Best Content Marketing Tools

Why do we need content marketing tools?

For those not familiar with the term, content marketing is a relatively new concept. It involves the creating and sharing of online content (for example blogs, social media posts, videos). Content marketing doesn't explicitly promote a brand. Its purpose is to stimulate interest in the brand's products and services. It has many facets and can be quite daunting with the amount of information that needs to be processed, therefore streamlining your workflow with content marketing tools is really important if you want to make an impact.

Tools for Content Curation

Content curation is the process of gathering information relevant to a particular topic or area of interest. There are many tools out there which can help in this process:

Site	Description
Feedly	Arranges the content you rely on into easy-to-read collections.
DrumUp	Discover and share content to your social media accounts.
Medium	Discover and follow your favorite writers and stories.
Paper.li	Collect and share content that's aligned with your audience's interests.
Curata	Curate, plan and measure your content's impact.
Scoopit	Curate, add your perspective and publish to your own topic page.
Klout	Create and share great content that your audience hasn't seen yet.

Tools for Content Creation

Creating content isn't always easy unless you have that creative flair. It can be quite time consuming and difficult to do. Whilst most other tasks in internet marketing can be automated, content creation relies on our creative nature and is a very manual job. So to make things easier, there are a number of content creation tools that simplify the process for us:

For Designers:

Site	Description
Typito	Create facebook videos for viral campaigns.
Snappa	Create online graphics in a snap.
ThingLink	Annotate images and videos.
Skitch	Lets you quickly mark up images with text, arrows and callout boxes.
PlaceIt	Create images of your site on people's phones, tablets, and laptops.
LICEcap	Create animated GIFs from your desktop.
Piktochart	Create Infographics and read here where to submit infographics.
Pixlr	Online photo editing suite.
WireWax	Transform any video into a connected, interactive video
VideoPath	Add annotations and additional content to videos.
Landingi	End-to-end solution for landing pages.

For Editors:

Site	Description
Grammarly	Checks for grammatical errors and plagiarism.
Hemingway	Helps to make your written content easier to read.
Headline Analyser	Enter your text into the box to begin headline analysis.
Content Explorer	Content research tool for copywriters and content marketers.
Yoast	Ensure your content is properly optimised for search engines.
Wordstream	Free keyword research tool.

Tools for Content Promotion

Once your content is read you need a set of tools to promote it. Whether it be social media, email, news, blog posts... there is something in the list below that will work for you:

Site	Description
Click to Tweet	Promote, share & track your content on Twitter.
eLink	Turn web links into newsletters, web pages and embedded content.
Mail Chimp	The most popular content marketing email tool.
PR Web	Online press release distribution service
Mail Shake	A simple solution for cold emails.
Trap!t	Social selling and employee advocacy.
Hoot Suite	Manage all your social networks from one place.
Outbrain	Content discovery and marketing platform.
Oktopost	B2B SEO agency social media management platform.
Buzz Sumo	Find the key influencers to promote your content.
Convertkit	Email marketing tool for bloggers.
LinkedIn	Publish your articles on LinkedIn following these guidelines.
HashTagifyMe	Find related hash tags on Twitter.
CoPromote	A network of creators dedicated to helping each other reach new and larger audiences.

Tools for Content Scheduling

Content scheduling tools fall into two camps - automation tools and tools to manage how/who/when/where you promote your content:

Site	Description
Buffer	Schedule, publish and analyze all your posts in one place.
Wrike	h Online project management software for teams.
CoSchedule	Group based online marketing calendar.
Trello	Tool to manage your marketing tasks.
Google Sheets	Sometimes a good old spreadsheet is as good as anything to manage tasks.

Tools for Content Analytics

As any good SEO specialist will tell you: Once your content has gone live, you'll need to track it. Below are some recommendations for tools for content analytics.

Site	Description
Google Search Console	Lots of details about where your customers are coming from.
Google Analytics	Track your content using this all purpose tool from Google.
Shared Count	Social Media URL analytics

As the content marketing tool landscape grows, there are more tools available (both free and for a price) to help you promote content in a variety of ways. If you have any suggestions for tools for marketing content that you've used, please feel free to comment below.