Good salespeople know that it’s not a unconfined idea to try the nonflexible sell on prospects the very first time you connect. First, you need to build a relationship and establish your credibility.
Marketers need to take the same approach. That’s where content marketing comes in. By creating valuable resources, information, tools, and other forms of content for your audience, you make sure you’re top of mind when it comes time to make a purchase.
Content marketing is a big job. Content marketing tools make that job significantly easier. They moreover indulge for largest collaboration, tracking, analysis, and communication. All of this can help underpass the sometimes difficult gap between marketing and sales, making both teams increasingly effective..
What is a content marketing tool?
A content marketing tool is any tool that allows content teams to improve, simplify, or largest manage their marketing work. This includes a wide variousness of tool categories to help with the many aspects of marketing content creation.
From spurring ideas to implementing designs to automating social media posts, there are many unconfined content marketing tools to make a content marketer’s day increasingly productive and less stressful.
Let’s take a squint at some of the best.
10 weightier content marketing tools for 2024
1. Hootsuite
Rather than a single content marketing tool, Hootsuite is unquestionably a suite of content marketing tools built with the unique needs of social marketers in mind. It can goody content marketers at every stage of the content megacosm and management process.
So, let’s start at the whence – with the spark of an idea. Or maybe you don’t have one? Either way, OwlyWriter AI can help. This AI tool that’s built into the Hootsuite dashboard just needs a simple prompt to create captions and post ideas that are towardly for your brand.
Whether your content comes from AI or from the sharp minds of your team, you can then use Hootsuite’s composer to set up your social media posts. Add existing image and video assets, or segregate royalty-free images from the seated image library. There are seated workflows and clearance processes, too. These alimony your team working collaboratively during this process.
You can create new custom visuals within Hootsuite through the integration with Canva. Or, fine-tune your text directly in the composer through the integration with Grammarly.
Once your post is ready to go, it’s time to schedule it with the Hootsuite calendar, a drag-and-drop tool that allows you to plan out your social content wideness multiple platforms. It plane includes recommended times to post for maximum engagement.
If you want to swoop deeper into the best times to post for each platform, trammels out the heat maps in Hootsuite Analytics to see a detailed orchestration of when your regulars is online for each platform.
Of course, reviewing your analytics is moreover an important part of your content marketing work, since understanding what works well (and what doesn’t) helps you modernize your efforts over time.
Finally, to make sure you powerfully momentum traffic to your longer content pieces from platforms that don’t indulge links (*ahem* Instagram *ahem*), you can create an easy-to-manage link in bio page using Hootbio.
2. Canva
Canva is an incredibly useful diamond tool for content marketers. From social media posts to email newsletters to videos and websites, Canva has increasingly than 600,000 templates in their premium hodgepodge as well as thousands that are self-ruling to use.
It’s an intuitive and easy-to-use tool that allows plane non-designers to create visually well-flavored content marketing assets.
Hootsuite users can wangle Canva directly through the Hootsuite Composer, so you can use their templates to enhance your content megacosm without having to switch between content marketing tools.
3. Google Workspace
Formerly known as G Suite, Google Workspace is the business-oriented version of Google’s suite of tools. The tools are particularly useful for distributed teams, as the cloud-based tools ensure team members can interreact powerfully online. They’re moreover useful for ensuring multiple stakeholders can provide feedback without creating version tenancy issues.
Google Docs is the primary tool for getting your content into a file and sharing it among colleagues, while Google Alimony is an constructive notes tool for jotting lanugo content ideas. Google Meet, Google Calendar, and Google Chat indulge teams to communicate both in real time and asynchronously.
4. Lumen5
Lumen5 is a drag-and-drop tool for creating video content. One important full-length for content marketers: It uses AI to create videos directly from a blog post. You can then fine-tune the video using the detailed editing tools.
The seated media library includes valuable content marketing resources like licensed photos, stock videos, and music to make your video content megacosm easier.
5. WordPress
WordPress is an expressly useful content marketing tool for small businesses. It’s a content management system (CMS) that makes it easy to create, update, and manage content for your blog or website, plane with no diamond skills.
