While more brands are wrapping their heads around the idea of outsourcing their content needs to professional writers, many have yet to understand the importance of hiring a technical copywriter.
A technical copywriter who specializes in a specific industry can provide expert, well-written content that may be above the heads of standard copywriters.
This, in turn, allows brands to access the quality, relevant content they need, while also ensuring that the information provided in a web page, blog post, or article is on-point, and informative enough to quell a reader’s needs.
Read on to learn more about what a technical copywriter is, and why hiring one may be in your company’s best interests.
What Does a Technical Copywriter do?
A technical copywriter is virtually the same as a standard copywriter, except for the fact that he or she provides expert-level knowledge on a particular industry or topic.
For example, a technical copywriter may work in the financial, legal, academic, medical, or script-writing fields. While many companies assume they don’t need professional knowledge in these areas, the importance of expert content is skyrocketing, and technical copywriters are currently in higher demand than they’ve ever been before.
10 Reasons to Hire a Technical Copywriter
If you’ve ever considered hiring an expert industry technical copywriter, here are the ten top reasons to do so:
1. Expert industry copywriters have hands-on experience in your industry
Even the best copywriter in the world will have a tough time getting to the heart of a complex topic if it’s something with which he or she has never had any experience. Because technical copywriters have often either worked or lived in a specific industry, they bring a depth of knowledge that’s difficult to find anywhere else.
For example, a legal copywriter may be a retired attorney or paralegal, which means that the content he or she creates will be more relevant and more knowledgeable than someone who only knew about the industry from researching it.
2. Google wants expert content
Last year, Google released its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. (We wrote about it at length here.) The Guidelines, which were designed to help the Google employees charged with ranking web pages determine what to look for in quality pages, specified the importance of expert-level content. E-A-T
In section 3.1 of the Guidelines, Google says, “The amount of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) that a web page/website has is very important.”
While the definition of “expert content” varies depending on the topic (humor vs. open-heart surgery) and distribution method (social media vs. scientific journals) of the content, it’s clear that the grandfather of all search engines now requires pages with a high rank to feature expert content.
Luckily, one of the best ways to secure expert content is through the acquisition of a technical copywriter.
3. Technical copywriters are likely to work more efficiently
While a standard copywriter may struggle to develop the level of understanding needed to craft a particular piece of content, a technical copywriter will have that base of knowledge from the get-go, which will allow them to craft quality content in less time and with less effort.
In addition to saving you time, this will also save you energy, as a copywriter who is an expert in your industry will require less support and guidance than one who is not.
4. Hiring an expert copywriter can help you avoid Google penalties
Depending on what industry you’re in, the pages you publish may be known as Y-M-Y-L pages. Y-M-Y-L, which is an acronym that was also discussed in Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, stands for “Your Money or Your Life” and refers to web pages that carry a high level of importance for readers.
For example, a medical page that offers advice about what to do when you’ve just learned of a cancer diagnosis or a legal page that provides information on child custody agreement would both be considered Y-M-Y-L pages. Why? Because both contain critical information that, if riddled with inaccuracies, could have a dramatic adverse effect on the reader’s health, wealth, or happiness. Y-M-Y-L
According to Google, Y-M-Y-L pages fall into the following categories:
Financial transaction pages
Pages with financial information
Pages with medical information
Pages with legal information
Other (any page that contains valuable information that could have an adverse impact on readers if it is incorrect)
If you work in an industry where you publish any of the following content on a regular basis, it’s critical to ensure that your content is always expert-level, and the most efficient way to do this is to hire a technical copywriter to help you.
5. An expert copywriter can help you mine new topics
It’s tough to be the only one in charge of topic mining and creation. When you hire a technical copywriter, though, you can relax knowing that not all of this burden will land on your shoulders.
A technical copywriter can help you develop new ideas for content and ensure that the content you are publishing is relevant, up-to-date, and directed efficiently at your target audience.
This can help streamline your content creation process and ensure you’re getting the highest possible ROI from your content creation.
6. Technical copywriters can help produce the quality needed for high-profile content
If you’re publishing anything in the way of campaign text, creative scripts, or marketing material, an expert copywriter can help you ensure that you get the quality you need from your content.
While there are dozens of smart times to hire an expert copywriter, the decision is a critical one anytime you need high-profile content that will enjoy wide distribution.
