“Content is king” is an excellent principle for marketers to abide by, but it doesn’t take long to realize it’s not easy to achieve. Content marketing requires consistency, effort, and time — all things marketers are often strapped for. Whether you’re part of a busy team or a solo creator, your goal should be to transform your content marketing process into a well-oiled machine. Don’t know where to begin? Here are some handy content marketing resources and tools to support your content marketing efforts.
For more on how to create an effective content strategy:
Nail Down the Planning Process
It isn’t easy to create a well-thought-out piece of content without knowing your overall marketing strategy or brand voice. Nail down these pre-production tasks before you get to blogging, vlogging, or podcasting:
- Make sure you craft an effective content strategy.
- Take the time to flesh out the skeleton of your content marketing program by making a content calendar (which you’ll want to keep on hand throughout the whole content creation process).
- Decide what types of content you’ll focus on producing. (Need inspiration? This post is a good place to start.)
- Develop your ROIs so you — or more importantly, your clients — can tell if your content marketing efforts are a raging success.
For content marketing resources to create a content calendar:
Never Stop Learning
Like any other skill, marketing is all about learning, re-learning, and learning some more. Whether you’re a content creation beginner or creative extraordinaire, here are content marketing resources to keep you ahead of the curve:
- What is Content Marketing: The perfect place to start if you’re unsure of where to begin, this website explains the basics of content marketing and how it can help your business.
- Copyblogger: Here’s a fantastic resource on copywriting, filled with how-to blogs, podcasts, and tutorials. While you’re there, check out their guide on how to become a more productive writer.
- The Ultimate Guide to Creating Remarkable Content: This beautifully designed blog post gives away the secret sauce for regularly creating great content. (P.S. It involves understanding your audiences well.)
- Contently: Get actionable tips on how to master your content, from how to measure your ROI to the best ways to generate leads from videos.
- HubSpot Academy: For case studies and tutorials on storytelling and promoting content, this is the site to bookmark.
- Seth Godin’s blog: Peek into the brain of a marketing whiz who has authored over 18 best-selling books on marketing.
- 4 Simple Reasons Your Blog Still Isn’t Getting Traffic: Ever experience that frustrating moment when you’ve written a great post, but somehow the views aren’t rising? Read this to understand why you may be seeing a lull in traffic.
- 26 Tips for Writing Great Blog Posts: It’s rarely enough to write a blog post and call it a day. Here are some ideas on how to boost your posts for maximum views.
- 12 Things That Will Kill Your Blog Post Every Time: Goodbye confusing headlines, hello click-worthy ones. This resource will teach you how to avoid common blogging mistakes.
- How To Get 50,000 Visitors To Your Blog In The First Month: The best way to succeed is to learn from others’ wins and losses. Here’s a comprehensive case study on how a blogger managed to generate massive amounts of traffic in just one month.
Keep the Ideas Rolling
Coming up with fresh content ideas can be a challenge even for the most prolific content marketer. Defeat writer’s block with these idea-generating tools:
- Alltop: This is a helpful list of the most-read stories online, organized by publication.
- Answer the Public: What are people Googling? Use this tool to discover an untapped goldmine of content ideas based on popular searches.
- Forekast: You’ll never miss an obscure holiday like National Avocado Day again when you’ve got this real-time tracker of upcoming events and holidays.
- Trendspottr: Get ahead of the curve by using this website to tap into emerging trends and pre-viral content — this tool predicted the rise of nitro cold brew!
- 22 Ways To Create Content When You Don’t Have A Clue: Here’s a fun infographic with creative ideas for content inspiration, from comics to plays.
- HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator: If only our brains could produce concepts and strategies as quickly and consistently as this idea generation tool. Plug in three nouns related to a topic, and HubSpot will spit out a week’s worth of content titles.
Writing Made Easier
Struggling to find the perfect word? Unsure of how to summarize your blog post in a witty headline or attention-grabbing subhead? These tools make the writing process infinitely easier:
- Evernote: Staying organized is the key to compelling writing. It’s time to replace that messy Word document with Evernote, a highly-rated app for taking notes, creating outlines, and saving ideas.
- Grammarly: Download this browser extension and never make a spelling, punctuation, or grammar mistake again. It’s the next best thing to a real-life editor.
- Ad Copy Cheatsheet: As the first thing readers see, headlines are arguably the most important part of any piece of content. Here’s a list of power words to use in your headlines that’ll entice readers into wanting more.
- Headline Analyzer: Write catchy headlines with this website — pop your drafts in, and it’ll score your headline on structure, grammar, and readability. It’s a great way to test out different options to determine a winner.
Create Stunning Visuals
An attractive visual is a surefire way to pique your audience’s interest. With today’s graphic design tools, anyone can quickly whip up a stunning visual to complement their content in no time:
- Canva: As one of the most popular graphic design programs, Canva allows anyone to create visuals for their online content. Use their drag-and-drop features and ready-made templates to churn out a graphic in minutes.
- All The Free Stock: Here’s a handy resource for free stock images, video, and icons to spice up your content. Other similar websites include Pexels, Pikwizard, Unsplash, and Raw Pixel.
- The Noun Project: Creating an infographic or a downloadable e-book? Browse through this huge library to find the icons you need.
- Biteable: For a fun piece of content, why not try animations? Don’t worry — they’re not as daunting to create as they sound. This website has a library with tons of short clips for you to knock out animations with little experience.
- Infogram: Infographics are an excellent way to display data visually. Here’s a useful data-visualization tool with dozens of ready-made templates so you can design an infographic in minutes.
- Make a Meme: Stay relevant and impress your younger audiences by using this website to create a meme. Just don’t try too hard.
- Ezgif.com: The cooler cousin of a static image, GIFs can be used to energize your content. Here’s a tool that’ll let you create a GIF easily.
Show Your Content Off
Generating great content is only half the battle. Now, it’s time to rake in the views with helpful content marketing resources. Here’s a guide to getting people to care about your content and boost those shares, comments, and likes. Pro tip: Don’t forget to repurpose what you’ve already created into even more content, which will help you reach an even wider audience.
Last updated on November 17th, 2022.