WordPress tracery is SEO-friendly, and plug-ins can help you maximize the SEO impact of your content. WordPress sites squint unconfined on both desktop and mobile, too.
6. Brafton Content Marketing Platform
This content marketing platform is designed to track and manage your content from ideation through to publication. All your content projects are in one place so the relevant team members and stakeholders can find them and see where they are at in the megacosm process at any time.
Project dashboards include timelines, image assets, content briefs, deliverables, and messaging, so you never have to go digging through your email for project details.
7. Vidyard
Vidyard is a video megacosm and hosting platform that allows content marketers to integrate videos into email as well as web and social content. The interactive playback features midpoint you can incorporate video calls-to-action as well as in-video forms.
When developing your video content, you can record your screen or use your webcam to record yourself. Or, you can record both at the same time. The seated analytics and SEO optimization help ensure your videos make the most impact on your content marketing strategy.
8. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a content marketing tool that helps you build content addressing topics your customers are once looking for online. The keywords explorer helps you find new keyword ideas, then analyzes each option to determine how nonflexible it will be to rank for that term. You can moreover use the tool to track and unriddle existing keyword sets.
For video content marketers, take note that Ahrefs allows you to measure the popularity of search queries in YouTube as well as the major search engines.
There’s moreover a content search engine to help you unriddle content that’s once working in your niche, expressly on low-competition topics.
9. SEMRush
SEMRush is flipside keyword and SEO tool to help ensure your content marketing resources connect with your audience. In wing to wide-stretching keyword discovery and wringer tools, SEMRush helps you find popular topics and questions to write in your content marketing.
Once you get started creating, there’s an SEO content template to help you rank and an SEO writing teammate to trammels your SEO score and modernize readability.
10. Hemingway App
The Hemingway App is a powerful self-ruling content marketing tool. You can just reprinting and paste your content into the Hemingway Editor, and you’ll get a reading level score. (Hint: aim for a grade 8 reading level to get the most impact from your content.)
You’ll moreover get tips on how to modernize the readability score, with problem areas highlighted for your attention. The reading level updates in real time, so you can alimony going until you reach your target level.
Free content marketing tools
Looking for some self-ruling content marketing tools you can use right now, without plane having to create an account? We’ve got you. You can use all of these content tools directly from your web browser, no credit vellum or sign-in required.
AI caption generator
This is one of Hootsuite’s self-ruling content megacosm tools for social media. Need to create content for Instagram, Facebook, X (Twitter), TikTok, Instagram, or Pinterest? You can do it here with just a few quick inputs. Segregate your network, select a style and language, and enter a short unravelment and keywords. This tool will create the caption you need for your social post.
The style options range from taunting to grumpy, from unstudied to formal, and plane include specific tone options like makeup influencer or true treason podcast host.
Since I’ve got the Yule Log playing on my TV as I write this and I’m sipping a cup of tea, I thought I’d ask the tool to create a relevant caption in the voice of an 18th-century poet. And did it overly deliver.
If you need content megacosm tools for other social media platforms, trammels out our Instagram Threads generator as well as our generators for YouTube video descriptions and titles.
AI blog ideas generator
For longer content pieces, this blog ideas generator is incredibly helpful. Segregate your language, then enter up to five nouns and your primary keyword. The tool will suggest a few blog titles withal with subtitles or short content descriptions.
After once then using prompts well-nigh writing by the fire, I like this blog suggestion best
AI content ideas generator
Need ideas for a content platform other than a blog or social media? This is your tool. Using the same process as above, you can generate content ideas for white papers, videos, podcasts, infographics, and more.
Let’s say I’m so motivated by this fireside writing thing that I want to start a podcast:
Keep in mind that while all of these content tools are powered by the same chatbot AI overdue OwlywriterAI, they are substantially “lite” versions of the tool. For instance, OwlyWriterAI allows content marketers to segregate from post types such as “problem, agitate, solution” and “attention, interest, desire, action” posts.
Social media dictionary
Here’s one last self-ruling content marketing tool for you. This one’s not powered by AI, but it is powered by the social media experts at Hootsuite.