7. Expert copywriters will optimize your content for SEO
To help your content enjoy the widest possible reach, you’ll need to find a writer who also understands how to optimize it for SEO. This is a skill that technical copywriters have, and that, combined with an enhanced level of knowledge and understanding is a winning combination for your content.
8. Professional copywriting will help engage your readers
If you work in an industry where a technical copywriter is a good idea, it’s likely you have a highly knowledgeable reader base that will appreciate expert content. If you don’t publish content that clearly displays your knowledge and expertise, you risk driving your readers away or damaging your reputation.
Luckily, hiring a technical copywriter can help ensure that all the material you publish is up to snuff for your readers and that you never lose customers based on unprofessional or inaccurate online content.
9. A technical copywriter can help you develop your brand
In certain industries, developing a reliable brand presence can be difficult. These are the industries that require the help of a technical copywriter the most.
In addition to helping you publish quality online content, a technical copywriter can also help you streamline your brand into a cohesive and reliable online presence.
From your web content to your social and blog material, there are dozens of applications for the skills of a technical copywriter, and including them in your company is a great way to enhance your web presence.
10. Expert copywriters make it easier to build a successful company
Content creation takes a lot of time and energy, especially when you’re doing it for an expert-level industry. Luckily, a skilled technical copywriter has the writing chops and the first-hand experience to not only alleviate your content burden but also to populate your web presence with the best in expert-level content.
In addition to helping you earn new customers and build your online reputation, this also makes it easier for you to worry less about content creation and more about critical responsibilities like marketing and operating your business.
Technical Copywriters: The Writers of Choice for Professional Industries
In some industries, a standard copywriter just won’t cut it. While these copywriters are talented enough to write content for a wide variety of businesses, there are some places where expert knowledge is needed, and this is where professional copywriters come in.
Specializing in industries like finance, tech, law, academia, medicine, or creative writing, these technical copywriters have a thorough understanding of a given industry and know what is required to craft ultra-relevant content that helps a brand rank well and provide genuine value to its customers.
Going above and beyond the calls of everyday copywriting, these technical copywriters understand exactly what it takes to succeed in a professional industry, and they have the skills and expertise needed to help make that a reality for the companies they work for.
While not every brand requires the assistance of a technical copywriter, there’s no doubt that hiring one can help maximize output, improve online content, and curate a successful online presence based on value and quality information.
If you need a skilled technical copywriter for your company, contact Express Writers today. We have technical copywriters in various niches and are happy to work with you to develop a plan to meet your content needs.
There’s a hot new player in the world of content creation, and it’s called a gifographic.
Gifographics are the next level to the amazing visual content piece known as an infographic. And gifographics are taking it to a whole ‘nother level. In addition to being more engaging and more interactive than infographics, gifographics are also ideal for mobile displays and primed to make a huge impression in content marketing as we know it.
Curious to find out about this innovative form of content?
Curious to learn how you can use them in your content marketing?
Let’s discuss.
What is a Gifographic?
In many ways, gifographics are the close cousin to an infographic. Infographics, of course, use images and text to provide an informative piece of content for users. GIF-ographics are an infographic… and just what the title suggests, with the parts of a moving GIF. See the differences in our two creations below.
Much like an infographic, a gifographic works by providing a platform for a lot of information in a small space. Gifographics, like infographics, also feature images but, decidedly unlike infographics, gifographics are animated. And “gifographic” is a term that Neil Patel coined back in 2014.
“GIF” is an acronym for Graphics Interchange Format. GIFs were one originally of the earliest forms of moving images on the web and they’re still massively popular. Sites like BuzzFeed use GIFS in their content all the time for high engagement, and Facebook just began allowing GIFs in its newsfeeds. Twitter allows direct GIF uploads, too. For example, here’s a GIF from a Twitter participant during one of our #ContentWritingChats:
While GIFs are short, sweet, and often hilarious, they lack one big component: they don’t often provide a ton of information for users. While they’re great for cat videos or images of people falling down, they haven’t dominated the “informative content” market until now. Combined with the traditional format of an infographic, gifographics have the potential to provide huge value for users and marketers alike. Published late 2015, our gifographic already has over 300 shares thanks to the fact that it illustrates the concepts while also providing a transcript and some helpful information for our readers. Effective, right? We think so, too. We even repurposed and cut the top of it as a GIF for an Instagram video:
While infographics are far from dead and are still effective in many ways, it goes without saying that they don’t work as well today as they used to. This is part of the reason gifographics are coming into popularity right now. One of the most important aspects of a gifographic is that it harnesses the power of video content, which is fantastic because an estimated 69% of all web traffic will be directed at video content by 2017. This means that the future of gifographics is bright and that you can benefit from incorporating them into your marketing strategy right now.
