A List of Essential Tools Every Content Marketer Needs

Content is incredibly important because it’s the stuff.

We all know the phrase content is king (it might as well be coined as the official slogan of marketing) and while that’s all well and good, it still begs the question, what kind of content can sit atop the mighty throne? What types of content will command attention the way a king does? What kind of content marketing plan do you need to develop that will make users listen?

The amazing and wondrous thing about these questions is that there will never be a right answer. Content marketing is always changing; it’s exciting and terrifying all at the same time. On one hand, it keeps you adapting. For B2C marketers, it’s all about how the content relates to the user. What do they feel when they see or read your content? How can they relate? Why is this important to them?

B2B content marketers can ask the same questions, but the context is different in the sense that curating and publishing content is more so for their branding. B2B content marketers will focus heavily on strengthening their relationship with their audience to expanding their brand awareness. This is so they can cultivate relations and close more deals with other business. On the other hand, new ways of storytelling emerge all the time, and if your team doesn’t keep up they run the risk of losing relevance.

Content marketing strategies must adapt with the changing tides ̶ commentary and copy must develop into narratives and stories! This truly is the best place to start because you get to share your team’s perspective with the whole world. Sit them down and start to create an engaging storytelling strategy in your content marketing plan. For first time business owners, small businesses or even novice marketers, this can seem intimidating. Storytelling is relatively easy but projecting that skill onto a larger stage is a difficult task to accomplish. Luckily enough, we live in the digital age where the best content creation tools are only a couple clicks away. This list of free content marketing tools will help you perfect your engaging storytelling strategy with ease.

Without further ado, let’s start with our list of marketing tools!

1: The Superhero: Buffer

Establishing and maintaining a presence on social media is critical in the Digital Age because social platforms allow brands to communicate with their audience at a more intimate level. Larger than life companies like Nike, Disney and Apple become more humanized and approachable on social channels, and smaller businesses gain the advantage of spreading the essence of their brand.

To help your social content perform its best, use Buffer! Buffer is a social media marketing tool that allows you to automate, track and analyze your social following. Business Insider was able to grow its Facebook page fans to 1 million with this tool, and this marketer gained 50% more traffic in just 30 days. It’s one thing to have great content, it’s another to generate a following that will engage with it. Let Buffer do the heavy lifting of distribution while you focus on the quality of your content.

2: The Sidekick: Quuu

Quuu works in conjunction with Buffer.

The categories you select in Quuu will automatically or manually send content to your Buffer queues. You can choose from tons of groups to target specific interests shown by your users. Quuu also tailors each piece of content, so if you’re not into the meticulous details of social media, this is the tool for you.

3: Your Mailshake Brings All the Boys to the Yard

ContentMarketer.io recently came out with Mailshake, a cold emailing tool that helps you reach more of your audience by sending your content directly to their inbox. They have prewritten messages you can choose from, and you can also control what hours of the day and which days of the week to send emails.

Mailshake also gives you the option of personalizing emails for a 17.6% open rate, as opposed to 11% if they weren’t personalized. What’s even better is that the tool was built for teamwork, so collaboration is effortless. Even better, all you need to get started is a Google account.

4: Written Rightly or RightlyWritten.

The power of the written word is exponential.

In the digital world, writing has evolved to blogging and, blogging, as it turns out, is very lucrative for business owners. In fact, companies that blog get 55% more website visitors than those who do not. Plus, it’s great for your SEO because websites that blog have nearly 434% more indexed pages.

If writing isn’t your craft, RightlyWritten is the blogging tool that will help you generate the great content you need. Their services don’t just stop at blogging, they also have an onslaught of writers who can write press releases, website content and even e-books! Their engaging storytelling strategy is what sets this tool apart from other writing services on the web, so if writing isn’t your strength, this is definitely the tool for you.

5: Slide On, Slide.ly On

Online, pictures are worth a thousand users, but videos are now worth more. Cisco states that by 2019, 80% of all internet traffic will be from videos. Well, if your business has the stuff, but video marketing isn’t your forte, this is the tool for you. This video creation tool is entirely based on the cloud. Slidely gives your team the convenience to access the site through all kinds of applications (iOS and Android), and you can insert photos, slideshows, video clips, and music  ̶  all in one place!

The Wrap-Up

These marketing tool examples are just some ways content marketers can take a portion of the load off their shoulders. From management to curation, there are a bunch of tools out there to support and enhance your content marketing plan. Don’t limit yourself to just this list of content marketing tools, you can discover other apps that will assist you (we just thought we should share some of our favorites!):

1. Buffer is the tool to use if you need help with social media content marketing
2. Quuu is that tool that helps you specify and expand your social content reach
3. Mailshake is the tool that will help you write cold emails to new consumers
4. RightlyWritten is the tool that will answer all your written content needs
5. Slide.ly is the tool that will help you create professional grade videos on the cloud