For all of its effectiveness and value, content marketing is hard.
Fortunately, there are a variety of tools to help make your content marketing efforts easier, more effective, and more productive.
55 Great Content Marketing Tools To Help You Get More Done
Here are 55 of our absolute favorite content marketing tools. (Note: they are in no particular order.)
1. Buffer: Buffer is a fantastic tool for scheduling social media content across platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn and for optimizing posts for the best time possible. I love this tool and use it nearly every day to schedule all my social media content across nearly 15 social media profiles, including Pinterest and LinkedIn. The business plan at $50/month is totally worth it. Their community also hosts the popular, friendly Twitter chat #bufferchat on Wednesdays at noon EST.
2. Canva: The brain processes visual information at a rate 60,000 times faster than it does textual information, so why not give your readers something pretty to look at? If you’re like most marketers, it’s because you don’t know how to create visual images. Fortunately, Canva is here to fix that. The platform allows you to create attractive headers, flyers, featured images, and Facebook profile images, even if you’re not a design whiz. They have an awesome Design School where you can get great resources on creating visuals, too.
3. IFTTT: IFTTT (which stands for “If This, Then That”) is an automation tool that allows you to quickly schedule events, set reminders, organize email, sync files across the cloud and track the hours you spend working. It can also help you connect apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Dropbox for a more streamlined marketing experience.
This is one of my favorite automated content marketing tools. Just be careful: if you automate too much in one day, your followers might think of you as… uh-oh… “spammy.”
4. Sprout Social: Sprout Social is intuitive social media management software for busy content marketers. Perfect for streamlining your life. They host #SproutChat on Twitter as well and have a good community there.
5. Bitly: Bitly is a convenient URL shortener that allows you to include URLs in character-restricted social media sites like Twitter, or to use them as a citation in your infographics.
6. Google Web Designer: Google Web Designer is an easy DIY banner-creation service that allows you to easily create banners for any device you want.
7. Instagram Ads: Even if you don’t have an Instagram account, you can still use Instagram ads to your advantage. Ideal for attracting new leads and pointing traffic directly to your site, these ads can go a long way toward helping you generate new traffic. Not on Instagram? Make that one of your tools this year! It’s been huge for our social growth.
8. Google AdWords: AdWords the pinnacle of keyword research innovations and content marketers have been using it for years to help them determine which keywords to target in their marketing campaigns. Use it to gauge local bids, use keywords dynamically, track converted clicks and target devices separately.
9. SEMrush: SEMrush allows markets to track which keywords their competition is using. It also allows you to do things like locate trending content, find industry influencers, and research topics. SEMrush also has an awesome community: they host the popular #SEMrushchat Wednesdays at 10 am CST.
10. Salesforce: Salesforce offers CRM solutions that allow companies to automate their business processes like lead management and conversion. It also allows companies to manage projects and synchronize systems with mailboxes and calendars.
11. Skitch: Perfect for content marketers who want to insert text or arrows into images to be shared in posts or social media statuses, Skitch integrates with Evernote and allows you to pixelate sensitive information (such as addresses and phone numbers) when sharing data.
12. Sidekick: Sidekick is a HubSpot tool for marketers who want to see who opens emails and when. This platform allows content marketers to track emails.
13. AngelList: AngelList is a Silicone Valley investment platform that allows marketers to invest or raise money for a variety of projects. Great for finding funding for a project or linking up with other online companies, AngelList offers the largest pool of funds dedicated to early-stage startups in the world.
14. Time Doctor: Time Doctor allows content marketers to track the productivity of a team, including tracking time spent working and managing hours.
15. Trello: The organized marketer’s dream come true. Trello allows you to organize all of your spreadsheets, sticky notes, emails, and paperwork visually according to project.
16. Google PageSpeed Insights: Perfect for optimizing pages and ensuring that you’re staying competitive in your field, this tool allows marketers to track how quickly a page is loading on mobile and desktop while also showing you where you can improve.
