Make no mistake about it, content marketing is increasingly important to a business’s success. From blog content and landing pages to email newsletters and social platforms, content marketing is a highly valuable strategy for businesses looking to reach their target audience.
There is a wide range of content marketing tools available for content marketers and business owners alike. Additionally, there are numerous free content marketing tools available that can help businesses enhance their marketing strategies without significant financial investment.
While the number of options to choose from may seem overwhelming at first glance, we’ve narrowed it down to the top 10 tools. Read on to learn about the top 10 content marketing tools to utilize for your content marketing strategy.
Content marketing is a strategic approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. The goal of content marketing is to drive profitable customer action by providing helpful and informative content that addresses the needs and interests of the target audience.
This can take many forms, including blog posts, social media posts, videos, podcasts, e-books, and more. By delivering high-quality content that resonates with your audience, you can build trust, improve SEO, establish authority, and ultimately drive conversions.
Top 10 Content Marketing Tools
With so many options it can be hard to know where to start when it comes to content marketing tools. Luckily, many of these online tools have free versions that allow you to test them out before committing to a monthly subscription. Without further ado, let’s jump right in. Here are our favorite tools to add to your marketing workflow.
1. Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO is an all-in-one search engine optimization tool for content writers and strategists. This content marketing tool gives you the features you need to create a keyword-backed strategy that yields results. With Surfer’s Content Planner, you can conduct effective keyword research to identify high-value, low-competition keywords, enhancing your SEO efforts. Determine search intent, see the monthly search volume, and related keyword ideas to add to your strategy.
You can also use Surfer’s Content Editor to write powerful, optimized, and well-researched content that speaks to both your target audience and Google. With Surfer’s optimization tool, you can see how your content compares to what’s currently ranking in the SERP. See suggested headings, LSI keywords, and even the number of paragraphs and images to include in your piece.
Surfer SEO is an excellent tool to help boost your organic traffic with SEO-driven content.
Pricing: The Surfer SEO Essential Plan is $99 per month. The Scale Plan is $219 per month and the Enterprise Plan is customizable.
2. Canva
Canva has taken the marketing world by storm in recent years. This interactive graphic design tool is intuitive and simple to use to create content production ranging from slide decks to social media posts. Create professional designs with ready-made templates or design your own graphics from scratch.
Canva is particularly useful for creating social media images with customizable templates and appropriate sizing for various platforms. It also allows you to invite your team to make edits, leave feedback, or send approvals of your designs. Stay organized with team folders, collaborate across departments, and plan and publish social media posts directly through Canva.
The Canva for Teams plan gives you access to 100+ million premium stock photos, videos, audio, and graphics. With 1TB of cloud storage, you will be able to create all the designs you need for your business.Pricing: Canva offers a free plan. Canva Pro is $120 per year. Canva for Teams is $100 per year per person for a minimum of three members.
3. Grammarly
You’ve probably heard of Grammarly before, but we had to include it because it’s an essential content marketing tool. Grammarly is a real-time writing assistant that checks spelling, grammar, punctuation, and delivery mistakes. It’s much more than a basic spellchecker as it gives you replacement suggestions for errors as you type using innovative AI technology.
Grammarly detects the tone of your writing, makes suggestions based on conciseness, and even provides full-sentence rewrites (with Grammarly Premium). Never publish a piece of content with punctuation or spelling errors again with Grammarly.
Pricing: Grammarly offers a free plan. The Premium Plan starts at $12 per month. The Business Plan starts at $15 per member per month.
4. Google Docs
Google Docs is a must-have for any business’s content marketing team. Google Docs is a cloud-based word processor that makes it easy to write and share pieces of content. It gives you all the traditional features of Microsoft Word but allows you to work in the cloud. The tool automatically saves your drafts every few seconds to ensure you never lose your work. You could even investigate Google Analytics as a web analytics service that is useful in your marketing efforts.
Google Docs integrates seamlessly with various content management systems, making it easier to manage and publish content.
The version history allows you to easily determine what changes have been made to a document. Make comments directly in the doc, work in suggestion mode, or assign someone to edit with Google Docs.
Pricing: Free
5. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a cloud-based content marketing platform that helps you create high-performing content. Benchmark your performance, create a compelling content strategy, protect your brand, share with others, optimize your influencer marketing, and delve into multimedia with this tool.
The tool helps you discover high-ranking content, analyze data to inform your strategy, identify influencers to work with, and monitor results. Add BuzzSumo to your workflow to elevate your content marketing. Additionally, BuzzSumo aids in tracking site metrics to understand audience behavior and optimize content based on performance data.
Pricing:BuzzSumo offers a free plan. The Content Creation Plan is $199 per month. The PR and Comms Plan is $299 per month for up to five users. The Suite Plan is $499 per month for up to 10 users. The Enterprise Plan is $999 per month for up to 30 users.
6. Envato Elements
Envato Elements is a creative asset hub that offers unlimited downloads of stock photos, videos, music, and graphics for one price. Get studio-quality stock videos and images for any content marketing project. With over 100,000 items added just this week, you’re sure to find what you need on Envato Elements.
Envato Elements supports content creation by offering a wide range of stock photos, videos, music, and graphics. Perfect for social media post creation, finding featured images for blogs, and creating presentations, this visual content marketing tool will come in handy. Download an unlimited number of commercial use licensed elements to use in your content.
Pricing: From $16.50 per month.