The Content Sea
We’ve talked before about the idea of the “content sea.” Today, the average social media user is confronted with MORE than 285 pieces of content each day. What’s more, people receive roughly 121 emails a day and the web at large shares over 27 million pieces of content on a daily basis. With that in mind, it’s no wonder that we’re suffering from content burnout. This may be one of the many reasons that people are on the lookout for concise, valuable, informative pieces of content now more than ever: we simply don’t have time to read 5,000 word articles or pick apart the meaning of long-form.
It would seem that we’re between a rock and a hard place. As the web continues to grow and as tech continues to develop, everyone needs content to make their businesses run, but more and more consumers are becoming burnt out on content.
So what’s the answer?
How do we create content that readers want to read? How do we create content that doesn’t immediately sink to the bottom of the content sea?
The answer is simple: make it more interesting.
This, my friends, is where the power of gifographics enters the picture.
How Gifographics Can Help Your Content Stand Out
Gifographics combine several of the things consumers love – information, visual interest, and conciseness – into one highly-shareable and highly-viral package. Gifographics are extra exciting right now because they’re just starting to break into the mainstream. While people beyond a select group of content marketers are starting to get familiar with this content form, they haven’t saturated the market yet, which means the grounds are ripe for marketers who want to jump on the bandwagon.
One of the reasons that gifographics are so effective is that people are 323% more successful at following directions that include illustrations than text-only directions. Additionally, we remember an average of 80% of what we see, compared to only 30% of what we read. These facts illustrate the importance of gifographics and prove that marketers who aren’t using them should be.
5 Key Benefits of a Gifographic
Aside from being immediately understandable and digestible by readers, gifographics offer a series of important benefits:
1) Gifographics boost SEO
According to Neil Patel, gifographics are one of the primary pieces of content that marketers can use to boost SEO rankings, help build authority, and gain readers.
2) Gifographics go viral
If you think infographics are the perfect vessel for “Going viral” you should check out what gifographics have the potential to do. A recent Buffer study found that when blog posts feature animated graphics, they grab more social shares than their un-animated counterparts.
3) Gifographics create engagement
If you were to take all of the information we used in our SEO content gifographic, it would read like a small novel. In gifographic format, though, it’s bite-sized, pared down to what’s important, and easy for readers to approach.
4) Gifographics accommodate the mobile revolution
2015 was the year that mobile search surpassed desktop search in 10 countries and there isn’t a content format that’s better for mobile devices than the gifographic. The value of vertical displays and immediately accessible information can’t be underestimated and marketers who put out gifographics are likely to see a boost in their mobile traffic.
5) Gifographics create diverse content
The average B2B marketer uses 12-14 different types of content in his/her marketing system. As new types of content continue to emerge, this number will continue to grow. High-performing types of content like the gifographic, however, have staying power that has the potential to add a great deal of value to a marketing plan.
10 Tips on How to Use Gifographics in Your Content Marketing
1) Use Gifographics to repurpose content
A gifographic is the ideal platform for repurposing content. Whether you’re looking to revive some old posts or produce a jump in your traffic, gifographics have the potential to come to the rescue. Use them to turn seldom-read blog posts into interactive visual content or to compile facts.
According to Content Marketing Institute, one of the biggest goals of B2B marketers going into 2016 is to “create visual content.” The gifographic provides a solid platform for doing that while also allowing you to get some extended use out of your old content.
2) Use Gifographics to diversify your content
One of the biggest secrets to effective content marketing is diversification. By using a variety of different types of content in your marketing strategy, you keep readers’ interest and ensure that you’re meeting your audience on their various platforms. Gifographics are a fantastic way to shake up your content creation schedule and provide your readers with content they’ll love. Although there aren’t statistics available for gifographics quite yet, we know that marketers who use infographics grow their web traffic an average of 12% compared to their counterparts. If this is true, just imagine what a gifographic can do!
3) Use Gifographics to add interactive content to your site
Interactive content yields 50% more engagement and twice as many conversions as non-interactive content. Sites such as KissMetrics have been proclaiming that the age of interactive content is upon us for months now and there’s no doubt that they’re right. Interactive gifographics use two-way quiz-like questions to promote interaction with the reader and promote bonding to your company. By combining the forces of interactive and visual content, you create a content supernova that’s bound to break the Internet.
