Content marketing is hard, plain and simple. It takes a lot of time to produce a content production schedule, create and optimize content, promote social media, and so on.
Thankfully, these online tools are here to make the process easier. Used by our very own content creators at Illumine8, these content marketing tools are must-haves for everyone.
Grammarly
At Illumine8 (and in life), proper grammar is a must. It’s the basis for all content marketing!
If you’re not super great with spelling or punctuation, download Grammarly. It’s “the world’s most accurate online grammar checker” for the English language. It ensures that your content is clear, mistake-free, and effective. It “scans your text for common and complex grammatical mistakes, spanning everything from subject-verb agreement to article use to modifier placement.”
The Chrome extension attaches to Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more. Become a grammar nerd, and download Grammarly.
CoSchedule’s Social Message Optimizer
Boasting as the No. 1 marketing strategy calendar, CoSchedule is truly ahead of the game. Some spend hours wandering around the Internet to compile and average statistics from different studies about these social stats:
- The right amount of characters per social media platform
- The use of emojis
- The use and right amount of hashtags
- The power of certain words
- The difference in ROI between links, photos, videos, and copy messages
CoSchedule developed an all-in-one tool to solve this problem, and it’s free for everyone. The Social Message Optimizer accounts for all social statistics, platforms, and average user data. Type in your message, and then select the type of post.
The Optimizer scores your message based on the optimization for each social media platform, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google+. It accounts for character count, hashtags, sentiment, emojis, and best days and times to post.
That means a Twitter message with two emojis and one hashtag might score higher than a Facebook message with the exact same message.
CoSchedule even gives you recommendations and educational blogs on how you can improve your social media marketing. It’s the only online tool social media marketers need.
CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer
On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. That means, “when you’ve written your headline, you’ve spent 80 cents out of your dollar,” according to old-school advertising tycoon David Ogilvy.
The point is that headlines matter. So much so that CoSchedule (again!) developed a free online tool to analyze how well your headlines will perform.
Like the Social Media Optimizer, type in your headline, and then hit Analyze Now. The Analyzer accounts for word balance (powerful, common, uncommon and emotional words), headline type (list, how-to, generic, and more), length, first and last words, keywords, and sentiment.
It even gives you a Google Search and email subject line previews to see your headline in action without consequence. Talk about an all-around win.
Canva
A huge part of content marketing is graphic design. Unfortunately, a lot of marketing agencies don’t have the bandwidth to afford a big-budget designer for every piece of content. Even Photoshop can be pricey.
That’s where Canva comes in. It’s an online graphic design tool that uses a drag-and-drop format and provides access to millions of photos, graphics, and fonts.
Canva offers pre-built templates and layouts for thousands of content needs, from posters to invitations to charts. The image tool even sizes everything for you, so no guesswork (or stretching)!
Quora
Thinking of content marketing ideas over and over again is exhausting on the brain. If your idea well runs a little dry, visit Quora.
It’s a question-and-answer website that’s run by a community of users who love to share their opinion. “Unique insights and quality answers” is what the website boasts, but it’s also a great way to find new ideas for content.
If something on Quora sparks your interest, makes you think, or earns a reaction, write it down. Build a social media message, blog, or an entire campaign around this idea.
If you’d rather be a community user who answers questions, it actually helps build your domain authority and earns traffic to your website - if you do it right. Just ask marketing god Neil Patel.
From grammar to social media marketing to content production, these online tools can help all content marketers. If you need a little more help with your marketing, contact our team.