Julian Librato

 10 Essential Tools for Content Marketing in 2020 In the recent years, the numbers of online marketers have increased astronomically because online platforms are the best ways of reaching out to a large number of people within a short time, not to mention they are also somewhat cheaper compared to traditional methods. This has resulted in increased competition as never before, but using the right marketing tools can help you beat your competitors and maintain your high rankings. If you have a blog or a website, the one thing you need most is more visitors. With a great deal of content on the website, it is hard to determine what your target audience want or are searching for. Imagine the amount of time it will take you to go through all the blog posts and social media platforms trying to find out. Luckily for you! Today on the market, you fill dozens of content marketing tools designed to analyze the web and assist you in reaching your target audience in the most effective way. It doesn't matter the type of business you are doing; you are sure to get a tool(s) that will serve your specific needs. Do you need content marketing tools? When it comes to content marketing, the most important things you need to focus on are your customers, content creation, SEO, curation and distribution. When you get these things right, the results will be worth it. You will have more sales, excellent lead generation and high audience engagement. Therefore it is apparent that any dedicated online marketer should have at least one or two content marketing tools. Here are some of the best tools for content marketing that you can bring to your online campaign and take your business to the next level. SEMRush – An all-in-one marketing toolkit This is the leading SEO tools for content marketing, with over 5 million users. With this tool, you can optimize your website to have content that search engines like! With the information that you will get from this tool, you can create optimized content to attract traffic or change a few technical aspects of your web to obtain higher search rankings. SEMRush will not only give you suggestions to keyword or phrases but also tell you how hard it is to rank specific phrases. The tool has many features some of which include; Domain analysis To perform domain analysis, all you have to do is to input the domain URL in the 'domain overview' section, and it's done! Some of the things that you will be able to see include; a monthly number of visitors, number of external links pointed to the website and competitors. Generally, you will see how your URL is performing in the search engines. You can use this information to improve your SEO or gauge whether it’s worth it to request a link from a certain site. Keyword research The idea behind keyword research is to establish how many people are searching for that keyword and getting suggestions for similar words or phrases. To perform keyword research in SEMRush, enter the keyword to the ' keyword overview' tool and the following will be displayed; difficulty score of the keyword, List of sites ranking on it and a monthly number of searches just to mention a few. Now, to get suggestions, there is a 'keyword magic' option that you can utilize to generate for you words or phrases related to your keyword. Rank tracking This tool is essential as it allows you to keep track of how your website is performing in search engines regarding a specific keyword. A detailed report will be generated on how your site is ranking. You can also do the same for your competitors to compare and see where you need to improve to beat them and stay ahead. Backlinks This tool allows you to search for backlinks which you can either do by performing a backlink audit or backlink analysis. To perform backlink analysis, you will enter the domain name and be able to see all the backlinks associated with it. Link building This is one of the unique features of SEMRush that makes it stand out. This tool will suggest to you worthy websites related to yours for you to approach for backlinks. Site audit This tool is also one of the strongholds of SEMRush. It looks for issues in your websites that are dragging your site down. This may include duplicate content, missing headers or keyword stuffing, among others. Utilizing such information can help you rank your site at the top. If you are looking for one-stop-shop for content marketing tools, I suggest you try the SEMRush. Buzzsumo – Analyze topics and find influencers Buzzsumo is another great content marketing tools out there. Every feature has been specifically designed to help you research and analyze thousands of articles and social media posts to see what is performing best. Use Buzzsumo to create, amplify and evaluate meaningful content that your target audience can relate to. When you open the user interface, on the top right corner, you will find your account settings. Here you can see your current plan, product usage, and teams. The teams feature you to invite some of your friends to join you and collaborate. The navigation menu has five of the major menu of the platform, which includes; content, influence, monitoring, discovery and projects. Each section has been designed with features to tackle specific tasks. For example, the discovery menu is for brainstorming. Thousands of content ideas will be at your fingertips by harnessing the power of multiple resources and database across Buzzsumo. You will be able to see what the world is sharing in real-time and spot a breaking story before it goes viral. The topics menu will expand your imagination by generating endless ideas based on a single keyword. The tool also has a feature that allows you to see thousands of questions people are asking. This is very crucial as it helps you ensure that your content is addressing your audience key challenges. Another intriguing feature of this tool is the availability of millions of social profiles where you will find the right person or company to promote your content. You can use the powerful web analysis tool to track the mention of your business or product. With Buzzsumo, you will be able to track what your competitors are doing and therefore helping you to remain on top of the game. Evernote – Capture, organize and share notes. If you are running more than two online business or you are a busy person, so to speak, the amount of information that you need to organize can be overwhelming. With Evernote, everything will be simplified. If you want to organize and share your notes in a professional way, this is the tool for you. The tool will allow you to capture, manage memories, thoughts, projects and even to-do-list so that you don’t forget anything. It allows you to scan images, write notes and even record voice notes. Perhaps the reason why Evernote is so popular among content marketers is that; you can access your documents and projects on any device even when you are offline. If you ever lose your phone you don’t have to worry, all your notes will still be intact and safe. The user-friendly interface is also another reason why you should use Evernote for your content marketing campaigns. Kred – measure your online influence. Kred is also one of the best performing online content marketing tools that will increase your influence online and make you more noticeable. With the Kred engagement profile, you can boost your own identity and collaborate with other top influencers on the network. The tool assigns scores to