Content Marketing Tools: Ideas, Writing, Creation, Distribution and Organization

Content marketing makes your brand an authoritative, provide additional value, and above all, it boosts traffic on your site.

However, to fully benefit from it, you have to put a lot of effort and arm yourself with patience and energy.

Fortunately, various tools can help you along the way. That’s why I’ve created, what I think is, the complete list of the best content marketing tools in the world.

The list is segmented in following categories:

• Content ideas: Tools that will help you to generate content marketing ideas.
• Writing: These tools will come handy with creating blog posts.
• Content creation: Bring more value to your content by adding infographics charts or video material.
• Distribution: The list of tools that you’ll need to promote the content.
• Organization: Tools to manage your team activities.

Let’s see what are the best marketing tools!

Content Ideas

#1 Quora

As the most popular Q&A website in the world, Quora is a goldmine of content marketing ideas. It has more than 270M total visits and +419.000 new questions per month.

You will find various Q&A about anything you can think of, and based on that you can easily generate ideas to make amazing articles.

Pricing: Free

Official website: https://www.quora.com

#2 BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo shows you the most shared articles across the majority of social networks. If you’re looking for social shares, tweets, and pins, this is your starting point.

You’ll get a clear picture of the content you should publish.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: http://buzzsumo.com/

#3 Ahrefs

While BuzzSumo gives you the most shared pieces of content, Ahrefs delivers the most linked pages, which can be a pool of new ideas.

Simply a perfect tool for generating content marketing ideas, link building and SEO in general. I recently wrote the text about generating long-tail keywords with Ahrefs and Wikipedia.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://ahrefs.com/

#4 Twitter

Twitter is perfect for interacting with the influencers, but that’s just one of the reasons to use it. If you want to see what are people talking about right now and generate tons of content marketing ideas, use Twitter.

For the record, that’s how I’ve decided to write a blog post about checking backlinks in Google Webmasters Tool.

Pricing: Free

Official website: https://twitter.com/

#5 Reddit

Reddit is defined as social media, social news aggregation, web content rating and discussion website. It’s a community where members can put their content that gets votes and comments.

Based on this you can identify themes and headlines that trigger people’s reactions. Discussion websites will always be a good source of content marketing ideas, and Reddit is among the most popular for more than a decade.

Pricing: Free

Official website: https://www.reddit.com

#6 Lumanu

When creating right content you keep up with trends all the time. With Luman, you will receive trending content automatically. You’ll get the most relevant content for you, as well as influencers related to that content.

Another important feature is monitoring relevant blogs, websites, and online communities so that you can participate in the right conversation. From these activities, content ideas will be like served on the plate.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://lumanu.com

Writing

#7 Google Docs

If you’re still using writing tools where you have to save the changes, worry about backup or check the word spelling, it means you haven’t been introduced to Google Docs.

So my message to all writers in the world is - stop torturing yourself and start using Google Docs. Google Docs makes your life easy and lets you collaborate with colleagues.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://docs.google.com/

#8 Zoho Writer

To really enjoy the writing experience, use Zoho Writer. You can use beautiful templates and designs and work with various formats including ODT, HTML, and docx.

Additionally, The Visual Edge feature enables you to import and embed images and video files from Flickr, Picasa, and Youtube. Many other fine features include protecting sensitive data and tracking changes to your documents.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://www.zoho.com/docs/writer.html

#9 Office Online

You couldn’t possibly think that I would talk about writing tools without mentioning a good old Microsoft Word, did you? There are all sorts of templates such as Calendar, Resume, Event flyer, Literature review, Project task list and much more. It keeps up with trends.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://www.office.com/

#10 Hackpad

Hackpad is a collaborative real-time text editor, recently acquired by Dropbox. It’s another way of writing articles for your blogs, and it lets you to easily organize your text.

You can add hashtags for every single pad (an editable content page). Plus you can create different workspaces where you save pads. One of the interesting features is that you can even embed YouTube videos or tweets from influencers.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://hackpad.com/

Content Creation

#11 PromoRepublic

Work smarter, not harder they say. If you think you are loosing time on finding the idea for your content, Promo Republic is the right solution for you. They have a rich Library of Templates with editable posts.

Using their Content Calendar and Automated Posting feature get you many benefits including time-saving and good content posting.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: http://promorepublic.com/

#12 Piktochart

This is an infographic maker. The best there is, in my opinion. Heavyweights like Moz, The Guardian, Forbes and others, use it.