4) Use Gifographics to showcase your brand’s personality
The days of stock photos and boring company websites are dead, or at least they should be, and one of the most sure-fire ways to stand out in the content sea is to create content that showcases your brand’s unique personality. A gifographic is a great way to do that. Because a gifographic allows you to have complete control over the imagery and text used, it’s a fantastic platform for helping your customers understand your culture and insights even more. This can help promote bonding and engagement from customers.
5) Use Gifographics to promote social sharing
Now that popular social media sites like Facebook are embracing GIFs, the gifographic has virtually unlimited potential. Create and distribute gifographics to increase social sharing or to expand your reach on social sites. This can spread the word about your brand and create increased sales and conversions over time. Since visual content creates about 94% more views than non-visual content and has the potential to increase your likelihood of being contacted by qualified leads by upwards of 60%, it makes sense to incorporate visual gifographics into your social media strategy.
6) Write clear titles for your Gifographics
In many ways, a gifographic needs to be treated like any other piece of visual content. Your readers need to understand immediately what it’s about and how it can/will benefit them. While gifographics can be hugely informative, they also possess so much information that they can be overwhelming if they’re not laid out correctly. For this reason, it’s important to write great headlines for your gifographics (just like it is everywhere else) and to ensure that your readers can immediately discern what the gifographic is about.
7) Make your Gifographics relevant
Just because gifographics are fun and exciting doesn’t mean you can make one about just anything and expect it to perform well. Instead, focus on making your gifographics relevant to your audience. For example, Express Writers is a content marketing agency, so I created a gifographic about SEO content. This is relevant to our clients and readers and provides value for both groups.
8) Make sure the information in your Gifographic is credible
This is a very important pointer – gifographics are content that is boiled down to nothing besides facts and statistics and, because of this, it pays to check and double check that all of your facts are accurate and your sources are reliable. This saves you from getting into hot water with competitors and ensures that you’re providing valuable content to your audiences.
9) Keep your Gifographics consistent
Just like everything else in content marketing, it’s important to maintain a level of consistency in your gifographics. This doesn’t mean that every one of them has to be exactly the same. Rather, it means that you should maintain a level of consistency in your voice, formatting, style, and information. This will help spread the word about your brand and ensure that you become a leader in the gifographic revolution.
10) Refresh Gifographics regularly
Even if you create a great gifographic, you can’t exactly expect to publish it and then ride the wave of its success forever. Not only is this unrealistic, but it’s also short-sighted. Great gifographics are valuable, yes, but they need to be backed up by the creation of other great gifographics. To ensure that your company is meeting this need, include gifographics in your editorial calendar and be sure to distribute them regularly alongside your other content. This will keep you on the cutting edge of gifographic creation and ensure that you’re staying atop the content sea.
Conclusion
As content marketing continues to change, it goes without saying that we’re going to see the emergency of new and exciting forms of content. Right now, the gifographic is the hot kid on the block… make that “sassy” kid, in fact!
So, tying it into your content strategy ensures that you’re providing value and information to your readers, which is the first and only way to truly win at content marketing. Thumbs up to you! We offer gifographic copy and creation services. Head on over to our infographic product and select Gifographics!
Why does my Twitter character limits hit the max so quickly? For as long as the bird has been on the social media scene, you’ve been asking yourself that question and wishing you had more characters to tell everyone about your day.
Twitter could be on the eve of granting your number one Tweet-wish.
Twitter Character Limits Removal? Big Changes For The Little Bird
Since its inception in 2006, Twitter has been a place for social media recluses to come and spill their feelings in 140-character spurts. The Twitter character limit has remained the same for nearly 10 years and is one social media aspect that has not been moved despite many changes from those other social media sites. In March,10 years after the first tweet was sent, things are slated to change. While many may see the character increase as a good thing, devoted Twitter users are up in arms about the change.
The longstanding limit of 140 characters is rumored to be increasing to 10,000 characters right around the time the social media site celebrates the big one-zero.
Twitter CEO and Tweet enthusiast, Jack Dorsey, has not officially announced the increase, but has been dropping subtle hints.
With Jack spouting things about the character limit imposing restrictions and release little-known information about why we even had to deal with a limit in the first place, it’s left more than a few people sitting with the hope that tweets can become something more than the often cryptic, tiny messages fired to other users.
