In this post are content marketing tools that you must use if you want to guarantee the increase in traffic on your website.

There are hundreds and thousands of tools you could use for implementing your content marketing strategy. But I have narrowed down the list to the most essential and vital, so you don’t have to look far and wide for the right software to use.

Content Marketing Tools to Die for

The tools below are organised according to the different stages involved in content marketing. Some tools are alternatives of the same ones listed in this post. This is to help you discern which among the options you’re most comfortable using.

Content and Topic Research

An effective content marketing strategy requires planning and research. In this case, you need to know what you will write and the positive effects it will bring to your site after clicking the “Publish” button. The tools below will help you analyse the best content to write on your blog or site.

1. Quora – Find questions about your topic without answers yet and answer them in your article. You can also use the best answers about a question and rewrite them into your post.

2. Reddit – Check out the top subreddits of your niche and find the best questions or discussions about your topic. Use the information here to outline your content, and make sure that you cover all your bases.

3. Feedly – Create an account and curate the best blogs and online publications about a topic.

So, everything you search for upcoming content ideas, you can check out the latest articles from the best sources of information about your industry.

4. Google Trends – Create content that people are talking about right now. Search for your niche and let the tool break down the trending and breakout topics. You can also see a graph that shows the interest over time for each. Finally, you can break down how much interest there is in each region in a country or worldwide.

5. Google Keyword Planner – Look for the best keywords and phrases to optimise on your content about the topic. The tool shows you the range of search volume a keyword gets every month. Use those with lots of monthly searches so more people can find your content when they search on Google. Of course, this works better if you observe the best on-page SEO practices on your content.

6. Long Tail Pro – Dig deeper with your content research by finding long-tail keywords for your content. These are keywords have low competition and clear search intent. This means that your content will rank higher and get more clicks on Google if you optimise for these. Enter your seed keyword to extract thousands of keyword ideas to use.

7. KWFinder – Look for even more long-tail keywords ideas using this tool. KWFinder lets you find this type of keywords for local search and historical data so you can optimise your timely content to a specific state or country. Also, using this tool gives you access to its full-suite SEO features like rank tracking, website analysis, and more.

8. Surfer – Analyse your chosen keyword using this tool to find out how you should write your content based on the top-ranking posts for the query.

Surfer lets you determine the most critical factors that affect ranking position for the keyword. For instance, you can find out which words you should include in your content and other questions you must answer. Doing so increases the chances of your content to rank on top of SERPs.

9. Buzzsumo – Find content about your topic with the most social shares and use them as a blueprint to writing yours. Identify who shared these articles and promote to them your (better) version of the same content. You can also find influencers in your niche and create your content based on their Twitter activity.

10. Social Animal – Get the most out of your content using this Buzzsumo alternative. Social Animal give you a good idea on how a content performs once published on your site and shared on social media. You can also conduct Facebook research by looking for posts about your topics with the most engagement. This way, you can replicate the success of these posts when sharing your content on this platform.

Content Creation

It’s one thing to know what kind of content to create for your site, but it’s another to execute it. While content creation is arguably the most difficult content marketing task out there, it’s also the most important.

Developing content that your audience loves is key to the success of your marketing strategy. And below are tools to help you achieve this:

11. Grammarly – Ensure that your writing is impeccable and your grammar is perfect with this tool. Signing up for a free account allows you to conduct basic grammar and punctuation check using its Google Chrome extension.

However, the paid account lets you check from our 250 factors to make sure that your content is in tip-top shape.

12. ProWritingAid – Create well-written articles and blog posts with the help of this Grammarly alternative. It is more affordable than its counterpart, but is also much more rigid and difficult to use. However, once you get the hang of it, you can clean up the grammar in your articles in no time before publishing them. Similar to Grammarly, paid subscribers can use its Microsoft Word add-on so they can edit the articles from Word before uploading them to their websites.

