rules of good writing.
Piktochart
According to Hubspot, Infographics is 30 times more likely to be read than an article, and it's one of the most effective content types for obtaining backlinks.
With Picktochart you have everything you need in one spot to create beautiful marketing graphics: templates, icons, graphs, images, maps, text formats (titles, subtitles, paragraphs, etc).
Medium
Medium is a platform every content marketers should definitely use.
Apart from the fact that Medium alleviates the pressure of setting up and maintaining your own blog, It is a platform to position yourself as a thought leader, build an email list, direct traffic to your website, and build brand awareness for your brand.
