The Top Content Marketing Tools You Should Be Using

Content marketing isn’t going anywhere. 

But it’s constantly changing, and it’s a full-time job just to keep up.

So if you haven’t already, it’s a good time to take full advantage all the tools at your disposal.

In this article, you’ll find info on the top tools in content creation, promotion, influencer outreach, and more.

1. SEMRush

SEMRush is a complex tool that covers a lot of ground, but one of it’s biggest strengths is the role it plays in keyword research. First of all, it lets you identify different variations of keywords you should be using. Start by logging in and typing a keyword into the search bar. The returning screen will have a wealth of information, but you want to really focus on the “Phrase Match Keywords” and “Related Keywords.”

Export the lists and review them to find new keyword ideas and variations to target in your future posts. You’ll also want to scroll down to the “Organic Search Results,” which will show you the top ranking pages that contain that keyword. But SEMRush goes beyond keyword research. Use it for competitor research by performing a search on your competitor’s domain. You’ll find their top ranking keywords as well as their top content. These are topics with a proven record, so take it and tweak it to make it your own. It can also be used to identify goldmine topics by using a little trick I like to call the Selector System. Read all about it here.

2. BuzzSumo

Hands down, one of the hardest parts of successful content marketing is finding the right topics. Luckily, we have tools to make the job easier. One of the best out there is BuzzSumo for analyzing competitor content and finding out what’s trending in your niche. To use it, simply navigate to the site and type in a keyword you’re targeting. It will return results for the most popular articles containing that keyword.For example, I typed in SEO. These are the results it returned:

• Reasons Why Email Marketing is Better Than Social Media Marketing
• 3 Tactics to Solve Your Email Marketing Woes
• Best Email Marketing Campaigns For Lead Generation
• Etc.

You’ll also be able to see the number of shares and engagements each post generated across Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, as well as the total number of links and engagements. When it comes to finding the best content for your niche, engagement is everything, and the availability of these numbers is a serious help to content curators everywhere. You can also use BuzzSumo to find content by domain. If you have a list of top competitors, type in their URL to pull all a list of their top performing posts. With all of your searches, you have the option to select a date range – past week, month, or year, or a specific range – to see what content is currently doing well vs. what has continued to be popular over time. Do note that some features (like date selection and total link views) require an upgraded plan.

3. Top Content Marketing Tools: Almighty.Press

This is a cool one. While it works similarly to the two listed above in that it pulls together popular content, Almighty.Press is unique in that it focuses solely on content that’s about to go viral. As you know, viral content is the holy grail when it comes to marketing, and you should jump on any means you can to try to achieve it. Almighty.Press uses the Almighty Force algorithm to sort through the (thousands) of news stories and identify viral content that’s about to be published, allowing you the opportunity to get in on the ground floor by curating a post around that soon-to-be viral topic. Don’t ask me how it works, just know that it does. On its blog, Almighty.Press puts users through a 4-step process:

1. Identify trending content.
2. Curate that content to your own blogs. (WordPress, Medium, Tumblr, and Custom CMS via our API)
3. Schedule that content to all of your social platforms. (with Buffer, IFTTT and Zapier integrations)
4. Schedule and deliver push notifications directly to your audience. (with PushWoosh and PushCrew integration)

You can filter content by URL, keywords, interactions, time, and the Almighty Force algorithm, and then save those presets for smoothing searching in the future. Intrigued? Try a free 14-day trial.

4. TapInfluence

Influencer marketing is one of the biggest and most effective trends in marketing. It’s an ideal way to expose your brand to new (usually, pretty huge) and highly relevant audience. The downside, of course, is that finding and partnering with said influencers is a whole job in itself.   Enter TapInfluence, a platform that lets brands find influencers and create, automate and track campaigns.   Here’s how it works: you choose from the platform’s 50,000+ influencers using TapInfluence’s Audience Intelligence feature, which shows you detailed analytics into a given influencer’s audience and performance data. Then, you create and automate your campaign. TapInfluence provides a fully automated workflow between you and your influencer to ensure everything runs as smoothly as possible. As your campaign progresses, you’ll be given access to comprehensive analytics including views, engagements, and real-time ROI.

5. Top Content Marketing Tools: Clickfunnels

Creating a sales funnel is one of the first steps in creating any marketing plan – on or offline. A sales funnel covers the entire customer journey, from brand awareness to conversion, and the steps you’ll take them through on the way. Those steps include all kind of tactics – email marketing, social media, landing page optimization, SEO, etc. It’s a lot for anyone to process from scratch, which is where Clickfunnels comes in. Using the software, you can easily create an actionable sales funnel from a drag and drop interface. Once you create the ideal funnel for your clients, you can automate the process and create landing pages, integrate with email services, A/B test your materials, etc. You choose your industry and the type of funnel you’d like to create, be it to generate leads, sell a product, create an event, etc., choose your page design, and sit back while Clickfunnels takes care of the rest.

6. MeetEdgar

No list of content tools would be complete without at least one social media management, so I’m shining the spotlight on my personal favorite: MeetEdgar. It does all the things you’ve come to expect from top social media tools: it helps you build a library of posts to store and distribute automatically, so you don’t have to write and post each manually. But what’s really cool about MeetEdgar is how it recycles each post by category. Edgar stores each and every post you load based on the category you assign it (and you can create as many categories as you like). Then, you can set up your schedule to run posts based on category. If you run out of new posts, Edgar will simply recycle one of your past posts from the same category. That’s a good thing for a few reasons: it ensures there’s always a post on your page, and allows an entirely new group of people to see the recycled post, ensuring you get the most value out of your posts.

7. Top Content Marketing Tools: Idio

Idio is an extremely handy tool that introduces content intelligence: a “new way to understand and influence the customer journey, and automate the delivery of smarter, more relevant and more profitable engagements across every channel.” It provides predictive analytics into your content’s overall competitiveness, content audits, content strategy and performance, with a wealth of analytics to boot. Idio’s insights are immediately actionable and automated. It works by tracking 10 million interactions a day and the content a person has viewed and then provides customized content to that individual. And the best part? It does all that work in mere seconds.

8. GrooveJar

A big challenge all online businesses face is how to turn website visitors into conversions. But don’t worry, there’s a tool for that too. GrooveJar is a platform designed to increase email sign-ups through the use of pop-up ads. I know, pop-ups are generally not included on anyone’s most popular list. But the thing is, they’re still crazy effective when it comes to collecting emails – if you do them right. That means simple, clean visuals (nothing too distracting or flashy), clear CTAs and unignorable offers. GrooveJar can help you with all of those things. Its pop-ups are easy to design and customize and connect directly to its Collect & Convert function, a set of triggered emails designed to get customers back on your site. Of course, you also have the option to integrate with your favorite email service like MailChimp, etc.  

GrooveJar reports that their most popular pop-ups turn 9% of website visitors into leads through.

9. Top Content Tools: Grammarly

Let’s get back to basics for a minute. Nothing hurts your credibility like a post filled with misspellings and grammar errors, so make sure you run each through Grammarly for editing.

It couldn’t be easier to use – it even comes with a Chrome extension for easy navigation – and highlights any potential errors it sees, including overused words and contextual issues. It may not be the fanciest on the list, but Grammarly could still very well save the day (and your reputation).

Get Started With the Top Content Marketing Tools

Content marketing is always changing, and so are the tools that can help you with it. The ones listed above are some of the best in the business right now. Which ones will you be using?