13. Hemingway Editor – Write the way like Ernest Hemingway did in his novels – short, succinct, and effective. Hemingway Editor is a free online editing tool that is also available as a desktop app for a price. But the former works like a charm regardless – you can edit on the fly or check the suggestions after you’re done writing. Each suggestion is colour-coded according to the issue the tool picks up from your article, such as excessive use of adverbs and passive voice, as well as hard-to-read articles, among others.

14. Textmetrics – Make your content SEO-friendlier by observing the various on-page SEO factors as pointed out in this tool. You can also determine your conversion score based on the words you used and the format of your article. Aside from being a content optimisation tool, Textmetrics lets you conduct keyword research and track your ranking for your chosen keyword.

Read more: SEMRush Keyword Gap Tool Tutorial

15. Article Insights – Using this little-known tool will be a solid addition to your content creation process. Find out which words you need to include in your content based on what your competitors used. Also, you can research from the tool how other pages used the words and phrases to give you ideas on how to integrate those into your content.

16. Yoast Real-Time Content Analysis – This content optimisation feature is included in the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, but if you’re not using this CMS, then this tool ought to do the trick.

Upload your article here and it will analyse your content based on different SEO factors.

17. CoSchedule – Schedule your posts for publishing using this marketing tool. It’s mainly an editorial calendar software where you can plan your articles in advance and stay on top of each as you or your writer is working on it. But CoSchedule has a social media feature that lets you share your content multiple times over a period to make sure that your audience sees it. Finally, you can drag and drop your old content to be shared across your social media so you can squeeze out more traffic from them.

Visual Content

When words fail, use images! Visual content is one of the best ways to convey your message to people because they can process the information faster and retain it better. Also, nothing drives away site visitors faster than a wall of text.

Employing visuals in your content marketing using the tools below will help you make a better impression to people.

18. Pixabay – Freely use the stock photos available for download in this site. Unlike other stock photo sites, you don’t have to link back to the author of the image to use them. The images from Pixabay work best if you use it alongside an online image editor to make them more unique and in line with your branding.

19. Pexels – Just like Pixabay, you can download stock images from this site for free. The site has images not found on Pixabay, although its collection of images are much smaller than the former.

20. Canva – As mentioned, stock photos work best if you can edit them and make it your own. Canvas is one tool that lets you add filters, icons, colours, and your branding on the images. Create images that you can use as your article’s featured image and for sharing on sites like Facebook and Pinterest.

Content Promotions

Your content won’t promote itself, no matter how good it is. You need to push your content out in the open for people to see and read. Below are tools that will help you get the job done.

21. Buffer – It allows to you create a drip campaign for your articles. Choose the date and time when updates about your content will be published on your social channels to maximize their visibility.

The advantage of Buffer over its competitors is how lightweight it is – you can use its Chrome extension can schedule your social media posts from there in seconds.

22. Hootsuite – This social media marketing tool not only lets you build your social media calendar from scratch. Using Hootsuite, you can also monitor the performance of your social media activity to make sure you are getting the engagement you need for your campaign. It also allows you to track mentions and conversations about your brand so you can promote your content to those people.

23. MissingLettr – Scheduling your social media updates one by one is a pain-staking process that could take hours of your time. MissingLettr automates the process for you in a few clicks of a button. Upload the URL to your content and the tool will pull images and quotes from it to build a year-long campaign worth of posts that you will review before publishing them.

Read more: SEMRush Backlink Gap Tool Tutorial

24. Triberr – Triberr is a site with online communities that you can join, promote your content with, and engage with like-minded people. The best feature of this platform is the ability to create Tribes. You can invite influencers within the same niche to share their content on your tribe for content curation. At the same time, you can promote your latest articles, on top of engaging with other people about your topic.

25. Viral Content Bee – Create campaigns for your articles so you can get other users to share them on social media. What powers Viral Content Bee is reciprocity. To create a campaign, you need to gain credits by sharing the content of others on your social media. Once you have enough credits, launch your campaign and see others as they share your content, the same way you did theirs!

