Lots of businesses trash their content marketing programs several months into them. When asked why, the single most popular response is that the program took too much time and effort, and it wasn’t bringing in much traffic.
Content marketing is not easy, to be sure. In fact, there is so much content out there that getting noticed is becoming harder and harder every day. In addition to this overwhelming fact, there is the constant need to create new, original content or discover and curate quality, relevant content, and then figure out when, where, and how to publish it for maximum effect. With all this in mind, it’s easy to conclude that it’s just not worth it. To all of you that have considered dumping your content marketing campaigns, this one’s for you.
Here are 8 tools that might make the content creation process much simpler and help you get the traffic you want.
AtomicWriter
Knowing for whom you are creating content is vital to content marketing success. Hopefully you’ve already identified your target audience (and if not, here’s a tool to help you do just that). Now it is time to find out if your content is appropriate for that audience. AtomicWriter is a great WordPress plugin that will give you feedback on any post you write before you publish it. Because you have already defined your audience, all you have to do is select it from one of the five categories provided. These range from “General” (those with a basic understanding of the topic and content) to “Genius” (those with an expert understanding of the topic and content). AtomicWriter will then analyze and provide feedback on the title, sentence complexity, links, length, and more, and make suggestions for improvement.
Keyword Tool
Keyword Tool is a great complement to Google Keyword Planner, or a good alternative to conducting keyword research on the fly when you want to concentrate on content marketing efforts. Google Keyword Planner is primarily used for paid advertising, so the keywords you find there may be too general for your purposes. Keyword Tool provides you with powerful long-tail keywords that have been the subject of thousands of searches, making them perfect for content creation. The Google Autocomplete feature that Keyword Tool uses will generate up to 750 long-tail keywords for any search term you enter.
Trapit
This is primarily a content curation tool. And it is a continuous source for content ideas or for other posts that you might want to repurpose or re-publish (with permission of course) on your own platforms. First, you create a “trap” by using a keyword. Then, this amazing sleuth seeks out relevant content and dumps it into your trap for you to access and use later. One of the other things that Trapit is “trained” to do is get your feedback. You can give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on each piece of content delivered to you. When you give a “thumbs-up,” it will search for similar content in the future. As you continue to return for ideas and inspiration, you can add new traps for a more personalized, relevant experience.
Title Generator
One of the keys to creating content that actually gets read is having such a compelling title that a potential reader is immediately interested and clicks through to read what comes next. Of course, you want what’s there to be great too, but getting eyes on that content is highly dependent on your title. This free tool will automatically generate about 600 possible titles based upon a keyword or keyword phrase you enter.
Alltop
If you are looking to write really relevant content that is currently popular with your target audience, you don’t have to go all over searching for it. Set up an account with Alltop and automatically get the latest news feeds for your business’ niche. Going through these feeds will give you lots of topic ideas for your content.
Scribe
This subscription-based software is amazingly useful in terms of SEO. The three basics of content marketing success – research, optimization, and connecting with your audience – are made easy. You can identify topics of importance to your target audience along with the language they use when searching, get an SEO analysis to build site authority, and connect with others who share the same audience so that you can establish relationships and alliances.
ZenPen
If you need to write without any distractions, this open-source app provides you a blank canvas to work from. All you have to do is go to the website, delete the text on the page, and start writing. The site offers traditional formatting options, like bold and italicized fonts, but without all of the extra clutter that other programs come with. You can also maximize the page to full screen to completely eliminate distractions and then download the text to your computer when you’re finished.
Canva
Canva is a truly amazing graphic design tool for beginners. You can create infographics, SlideShares, videos, posters, and more, and even edit photos in your projects. You are literally walked through the process of creating virtually any kind of visual content you need.
Using these 8 content marketing tools will make content creation easy, efficient, and will resurrect or vastly improve your content marketing campaign.
