Content is King.
You’ve heard it before. But putting out the right content at the right time and to the right audience is vital. After all, the whole end-game of content marketing is attraction, conversion, and retention of customers. Who doesn’t want to drive additional traffic to their website? Generate additional leads? Make additional – and continuous – sales?
But content marketing isn’t like Field of Dreams – you can’t just build it and expect your audience to come. You have to ensure your content offers value and relevance. Consider these content marketing stats:
- Only 41% of content marketers have a documented content marketing strategy
- Of the most successful companies, 69% have a well-documented content marketing strategy compared to just 16% of less successful companies
- 91% of today’s marketers use content marketing as a piece of an overall marketing strategy
Content Marketing Tools You Should Be Using Right Now
If you aren’t among that 91% – or you think your content marketing could use a boost – suit up. No matter which of the above categories you find yourself in, the following content marketing tools can round out your arsenal. Time to hit a home run.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a one-stop-shop for all content marketing strategies. Ahrefs lets you view all different types of data, such as:
- How many backlinks you have
- Where those backlinks originate
- Current dominant keywords
- Brand mentions
Ahrefs also lets you track competing brands. You’ll get to see what strategies are working for those brands and have the opportunity to try some of those strategies yourself. For instance, what keywords does your competition consistently rank for? How much average traffic do they get? With this information, you can come up with new strategies for your content.
Hemingway Editor
Part of having a great content marketing strategy is ensuring you’ve got great content – but that goes a bit further than just subject matter. How do you present your content? Do you write in active voice? How’s your spelling? Grammar?
Hemingway is a free tool that proofreads your content and checks for various mistakes and offers suggestions regarding how you can strengthen your content piece. You simply cut & paste your work into the Hemingway app, or you can type right within the editor. Some items the editor highlights include:
- Long-winded sentences you can shorten
- Phrases that should be simplified
- All instances of passive voice
- Adverbs and items that weaken text
Hemingway lets you put your best-written word forward.
Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo provides all sorts of insight into content marketing aspects such as most-shared content. You can run reports and analyze all social media platforms at once. You can set alerts to let you know when a competitor posts new content. Want to analyze your competitors, track their content performance, and even compare their results with your own?
What about dipping your toes into influencer marketing? Buzzsumo shows you the leading influencers in any industry and the type of content they’re sharing. The information you glean can help you plan a means of outreach.
Buzzsumo is perfect for planning your content calendar, scheduling social media marketing posts, and more. Don’t begin even drafting a post until you analyze the requisite information in Buzzsumo.
Evernote
Evernote is perfect for keeping track of notes, content ideas, even to-do lists. Evernote is a cross-device app that you can reach from your laptop, desktop, or mobile phone as long as you have the app – save something on your work computer? Access it from your tablet when you get home. You can share your Notes and Notebooks with other teammates – just add them to your team when you’re setting up your account. Best of all, you don’t have to be online to access your notes. Next time you’re connected, your Notes and Notebooks sync across all devices.
Buffer
Another great content scheduling tool is Buffer. No matter how large an organization or dealership you run, managing your social accounts in a timely fashion just isn’t always plausible. Buffer lets you automate your posts and more, such as:
- Manage all your social accounts from one convenient dashboard
- Set up an updating and posting schedule that works for you
- Edit or delete posts as necessary
Buffer also works with several different browsers, so you can integrate other extensions and apps if you want.
WordPress
Many content marketers have a working knowledge of WordPress. It’s one of the world’s most well-known blogging tools. WordPress makes layout and publishing simple, and allows you to customize the look and feel of your content. Got lots of images to put in your blog? WordPress can accommodate.
Plus, this tool has so many plugins, you can virtually set up your content to work more powerfully for you than ever before. WordPress has plugins for everything from eCommerce to SEO and social media.
SEMrush
And speaking of SEO, or search engine optimization, content that doesn’t have this backbone isn’t well-supported. Much like Ahrefs, SEMrush lets you discover keywords, backlinks, and trends and significantly ups your content upkeep game.
You can track your site’s overall organic health. This can help you identify any technical issues your site may experience and uncover pages that aren’t ranking highly. SEMrush’s brand monitor is an eagle-eyed scout constantly seeking mentions of your brand that aren’t linked back to you. This helps you build up your links, bring new content ideas to light, and overall boosts your brand’s awareness.
Because content won’t lose its crown any time soon, there are tons of content marketing tools at your disposal. Such a flooded market makes it hard to know which tools your tech stack would benefit from most. All of the tools above can help you develop that vital content marketing strategy that boosts traffic, increases engagement, and ultimately lead to more conversions and an infusion of revenue.