26. Quuu Promote – This platform is a turnkey solution for promoting your content on social media. Choose the niche of the article and edit the details of the social media posts before publishing them on the site. If approved, Quuu users who share your same niche will promote the content on their social media accounts.

27. Mailshake – Send email drip campaigns to influencers, whom you identified in your content research. Upload the list of emails with their custom fields and create templates for your outreach email.

You can set the tool to send the emails at which date and time and monitor the results.

Email Marketing

There’s a reason email marketing has some of the highest ROI among digital marketing channels. The fact that subscribers joined your list means they want to receive your emails. Therefore, take this opportunity to promote your content every time you publish a new one.

Below are tools you must build an email list and manage your email marketing.

28. Sumo – One of the best free lead capture tools in the market, Sumo lets you create eye-catching opt-in forms that visitors can’t refuse to ignore. The tool also works as a full-fledged email platform where you can store subscribers, send them emails, and launch campaigns for them. Also, the tool lets you embed social sharing buttons on your site pages so there’s no need to use a separate tool for it.

29. OptinMonster – This tool allows you to create more sophisticated pop-up forms that increase your subscribers. OptinMonster lets users segment and target visitors based on their behaviour on your site to show new and old visitors the right offer. There’s also the option to conduct A/B testing on your forms and see which variation converts the most.

30. MailChimp – This popular email marketing platform is the choice for beginning content marketers who want to get their feet wet in this promotional channel. You can use its built-in opt-in form builder and feature it on your site.

Subscribers will then go straight into one of your lists where you can broadcast your latest content via emails or execute your drip campaigns. Best of all, it’s free until you reach 2,000 subscribers.

31. ConvertKit – Despite being a paid tool, ConvertKit is one of the best email marketing platforms out there that’s easy to use. Aside from doing what MailChimp does, the tool also works as a marketing automation tool. Upon filling out and submitting the form, the tool will tag and segment the subscribers so you can promote content based on which segment will enjoy it the most.

32. MailerLite – I consider MailerLite as a free version of ConvertKit. It has the same great email marketing automation features and you don’t have to pay until you reach 1,000 subscribers. However, getting your user application approved by the brand is tough.

Content Analysis

After you’ve promoted your content, it’s time to check how much of your efforts led to a spike in your website traffic. Using analytics tools, you can drill down where and how you got the traffic so you can double-down on these channels to maximize incoming visitors.

Below are some of the most well-known and best tools to help you review your content marketing performance.

33. Google Analytics – The staple of all website owners, analytics don’t get any better than this tool. Monitor how many people visit your site over time and compare it to the previous period to see if there are any improvements. You can also create goals to measure your conversion rates if you’re running a sales funnel using multiple site pages.

34. Google Search Console – A complement to Google Analytics, Google Search Console shows you how your site performed on organic search. It shows you the keywords you are ranking for and how many impressions and clicks your site pages are getting. Best of all, the tool informs you if your site has issues that you need to resolve before it drops its rankings for your target keywords.

35. CrazyEgg – If you want an uncomplicated way to check how many clicks your CTAs get, then CrazyEgg is your tool. Getting lots of traffic is just half the battle – the other half is converting visitors into subscribers, followers, or customers of your site. CrazyEgg helps you gather data by recording how visitors interact with your site and which sections on your site pages they engage with the best. This way, you can tweak your pages to generate more sales and revenue.

36. Hotjar – Similar to CrazyEgg, Hotjar lets you improve your content marketing performance by collecting user behavior data on your site and turning them into actionable items. The great thing about this tool is that it has a free plan. This way, you can start small by monitoring your website traffic then upgrade to its paid plans once you converted visitors them into revenue.

Content Repurposing

How good your articles are doesn’t matter if your audience doesn’t want to read it. Here, you can convert them into other content types. Below are tools you can use to repurpose your existing content into your desired formats. This way, you can get back the attention of people and drive more traffic to your site.