17. Google Mobile-Friendly Test: The Google Mobile-Friendly Test allows you to earn a “Mobile friendly” label below your organic search results when you pass the comprehensive mobile efficiency test. It’s easy, free, and can help you land more organic search results.
18. Uberflip: Uberflip is an innovative software designed for content marketers, and is a great content marketing tool. This platform displays different content on your site depending upon who is viewing it, which makes it perfect for targeting unique audiences and providing valuable material.
19. Yoast SEO: Yoast SEO is a free WordPress plugin that allows marketers to evaluate blogs for keywords and to preview a post’s performance in organic SERPs.
20. Publicize for WordPress: This convenient feature can save you time when it comes to your social media sharing. Publicize for WordPress allows you to automatically share blogs to Google+ profiles and other platforms you may use.
21. Instapage: For anyone who has ever struggled with landing page creation, this tool is for you. Quick template-based creation, this software makes creating landing pages a snap.
22. Crazy Egg: Crazy Egg is a fantastic platform that allows marketers to see where users are clicking and what they’re interacting with while they’re on your website. It can also help you understand why people leave your site and how they’re interacting with your calls to action.
23. Unbounce: Unbounce offers split testing for landing pages and is a fantastic tool for people who want to improve the performance of their pages.
24. Picreel: Because you can’t make everyone who visits your site convert into a sale, it’s important to do what you can to make your existing visitors convert. Picreel allows you to display customized exit offerings depending upon what they did and how they interacted on your site.
25. W3 Total Cache: W3 Total Cache is a WordPress plugin that helps your page load as quickly as possible, enhancing user experience and creating a more streamlined site.
26. MailChimp: MailChimp is a fantastic tool for automating your email campaigns, building email templates, testing user interaction, and scheduling your email promotions.
27. AgoraPulse: AgoraPulse is an intuitive social media management tool that can be helpful for platforms like Facebook. It allows you to run promotions and reporting more smoothly.
28. Infusionsoft: Infusionsoft is a CRM designed to cater to small businesses. It’s helpful for organizing customer relationship management, marketing, lead generation, sales, and all manner of automation.
29. Postcardly: For content marketers who still use direct mail marketing as a part of their promotional strategy, there’s Postcardly. This innovative platform allows you to upload any photo of your choice and print it as a postcard. You can upload addresses in bulk – which makes this platform fantastic for holiday greetings or for announcing new promotions.
30. Paper.Ii: Want to tie all of your social media efforts together? Look no further than Paper.li. This platform creates a website-based feed and auto-generates it like a newsletter. It also links into your Twitter, provides automatic updates for your customers, and can help you earn more leads.
31. YouTube Live Stream: Live streams are everything right now and companies that build and nurture one can interact with their customers more effectively. YouTube Live Stream allows you to do this and is an important way to take your content to the next level.
32. Wordtracker: Wordtracker is a helpful keyword research tool that allows you to locate the top-performing keywords in minutes.
33. BuzzSumo: BuzzSumo is a favorite tool of ours at Express Writers. It can help you locate the most shared or viewed content in your industry so you can get a feel for what’s hot and what’s not.
34. Google Trends: Google Trends allows marketers to find out what other marketers are talking about and how people are searching on Google.
35. SPUN for iPhone: SPUN is a unique app for the iPhone platform that curates content and allows marketers to find what they love, which is great for idea generation.
36. Scoop.it: Scoop.it is a content curation service that allows you to publish, discover, and curate content that can help you gain visibility with your followers. For curation, this is top among content marketing tools.
37. Moz Toolbar: As a content marketer, linking is an important strategy. Unfortunately, many sites are low-quality or lacking in authority and linking to them may actually damage your site’s reputation. The Moz Toolbar can fix that. Designed to install in Chrome or Firefox, the Toolbar allows you to see important SEO metrics as you bounce from site to site, as well as allowing you to create custom searches, research keyword ranking difficulty, validate authorship and markup, and view social metrics. A true must-have for any responsible marketer!
38. Commun.it: Commun.it is a Twitter management dashboard that helps you do away with the overwhelming barrage of status updates and cut through to the most important content on the site.