Hiring a professional designer is usually very expensive, which makes this tool much better alternative. Around 500 templates is updated every week so it’s very likely that you will find an exact match for your message.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://piktochart.com/

#13 Infogr.am

More than 4.6 M infographics (wow) is created using this tool. You will find beautiful charts and maps for your data. Very simple color and style editing.

One particularly interesting feature are public sources inside the product, including World Bank and UN. Lots of useful stuff here.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://infogr.am/

#14 ease.ly

There are more templates than you can count. You will be aware of this as soon as you start scrolling the page. Simply pick the right one for your data and modify it according to your needs.

If you’re not sure, you will find blog tips and useful courses about infographics. Great fun guaranteed, and it’s all free.

Pricing: Free

Official website: https://www.easel.ly

#15 ChartBlocks

If you are operating with charts primarily, you’ll hardly find a better tool than Chartblocks. That is not a surprise because these folks put all their energy to build a tool specifically for charts, and they did one heck of a job.

Once you import your data, you can use their wizard to help you along the way. With tons of customization options, it’s possible to customize every single element of charts. In the end, simply grab the embed code and put it on your website. All thumbs up.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: http://www.chartblocks.com/

#16 AnyChart

Talking about AnyChart, one thing is certain - you won’t need to adapt to anything. Whatever server and database technology you’re using you will have your charts and dashboards delivered.

It really can’t get more flexible than this. One more thing. Don’t lose your ground when you see the list of their customers. I won’t say anything more.

Pricing: Paid

Official website: http://www.anychart.com/

Distribution

#17 Buffer

They say that Buffer is A better way to share on social media. Around 3 million users agree, so do I. Scheduling posts for later is the most useful feature.

It allows you to focus on other things especially if you’re a bootstrapping startup without a hired Community manager. Posting the same message to all social networks (with possible customizations) is another thing that will come in hand.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://buffer.com/

#18 HootSuite

If you want to Get serious about social, and measure the effectiveness of your social media campaigns, HootSuite is your tool. It gives you insight to about your brand from your audience perspective, and a chance to easily engage with them.

However, HootSuite’s top notch feature is scheduling your future posts across the more than 35 global networks.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://hootsuite.com/

#19 Kuku.io

Kuku.io is a set of social management tools to optimize your social media strategies. The great thing about Kuku.io is sharing and publishing your content to multiple social accounts, at once.

There are more stunning features, like the one where you get to see how the number of your followers is growing, depending on your activity. Knowing the best time to post can make a difference.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://kuku.io/

#20 Jarvis

For me, the best thing about Jarvis is that they got the list of the most popular content in your industry. They know exactly what pieces of content are shared on Facebook and Twitter every single day.

They are also letting their customers search for engaging keywords and posts. That way you get to know what content to post. Jarvis doesn’t have a free plan, but you can try it for free for 7 days.

Pricing: Paid

Official website: https://choosejarvis.com/

#21 Stacker

Reading all messages that come to your inbox and responding to them from one place is a Stacker’s beautiful feature.

But that’s not all, you can add your content into Stacker and let them publish at the best time through the day, which can maximize the number of fans and engagement. Another cool feature is installing a browser extension and sharing from one click.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://www.getstacker.com/

#22 dlvr.it

This is an interesting social media tool with smart automation - the fastest way to find and share great content across different social networks.

The only thing you need to do is creating the content into the queue. Dvlr.it will do the rest (sharing on the optimized schedule).

Pricing: Paid

Official website: https://dlvr.it/

#23 SproutSocial

The three main features are Analytics, Engagement, and Publishing. Analytics will tell you everything about a number of incoming messages, followers, fans and more, while engagement brings you all messages to one place.

Scheduling allows you to send messages to multiple social networks from one window. There is no free plan but you can start a free trial without a credit card.

Pricing: Paid

Official website: http://sproutsocial.com/

#24 GoCinchy Social

Work-flow is really simple. I’d say something like Lean Startup Methodology. Firstly, you need to create a time-bound campaign along with campaign goals. After that, you start publishing wnd scheduling posts within the campaign.

The next step is to check campaign report, see goal completion results and then improve the strategy and repeat the process. It doesn’t get any simpler.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://www.gocinchy.com/

#25 SocialScheduler

Your audience is using all social media, more or less. Plus, different social channels require different optimization in terms of timing and frequency. To save your time and energy, you need to do things in advance.

