36 Content Marketing Tools: The Essential Toolbox

The right content marketing tools turn any content marketing strategy into a highly successful plan. The problem? There are dozens of tools to choose from.  How do you know which tools to use and which ones to leave behind? In this article, you’ll see the top essential content marketing tools.

I’ve researched the best content marketing tools that make a difference when your goal is curating, creating, and distributing your content across the Internet.  Avoid all the confusion. Simply select a few of the following 36 tools. Let’s start it…

Content Creation Tools

Success with content marketing starts with outstanding content to deliver to your audience.  Use these content creation tools to research and create your content.

1. Use Site:search

Do you know that you’ve previously written something quotable on your website but can’t remember which post it’s in?

Or, do you need to search a third-party website for research material? Site: search is a simple hack that lets you limit a search to a particular site’s content. This is the formula: site:samplewebsite.com [keyword]

Writing a post about book editing, and you remember reading something about that on becomeawritertoday.com? Enter the formula into Google this way: site:becomeawritertoday.com book editing. so, your search brings up every post on becomeawritertoday.com that deals with book editing.

2. Search Inside Giphy

Use the Giphy Chrome extension to find the perfect GIF. Take these four steps:

1. Firstly, open the extension inside Chrome
2. Secondly, conduct a search
3. Select a GIF
4. Finally, drag & drop the GIF into your document

Giphy provides support for its extension, and it works inside applications such as:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Gmail

3. Google’s Explore Tool For Content Marketing Tools

Did you know that you can conduct Google searches without leaving your Google document? It’s possible when using Google’s “Explore” tool.

Highlight a keyword inside your document, right-click, and select “Explore.” You’ll notice a search results icon open in the right-side column of the document with three research options:

1. Web
2. Images
3. Drive

4. Google Alerts

Improve your content marketing results by writing about news inside your industry immediately after it happens. Use Google Alerts to send notifications to your account the moment something interesting comes up. It’s simple to set up an alert:

1. Firstly, Click here to open up Google Alerts
2. Secondly, type a keyword into the search box
3. Click “Create Alert”
4. Finally, get real-time alerts by clicking on “show options.” Select “As it happens” as your “How often” setting

Content Curation Tools

Sometimes you need to collect other people’s content instead of creating everything on your own. So, it’s a process called content curation, and there are quality tools available to help make the job easier.

5. Curata Content Marketing Tools

Curata lets you use authors, news sites, keywords, and blog posts as content sources. Moreover, use the intuitive dashboard to add commentary, images, and even share or schedule the content you’ve collected.

6. Post Planner

Post Planner’s homepage cites Buffer and Buzzsumo’s research that using their app generates 510% more engagement. This tool uses past performance to curate shareable content for you. After creating social media posts around this curated content, Post Planner allows you to drag and drop your posts directly into a content calendar.

7. Pinterest

Use Pinterest to curate visual content for later use. Set up boards to collect images and infographics. You can include tags and links to help you search and find content when creating blog posts or social media posts.

8. Pocket

With Pocket, you’ll use a browser bookmarklet to quickly save content. Use tags to label each piece of content and make it easy to find your favorite topics at any time.

9. Scoop.it

Scoop.it automates the content curation process. Inside your account, use an area of interest to build out a topic page. Next, tell the app to use RSS feeds, websites, searches, and blogs to pull in related content. Use the curated content when it’s time to publish your next article or social media post.

Social Media Tools

Social media is an important part of any content marketing plan. It can also overtake your schedule if you’re not careful. Use these tools to help you:

• Analyze campaign effectiveness
• Automate your posting schedule on social media
• Track & assess which new content ideas to use next

10. BuzzSumo Content Marketing Tools

Use Buzzsumo to view which content gets shared the most across a variety of social media platforms.

It helps you discover influencers and what types of content they’re sharing on their social sites. This is effective when finding partnership possibilities where influencers share your content for you. You should also use this tool to track trending content for new ideas about creating your next blog post around.

11. Followerwonk

Is Twitter a big part of your content plan? Use Followerwonk to gain insight into your Twitter audience. You’ll find more success growing a Twitter following after using this tool’s analytics that reveals who’s following you, who they’re connected with, and which influencers connect with for maximum content distribution.