37. Beacon – This tool lets you create lead magnets to turn your visitors into email subscribers. You can also convert your blog posts or content published on third-party sites into PDF files as content upgrades. This way, you give your old content a new lease in life, thus getting a higher ROI from them.

38. Visme – Like Canva, this tool lets you create infographics and different images for your website or social media needs. What separates Visme from its competitors is the ability to create dynamic presentations that you can upload on sites like SlideShare. So, if you have existing content, convert them into visual content using this tool. Embed them to their respective original posts, and promote them for additional traffic.

39. Lumen5 – If you want to make an impact with your social media updates promoting your content, then Lumen5 is your tool. It grab text and images from your content and compiles them into a short video. Edit the video by changing the font, layout, and even the music. Download the video and upload it on social media so you can run ads for it.

40. BlogCast – Podcasts are a brilliant way to consume content because people can play these in the background as they go to work or do something else. If you have lots of articles that aren’t getting enough traffic, consider turning them into podcast episodes using BlogCast. This platform lets you repurpose your articles into audio format one by one for a price. But if you have thousands of content you want to convert, then subscribe to a monthly plan instead.

WordPress Plugins

WordPress is one of the most popular CMS for a variety of reasons. One of them is the vast selection of plugins you can use to improve your site even without coding or design experience.

Below is a must-use list of content marketing plugins to build an audience and boost traffic of your site.

Read more: SEO Edinburgh

41. Thrive Leads – This list building plugin from Thrives Themes works the same as OptinMonster. Choose from a variety of opt-in forms to turn visitors into subscribers. You can also create forms that only a specific segment of your visitors can use to improve conversions.

Unlike other similar tools above, Thrive Leads only lets you pay once (pay yearly if you need customer support).

42. MailPoet – If you want to send out emails about your latest articles to your subscribers straight from WordPress, then MailPoet will help you get the job done. The plugins lets you create beautiful emails from templates that you can customize to match your branding. The result are high-converting newsletters that promote your content and grow your traffic further.

43. Revive Old Posts – You don’t want to let your old articles gather dust. Using this plugin, you can automatically share your content on social media so they keep getting attention and additional traffic from your audience. Just set the time where the updates will be published and the tool will take images and text from your articles.

44. WP Rocket – Making your site load faster is not part of content marketing’s scope. Nonetheless, speeding up your site’s loading time keeps people in your site and allows them to complete your desired actions. Using arguably the best caching plugin on the platform, WP Rocket is also loaded with features like database optimisation, lazyload, and CDN integration, among others.

45. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – If you want visitors to read your other articles about the same subject topic, this plugin displays related content at the bottom. You can edit to only show certain articles and customize how it presents the articles. When used correctly, you can decrease your site’s bounce rate by recommending other content that might interest visitors.

46. Social Warfare – Aside from actively sharing your content to your social media followers, you can also let visitors do it for you using this plugin. It gives you the power to customize the appearance of the social sharing buttons.

More importantly, the buttons load fast and don’t take up too much resources compared to other similar tools. Other features of Social Warfare include share recovery, shareable quotes, and the ability to get Pinterest shares from your images.

47. Yoast SEO – This high quality search engine optimisation plugin remains as good as it did years back. Arguably the best feature of this plugin is how it helps you optimise your content for your target keywords. Also, even without SEO knowledge, you can set up the plugin in seconds and let it take care of the technical aspects of ranking your content on Google. If you purchase its premium version, you get additional features like internal linking suggestions, content insights, and redirect manager, to name a few.

Read more: SEMRush Content Analyzer Tutorial

Conclusion

Judging from the tools above, you already have a handful with content marketing. And this is the reason why you need the help of tools more than ever.

While you can do without apps and software, they nonetheless make your job much easier by automating boring tasks. This way, you can focus on getting insights on how to hit your content marketing goals.

By choosing wisely from the tools above, you get a leg up against the competition and accomplish your content marketing strategy with relative ease.

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Craig Campbell

I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years. In this time I have gained extensive knowledge in the subject of SEO and have build up a wealth of experience in SEO and other digital marketing services.

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