90% of marketers using content marketing and 72% creating more content than they were a year ago.
While the stats prove marketers find content marketing an extremely important part of their overall marketing strategy, only 34% of marketers think they’re effective with their content marketing efforts. That number is way too low.
So what can we as marketers do to get that percentage up? First, we need to have confidence in our abilities and ourselves. Next, we need to have a plan in place. And lastly, we need to be using the right content marketing tools to create and get our voices and our brand’s content and storytelling out there!
This isn’t a comprehensive list (or a list ordered by importance), but it’s a list of must-have content marketing tools to help you start becoming and feeling more effective with your content marketing efforts.
- WordPress
WordPress is great web software used to create blogs and websites. It first started as just a blogging system but has since grown into a content management system. It allows you to create your own custom theme, add plugins, publish your content (words, images, videos), control comments made on your blog and so much more. WordPress must be an awesome tool since more than 60 million people use it, including us.
- Curata
With
Curata, you get a tool that does a number of useful things for you. The most common way it’s used is as a content curation tool, where you can easily discover, arrange and share content that’s relevant to your brand and audience to better position yourself as a thought leader within your industry, among other things. Curata is also a good content collaboration and organization tool.
- Steptap
Steptap is a relatively new platform for businesses and marketers to leverage for their content initiatives. A
Steptap is created to teach your prospects and your customers how to create something, build something, do something, or fix something. With a premium account (which we highly recommend) you can even get some pretty decent
SEO value out of your efforts and drive traffic and sales.
- Visual.ly
We all know visual content grabs and keeps a reader’s attention, and with
visual.ly you can create all kinds of captivating visuals for your audience. Aesthetically pleasing infographics, videos, presentations, engaging web experiences and micro-content are what you can expect from this content marketing tool.
- Qzzr
Virtual quizzes are on the rise. Why? To put it simply — because
quizzes are all about the person taking them. Plus they’re fun and engaging.
Qzzr, another tool we use, lets you create these types of quizzes for your site or blog, and its design includes social sharing buttons so quiz takers can immediately share their results with their friends and followers, which usually leads to more people taking your quiz.
- SlideShare
Keeping with the visual theme we have going here,
SlideShare is a tool used for uploading and sharing interesting, informative slide presentations. It also provides insight into who sees your presentations.
- Hootsuite
Hootsuite is going to be a lifesaver for anyone involved with social media accounts for your brand and/or your clients (just ask our social gal). Through Hootsuite you’re able to manage several social media accounts, schedule messages and tweets to be sent out through each account, track any brand mentions and examine social media traffic.
- Buzzstream
Buzzstream is a content promotion tool, under the earned media category. It gives you a multitude of services to assist you with
link building. Through this platform you can find influencers within your niche that might be willing to share your content, while also organizing and monitoring your
outreach efforts.
- Outbrain
Another tool worthy of having is
Outbrain. This tool falls under paid media. It’s a content discovery tool that exposes and recommends your content to people reading other quality publishers. Outbrain also offers readers a more personalized reader experience.
- Google Analytics
Last but not least on this list is a way to track your site analytics. We’ve found that
Google Analytics is a useful monitoring tool because with it we can measure conversion rates, evaluate the impact social media and mobile have on our site’s traffic and customize reports for our company and our clients.
Running an ecommerce business? Check out our post about the
top ecommerce marketing tools.]]>
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
One Response
Product instructions and how-to content is fast becoming the new domain of content marketers where engaging customers and improving the user experience are key to building loyalty and word of mouth. We are seeing a lot of opportunity for content marketers for 2015 in the area of new types of marketing content that is directed a customer engagement.
Steptap was built to satisfy the need of content marketers to quickly and easily build well-formatted and ultimately shareable content on a platform that services an SEO purpose for the business, and not just the platform itself. In this way, Steptap has differentiated from other how-to sites in that we are all about building credibility, links and authority for the business.
One of the nicer things about Steptap is that you can get a full-working account for free. For those marketers who want to add branding, we are offering a host of marketing-minded upgrades for a remarkable value.
This is a great list of top-ten tools for content marketers, and we couldn’t agree more that this list represents a solid base of must-haves for any serious content marketer. We are particularly thrilled to be included at such an early stage, and look forward to hearing your feedback on how we can improve as we grow into 2015.
Thanks, Stryde!