39. Hootsuite. Hootsuite is great for content marketers who have dozens of different social media platforms to keep track of. The service offers a one-stop shop for social media management and is generally recommended for companies that maintain a presence on about 15-20 pages. Update content on all sites from one convenient desktop and automate your posting schedule from your desktop. It really can be that simple. They even have a great community: on Twitter, they host #HootChat that happens Thursdays at 3 PM EST (see their Tumblr page for more).
40. Slideshare: Slideshare is an underrated content marketing tool. Used to create a visual piece of content that can help you draw attention to your site, Slideshare can be a huge force for lead generation.
41. Facebook Promoted Posts: Facebook Promoted Posts are a great way to make your content more visible and take advantage of your newsfeed as much as possible. Use it to reach new clients and earn new leads.
42. Slack: Slack is a platform that lets you do more than just instant messaging. It makes messaging easier through the integration of applications such as Trello, Google Drive, and Zoom, among others. This makes communicating with your marketing team easier and not have important tasks and documents get buried in unread emails.
43. Followgen: Followgen is a helpful targeting tool that allows companies to find their ideal audience on social media. It can help you get your content out to the right customers and tie together your targeting and social advertising systems.
44. Bundlr: Bundlr allows marketers to build topic pages that include photos, tweets, videos, and articles to build a better-rounded content strategy. Much like the “Pin it” button, Bundlr offers a “Bundle This!” plugin that allows you to pull content from your browser for easy marketing and distribution.
45. Trello: Trello is a free tool that allows marketers to organize media and ideas on digital cards. This allows you to streamline ideas and collaborate effectively with other members of your content marketing team.
46. Evernote: If you’re not using Evernote, you’re missing out on the pinnacle of organizational success. Evernote is a multi-purpose organizational platform that allows you to snap photos of receipts, organize your editorial calendar, and keep track of all of your content ideas in one place.
47. Wunderlist: Wunderlist is a powerful list-platform that allows marketers to organize beautiful and powerful lists for content strategy and editorial calendar use.
48. MindNode: Ideal for keeping your brainstorm sessions organized and on-schedule, MindNode helps you understand what’s working in your content strategy and what’s not.
49. Meme Generator: Memes are a fun, lighthearted way to add variety to your content marketing, and when you use Meme Generator, yours can be some of the best on the web.
50. Authority Metrics: Authority Metrics is an innovative new keyword tool that streamlines the process of keyword research and helps you determine the best keywords for a niche. The tool also offers automated keyword competition analysis and a set of advanced filters that make keyword research easy.
51. ContentMarketer.io: ContentMarketer.io is a tool that helps you connect with industry leaders and influencers through email and twitter. The platform provides proven templates to make outreach more successful and advertises that it can help you increase your blog’s traffic by three times, just by making contact with the people you mention in your blog posts.
52. Tweetdeck: Are you handling a lot of Twitter chats? Then Tweetdeck is the perfect tool for you. Organize your stream of chats happening all at once and see multiple, live tweet windows. This tool is one of the best ones out there for catching live Twitter action.
53. Trapit: Trapit creates a personalized content feed based on your specialty, interests, and passions. Designed for use on the iPad, this app helps provide great content, which can be a source of inspiration, ideas, and research.
54. Narrow: Narrow is a tool that helps you develop a targeted Twitter audience through the innovative use of hashtags, keywords, and locations. This narrows and defines your target audience and makes successful engagement easier and more productive. The tool also offers analytics and the ability to manage up to 10 separate Twitter accounts.
55. Pocket: Pocket allows you to save articles, resources, and videos for viewing at a later time. Ideal for organizing content from all of your social media platforms and apps, this app can help you get organized and create better content.
Content Marketing Tools: Which Ones Do You Like?
While content marketing may seem like an impossible feat, our list of 55 top content marketing tools can help make your content marketing efforts easier and more effective in the coming year.
Have a favorite not listed here? Share in the comments below!
Interested in getting good content? Make our Content Shop one of your destinations this year for the fundamentals you need: good content to use with all your newfound tools!