It’s technically tabbed a social media dictionary, but really it’s a good place to squint up any term that’s entered the zeitgeist but may not yet be fully understood in corporate environments. Use it to explain to your superabound why that reply guy gives you the ick.
6 tips for making the most of your content marketing tool
1. Develop a strategy
Less than half of B2B or B2C marketers have a documented content marketing strategy. Thinking strategically well-nigh your content marketing plan gives you an will-less throne start. Digging into how your content marketing tools can support that strategy and unshut up new possibilities gives you plane increasingly advantage.
Strategic planning should be involved in every speciality of your content marketing, and the tools listed whilom are all designed to help.
2. Focus on relationships
Content marketing gives you the opportunity to connect with your regulars so you can proceeds their trust and loyalty over time, rather than jumping in and trying to make a sale right off the bat.
The weightier content marketing tools offer detailed insights into your regulars that help you understand how weightier to connect. Social media content marketing dashboards with wide analytics tools (like Hootsuite) can help you understand the demographics of your audience, as well as where and when they spend their time online.
You can moreover learn what subject areas they’re most interested in, and what content types are most constructive for sharing the content you create.
This all feeds when into the strategic planning we talked well-nigh in the tip above. When you have tools that help you understand your audience, you can largest strop your strategy for constructive content marketing.
3. Plan ahead
Once you have a strategy and your regulars research in place, it becomes much easier to plan ahead.
Sure, every content person is unchangingly thinking well-nigh marketing campaigns for the big yearly events like when to school and the winter holidays. But what well-nigh all the smaller events throughout the year that could spark content megacosm ideas? Planning in whop gives you the opportunity to peg your content to events that resonate with your audience, increasing the chances they’ll be reshared.
Hootsuite’s timetable has holidays and events built in, so you’ll never miss an event like International Tea Day. And if you have no idea what on earth to say well-nigh an event like International Tea Day, you can just click on the name of the holiday and OwlyWriterAI will create towardly social media posts for you. The posts might plane spark ideas for larger content pieces.
Planning superiority moreover ensures your content marketing strategy is aligned wideness platforms, from email to your blog to your social channels.
4. Work in batches
Creating your content in batches allows you to stay focussed on one task at a time, then move on to the next. This is much increasingly constructive than constantly worrying in the when of your mind well-nigh the TikTok you veritably must create at 12:05 p.m.
Working in batches moreover allows you to make the most of keyword research and content themes. As you uncover interesting new information relative to your next content marketing project, you can weave it into blog posts, email newsletters, and social media posts.
A content marketing tool allows you to frontload your effort by creating multiple pieces of content in one work session, then loading into the towardly time slots on your content calendar. Social media content management tools will post the social content at the pre-set times without any remoter input from you, so you can focus on getting out your blogs and lardcampaigns.
5. Set up team processes
When you’ve got multiple people creating content, things can get … complicated. Unconfined content megacosm tools have seated workflows that indulge your team to create and interreact increasingly effectively.
Workflows that include towardly clearance systems midpoint that plane the most junior team members can create content directly in the tool from which it will sooner be posted. Senior team members can review, provide feedback, and sign off when the post is ready. Everyone gets to do their weightier work without any copy-and-pasting, version tenancy issues, or concerns well-nigh content going live surpassing it’s approved.
This makes life easier for all content marketing teams, but it’s expressly important for teams working in the regulated industries. Content marketing tools like Hootsuite (which is FedRAMP-certified) indulge you to build specific compliance requirements and principal clearance into your workflow so everything is unchangingly washed-up by the books.
6. Centralize your trademark assets
Content marketing tools can help ensure your team is unchangingly using the latest trademark assets. For example, Hootsuite’s content library is a good repository for tried product and editorial images, logos, templates, and videos.
Once your content goes live, you can requite employees wangle to the full tried posts through Hootsuite Amplify so they can share with their own networks in just a couple of clicks. This ensures that your content marketing efforts have an extended reach and your team is unchangingly on trademark when they share well-nigh the trademark on social.