7. Hemingway Editor
Hemingway Editor is a free and simple tool that highlights lengthy or complex sentences and common errors. It gives you a readability score and grade level to ensure your copy is at the right reading level. Hemingway Editor helps make your writing bold and clear.
It detects passive voice, suggests simpler alternatives to complex words or phrases, highlights sentences that are hard to read, and counts the number of adverbs. Type directly in the app or copy and paste your content into it to evaluate and suggest edits.
Pricing: Free
8. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media accounts management platform that helps you create engaging content and grow your audience. If you run multiple social media accounts for your business, Hootsuite is a great tool to manage all your social media content across all social media platforms in one place.
Schedule and publish relevant content using the calendar feature, stay on top of trends by setting up customizable streams, get recommended post times, and track results all on a single platform.
Pricing: The Professional Plan is $49 per month. The Team Plan is $179 per month. The Business Plan is $739 per month.
9. Ahrefs
Similar to Surfer’s Content Planner, Ahrefs is an SEO tool that processes clickstream data to maintain the largest third-party database of search queries. With the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer tool, you can find keywords’ monthly search volume, difficulty score, traffic potential, and much more.
You can run content gap analyses to see what keywords your competitors are ranking for that you aren’t — helping you find and target new keywords. You can also set up Rank Tracker which monitors your site pages’ rankings on Google for the list of keywords you input. Using big data, Ahrefs offers plenty of helpful tools and resources for content marketing. Ahrefs also assists users in performing technical SEO tasks seamlessly, making it easier to optimize content without extensive technical knowledge.
Pricing: The Lite Plan starts at $129 per month. The Standard Plan starts at $249 per month. The Advanced Plan starts at $449 per month.
10. Yoast
Yoast is a WordPress plugin that helps you optimize your website content for SEO. Optimize content for your target keyword, edit meta descriptions, title tags, and slugs, and find relevant internal linking opportunities with Yoast. The tool also takes care of basic technical SEO issues for you. Additionally, Yoast assists in optimizing content by suggesting relevant internal links to enhance blog posts and improve SEO performance.
It’s extremely simple to use with red, yellow, and green indicators to help you fully optimize your site’s pages. Save time and boost your organic traffic by sharing high-quality content and keeping your technical SEO on point.
Pricing: Yoast offers a free plan. The Premium Plan is $99 per year.
As you can see, there are plenty of options for content marketing tools to make your life easier. Try out several of them to create the most valuable content for your business. We hope you’ve found this list of the best tools for content marketing helpful and informative!
Bonus Project Management and Collaboration Tools
Project management and collaboration tools are essential for content marketers to streamline their workflow, assign tasks, and track progress. These tools help ensure that your content marketing efforts are organized and efficient. Some popular project management tools for content marketing include:
- Trello: A visual project management tool that uses boards, lists, and cards to organize tasks and projects. Trello’s intuitive interface makes it easy to see the status of your content marketing projects at a glance.
- Asana: A work management platform that helps teams stay organized and on track. With Asana, you can create tasks, set deadlines, and assign responsibilities, ensuring that everyone knows what needs to be done and when.
- Basecamp: A comprehensive project management tool that includes features like message boards, file sharing, and schedule sharing. Basecamp helps keep all your content marketing materials and communications in one place.
- Slack: A communication platform that helps teams stay connected and collaborate on projects. Slack’s channels and direct messaging features make it easy to discuss content ideas, share updates, and get feedback in real-time.
By incorporating these project management tools into your content marketing strategy, you can improve collaboration, enhance productivity, and ensure that your content marketing projects are completed on time and to a high standard.
Bonus Video Marketing and Email Marketing Tools
Video marketing and email marketing are two powerful channels for content marketers to reach their audience. These tools can help you create engaging content and deliver it directly to your target audience. Some popular tools for video marketing and email marketing include:
- Vidyard: A video marketing platform that helps businesses create, host, and share video content. Vidyard’s analytics features allow you to track viewer engagement and measure the impact of your video marketing efforts.
- Loom: A video recording tool that allows users to create and share video messages. Loom is perfect for creating quick, personalized video content that can be shared via email or social media.
- Mailchimp: An email marketing platform that helps businesses create and send targeted email campaigns. Mailchimp’s automation features and detailed analytics make it easy to manage your email marketing efforts and track their success.
- Constant Contact: An email marketing platform that provides features like contact management, email tracking, and social media integration. Constant Contact’s user-friendly interface and robust features make it a great choice for businesses of all sizes.
Using these video marketing and email marketing tools allows you to create compelling content that captures your audience’s attention and drives engagement.
Choosing the Best Content Marketing Tools
Choosing the best content marketing tools can be overwhelming, but it’s essential to find the right tools that fit your needs and goals. When selecting content marketing tools, consider the following factors:
- Ease of use: Choose tools that are user-friendly and easy to navigate.
- Features: Consider the features you need to achieve your content marketing goals.
- Integration: Look for tools that integrate with other tools and platforms you use.
- Cost: Evaluate the cost of the tool and whether it fits within your budget.
- Scalability: Choose tools that can grow with your business and adapt to changing needs.
By considering these factors and exploring the tools mentioned in this article, you can find the best content marketing tools to help you achieve your goals and succeed in the competitive world of content marketing.
Take Your Content Marketing To The Next Level With Elevato
These tools go a long way in helping you up your content marketing game, but nothing can compare to working with hand-in-hand with experts. If you are a business owner and want to improve your content marketing efforts, reach out to the professionals at Elevato. Our team of specialists is highly skilled and ready grow your business.