What Increased Twitter Character Limits Mean For Twitter
Despite major changes that have been seen in other social media platforms, Twitter has remained steady in the way that if functions at its core. The site has managed to keep limits and dubious amounts of pictures at a minimum. The limits have helped prevent it from becoming the corny site that your grandma (and, admit it, you) use to connect with emotional friends who can’t keep their, seemingly 10 page, sagas off their statuses. The new character limit increase would mean an increase in the way that people can share their feelings and a decrease in the number of texts-as-screenshots pictures would appear on your Twitter feed. Twitter sees the large number of texts being screenshot and shared on Twitter not as a problem, but as a call for help from Twitter users. The dozens tutorials on quickly screenshot-ing your texts for Twitter that can be found online should have been enough for Jack Dorsey and his tweet team to see that there needs to be more options for people to post everything they want to say. The short but sweet bit was a fun act for Twitter to play and a great niche for them to fall into, but it is getting old and Twitter users are demanding more ways to communicate without even knowing they are doing it.
What Will Increased Twitter Characters Mean For You?
Many of the 974 million Twitter users are upset over the big changes that could be coming to Twitter. The majority of these users are upset and are sending out Tweets just like this one:
Just to let everyone know, if @twitter does increase their character limit to 10,000 then I’m out. — Regina (@NotSoEvilRegal) January 19, 2016
Users are upset over the change because, to them, Twitter is a place where creativity is forcibly inspired due to the character limit. Sure, you can post multiple tweets recounting the story of why you and your husband are no longer together, but the character limit really makes you think about what you really need to include in the story.
When looking at the increase in character limit, it is a good idea to see all of the benefits that come with more characters on Twitter. You can tell your friends full stories that have enticing headlines, Twitter can become a place to highlight a business’s creation of content and you can easily search for conversations that people have had…without having to worry about looking for their screenshots. The new character limit increase will make Twitter an all-around better social media option.
The proposed increase in character limit will likely not change the way that you send little messages to your friends, but it will give you more of an opportunity to include everything that you want to tell them.
Silver Linings For Blue Birds
Businesses, individuals and marketing experts will all be able to pull big benefits from the plans that are going to change Twitter forever.
For years, businesses have had to settle for bite-sized URLS and quick posts about sales that they might be having. The proposed character increase will allow these businesses to tell you all about upcoming sales, events and promotions. They can cram more information into a 10,000-word Tweet than they could with only 140 characters.
Remember that screenshot your best friend posted two weeks ago? Remember how she also posted 1,000 tweets since then? If you want to search for the screenshot, you have to remember what the caption of it was. You can’t search by what it actually said because it was a picture. With the new increase, your best friend will be able to post the words directly to Twitter. You can get right on, search for what she said and recall it to remind her how awful she felt when her boy-toy of the month cheated on her.
Some of the biggest benefits will come to marketing experts. For years, businesses have been asking the experts to Tweet long ads and information for them. This has never been a reality, but the increase would allow social media content creators to have all the space that they need to work with to get information out about the best businesses in the world of Twitter.
We launched our very first #contentwritingchat this week, Tuesday the 19th at 10 AM, and it was a raging success! Over 300 tweets were sent back and forth in the short hour. I was the host, and the topic was all about my favorite subject, What is a Copywriter? As the host, I answered the key questions put together by my social media team on this topic. We had some great participants join in and add superb thoughts to the conversation!
Our Very First #ContentWritingChat Makes it To #42 Hottest Talked About on Twitter
The most exciting part was when we were told by TMobile that we ranked #42 in the USA on Twitter. We had to take a screenshot of that one:
Content marketing is the best of both worlds for Olivia. She knows what it is all about and we know that the two often go hand in hand to get to content marketing.
Nearly everyone uses it, so it is important that social media content is unique. SEO is equally important because, let’s face it, who doesn’t use Google on a daily basis?
While we know there’s much more to SEO, long tail phrases are the newest way to get the content marketing results that you need for your business. They’re a great place to start.
Businesses need copywriters because most of them don’t have the skills for online writing. Copywriters provide professional service and great information that a business may not have been able to put out otherwise. You should also consider using a copywriter …
We are looking forward to seeing all of you next Tuesday at 10AM (Central) on the #ContentWritingChat! Our guest host will be none other than Elena from SEMrush, discussing content strategy tips for the online SEO writer. Join us on Twitter @ExpWriters!
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!