This tool is specialized for that. It enables you to schedule your messages to achieve perfect timing. Currently, Facebook,Twitter, LinkedIn Pinterest are all supported. More integration is underway.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://www.socialscheduler.co.uk/

#26 SocialPilot

What I like about Social Pilot the most, is bulk scheduling. You can share hundreds of posts without any efforts by uploading a text or CSV. The posts will be scheduled and published in appropriate time.

Of course, Social Pilot is offering much more including custom Facebook branding, so that every post can look like this: Posted by Jellymetrics. Nice.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://socialpilot.co/

#27 Over-graph

Hello brands. Over-graph has the best solution for your communication on Social Networks. What’s more, they will improve your Social Network Campaigns.

In the trial version, you get no limits which is a great thing. You won’t have second guessing whether to use it or not.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: http://ww.over-graph.com

Organization

#28 Slack

For the few who haven’t heard about Slack, it’s an instant messaging and collaboration system with a skyrocket growth.

You can use channels available to the team, private channels and direct messaging. Sharing files has never been easier. Even if you’re a developer you can easily send highlighted piece of code. Slack rocks!

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://slack.com/

#29 Trello

Trello lets you work more collaboratively and get more done. Their boards, lists, and cards enable you to organize and prioritize your projects.

With Trello you will know tasks of people in the project and have a clear picture what’s actually happening. You can upload photos from Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and OpenDrive. There are also checklists, deadlines and so on.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://trello.com/

#30 MeisterTask

MeisterTask is a perfect app for assigning tasks and following each other’s progress within the project. It’s a customizable app, very adjustable to everyone's needs. It gives you a clear picture of active projects in your organization.

Plugins such as a timer, lets you know how much time project members are spending. Downloading apps for Android and iOS will provide you project details wherever you are.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://www.meistertask.com

#31 Google Calendar

Google Apps are always great! Google Calendar app helps you spend less time managing your schedule and more time enjoying. The calendar is integrated with other Google apps such as Gmail, Drive, Contacts, Sites, and Hangouts.

Another feature I really like is sharing the calendar with the colleagues so that everyone can be introduced with the plan. Personally, I use the app for scheduling my blog posts allowing my co-founder Jasmin to know the posts I’m writing.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://calendar.google.com

#32 Todoist

I simply love Todoist platform support which includes Android, iOS, OS X, Windows, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Outlook, and Gmail. This is so important when you have many people in your team. Some will prefer OS X and some will fancy Windows and that’s the reason why I like Todoist.

It’s so flexible. But there is a lot more to it. For an example, Location alerts are cool - when you arrive or leave a certain location you will get a notification.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://en.todoist.com/

#33 Wrike

This is a perfect solution for different types of teams:

• Marketing
• Creative Teams
• Project Management Teams
• Product Development Teams
• All teams

All big the things are made of small individual parts.

That counts for your business too. Track individual contribution, but never lose your big objectives. You can finally forget about attachments to your computer. Track all changes in real-time.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://www.wrike.com/

#34 Asana

The fact that Asana is used by Uber, Pinterest, Dropbox, Stripe, NASA and many other companies says a lot!

It enables you to create a new task in few clicks and to track the progress of your running projects. Also, you can assign a task to your teammates and comment with them.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://asana.com/

#35 Google Tasks

Google Tasks is a simple app you can use for small projects. The whole idea is pretty simple - just add your tasks and set due date value. With clearing tasks you can easily check what tasks are finished and what aren’t.

Probably the best feature is Google Chrome extension. Among other things, it’s possible to highlight a text on any web page and add that text to a new task. There is a reason for 462,806 extension users.

Pricing: Free

Official website: https://mail.google.com/tasks/canvas

#36 WunderList

Available through several platforms, from OS X to Chromebook, Wunderlist is the simplest way to get the things done.

Collaborate with anyone and, thanks to reminders, the app will make sure you don’t forget anything. Don’t miss your deadlines.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://www.wunderlist.com

#37 Taiga.io

Taiga.io is a platform for both tech and non-tech people. Scrum agile software development methodology is widely used these days, and you can use Taiga app to handle it.

Plus, there is Kanban methodology to divide project development into stages and it’s not limited only to software development projects.

Pricing: Free & Paid

Official website: https://taiga.io/

Conclusion

It’s not just the fact that content marketing is a must-have, but the thing is that content marketing is a constantly improving process that you need to keep up with. It’s getting better and better every day, and content marketing tools take a big part in that. With so many available tools, you need to pick the right ones for your business. Hopefully, this list narrowed your options.