the influencers by analyzing their social media platform activity (Twitter, Facebook, etc.). One great thing about the tool is that there is always room to build and improve your social status. Also, you can always measure your online influence to know how you are doing. Some of the benefits of using Kred include; influencer verification, NTFS engagements and Kred's score API. Also, you can secure your brand's name on businessname.kred Trello – An easy way to collaborate with team members Trello is a web-based platform with tools specially crafted to help businesses in defining and managing projects. It also has features that allow users to create and organize project activities according to their priorities. A user can easily update the status of each task as either ‘to do’, ‘doing’ or ‘done’ when the task is completed. Trello also features an advanced carding system that enables timely communication between team members working on a project. Members can interact by sharing files, documents, photos or sharing links to several cloud storage solutions. You can start with a free plan which has several features including unlimited lists, cards and boards. You also get one power-up board. On the downside, your maximum file upload size is 10mb. You can, however, attach links to any cloud storage feature platform. The ‘Business Plan’ is the second plan, and it costs about $ 10.00 per month if billed annually. It comes with all the free plan features with an increased file upload size of 250mbs. It also has unlimited power-up boards, and it is integrated with other applications like Evernote and Bitbuckets! For $ 20.90 the ‘Enterprise plan’ comes with all the ‘Business plan’ features and a ton of security features including a file encryption system, end to end encryption, intrusion surveillance and a personal virtual assistant. This package offers you all the tools your business needs to attain project milestones. Canva – Design beautiful image and visuals Canva is a web-based graphic designing tool that can be used to create a diverse collection of graphic designs, including social media posts, banners, flyers, advertisements and business cards, just to mention a few. One of the things that set Canva apart from its competitors is the fact that it has a fantastic user interface optimized to give any graphic designer, beginner or otherwise a great experience. The tool has thousands of templates that users can easily edit by dragging and dropping design features to suit their needs. What I love most about Canvas is that even with a free account, you still get access to thousands of design templates and amazing editing tools. However, you will need to have a premium account to unlock all the editing tools. Unlike other graphic designing software, Canva does not require users to download additional software. All you have to do is create a free account and start creating refreshing designs and grow your brand awareness. Grammarly –Correct spelling and grammar If you are someone who creates a lot of content, you might have few typos or grammatical errors slip through you, which is only human. There is no editor to help you fix your grammar and spelling mistakes better than Grammarly. Whether you are crafting a professional email, blog post, submitting a paper or writing a book, having professional proofreading software can be a lifesaver. Grammarly will monitor and check your online writing to ensure that your final text is clear and engaging. When you open the editor, there is a section where you will be shown your text's overall score, which represents the quality of your document. Other details that will be displayed include word count, reading time, speaking time and readability score. Each of the information displayed is an indicator of how good or bad your document is and what you need to improve on to have a great document. To utilize the editor, you can use three of the following; browser extension, Microsoft windows and outlook plugins or download app. The editor is available in two different versions; free and premium version. The free version has limited access; for example, you cannot use the plagiarism detection system. On the other hand, the premium version comes with the full package, including vocabulary enhancement suggestions. You will never go wrong with Grammarly as your writing assistance. If you want to have confidence in all your documents and texts, Grammarly is the tool to use. Invideo – Create awesome videos Invideo is a web video editing tool that is designed to help individuals and business in creating relevant and appealing videos and animations to market their brands. The editor has thousands of regularly updated video templates that you can easily customize to suit your needs. The tool has a friendly user interface that does not require any prior knowledge in video editing to use; all you have to do is insert your media and start creating your video. One unique thing about these video templates is that they come preloaded with free royalty songs! You can also use the article to video feature to create catchy videos for your brand by inserting a link to an article then the editor will guide you in creating your video. Invideo’s support team is also another thing to be admired. The tool offers its users a reliable customer support service that will immediately rush to guide you whenever you encounter a problem while using their editor. Pexels - Super high-quality free stock photos Pexels is one of the world most advanced stock images tool offering its users millions of high-quality stock photos. This photos can be used to create Facebook and Google ads, digital marketing, blog posts and much more graphic content. The tool features stock images that are free to download and to use even for commercial purposes without any risks of copyright infringement. It also has a rich collection of video files that users can edit and customize into graphic content that addresses their needs. When it comes to ease of use, Pexels has one of the easiest user interfaces. Finding graphic content is easy, all you have to do is type the name of the image you want, and it will give you a list of all the matches. Aweber – email marketing services Aweber will provide you with the best email marketing services. The app is user friendly and comes with plenty of templates you can use. Are you running on a low budget? Don't worry; there is entirely a free version of the app if you have a list of less than 500 subscribers. This tool will allow you to; create a mailing list, design newsletter, automate your email responses and view and analyze your email campaign statistics. With such information, you will always know what you need to improve on to effectively reach your audience. Some of the key features of Aweber include; A landing page builder. A phone, email and live chat support feature. Third-party integration Importation and hosting mailing list. Conclusion Businesses are spending a fortune in marketing their products on social media and the internet at large. This makes it hard for startups and brands to compete fairly due to their limited budget. However, with the right content marketing tools, you can easily grow and strengthen your brand name without spending too much on marketing. This can be achieved by creating relevant graphic content like images and videos about the brands, using publishing tools to create great articles and posts about the brand and tracking consumer trends in the market.