12. Tailwind

Leverage your Instagram and Pinterest efforts with this simple, yet powerful, content scheduling tool. Tailwind tracks when your audience is online and optimizes when your posts on Instagram or Pinterest should get released. The result is more social mention and engagement because your content gets posted when your audience is most active.

Save time with the following Tailwind features:

• Multi-board pinning
• Bulk image upload
• Hashtag lists
• Pin looping
• Drag & drop calendar

There’s also robust analytics and reporting area where you’ll uncover which posts and pins work well and which content isn’t resonating with your audience.

13. Buffer Content Marketing Tools

Supercharge your social media marketing campaigns using Buffer.  It lets you build out various social media updates over several different channels based on a schedule that’s set up ahead of time. Track how well your content performs and make decisions about adjustments after viewing the analytics dashboard.

Beginner Blogging Tools

You may be wondering: What’s the best way to create and market content? Here’s the answer in one word: Blogging.

If you’re starting on your content marketing journey and haven’t yet started a blog, then it’s time to do it.  The reason is that you don’t own your social media platforms. Social media is like building your business on sand because it can get taken away if you violate a platform’s service terms.

Learn how to start a successful blog so that you’re building a business on bedrock. Your “home base” online is your website. You can write and say what you want. No one can take your business away as long as you pay your hosting fees.  Here are tools to easily get started with blogging.

14. Blog Tyrant Content Marketing Tools

Blog Tyrant offers many blogging tools all in one place.

Learn about the following areas:

• SEO
• Email marketing
• Writing tips
• WordPress plugins to start with

15. Welcome.ly

It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner or a seasoned blogger; you need a homepage that converts traffic into subscribers. So, Welcome.ly makes it easy to set up a homepage in such a way as to maximize visitor’s focus on signing up for a lead magnet. Moreover, this tool forces you to keep distractions to a minimum by limiting homepage elements to:

• Content upgrade opportunities
• Social proof
• Pilot story

16. Nameboy

You need to come up with the perfect domain name for your blog.  Nameboy makes it easy to do via its domain name generator tool. So, just enter a word or two into the search box and discover available domain names that fit your business.

Essential Content Marketing Tools

Plenty of content management system (CMS) tools exist that help speed up the content creation process. Choose one of the following and keep your content organized.

17. HubSpot

Are you looking for an all-in-one CRM, sales, and inbound marketing suite of tools? Look no further than HubSpot. This tool gives you everything you need when it comes to creating actionable content.  Many of HubSpot’s content marketing tools are free to try:

• Pop-up tools
• WordPress plugin for content management & lead capture
• Form builder
• Live chat & chatbots

Its CRM allows you to centralize all your content marketing efforts in one place so that you create, optimize, and distribute content out to the correct audience. HubSpot continuously analyzes your overall marketing plan so that lead generation and revenue numbers grow over time.

18. WordPress

One of the most popular content management systems used worldwide is WordPress. In simplest terms, WordPress is best defined as an open-source CMS that allows both beginners and seasoned veterans to create and manage their websites.

Use WordPress to create content, upload content, track website visitors, and distribute content to your audience. Its plugin architecture provides the ability to uniquely customize your content management efforts. Moreover, you can use WordPress to set up:

• Blogs
• Social networks
• Static sites
• Memberships
• E-commerce stores
• Online courses
• Portfolios

19. Contentools

Content tools is an interesting content management system that keeps your content brainstorming, creation, and publishing need all in one place. So, it includes an “ideas pipeline,” workflows, the marketing calendar, social media scheduling, and analytics and tracking tools.

Use the in-app editor to build out your content and check for search engine optimization with its SEO indicator. Content tools use artificial intelligence to power its content insights tool. In addition, social media marketing tools provide auto-publishing functionality.  Need to integrate with other tools?

No problem.  Because it integrates with other third-party tools like Dropbox, Evernote, and Salesforce via Zapier.

Content Tracking Tools

What do you do after creating and distributing content? So, Track it! Analyzing what your audience responds to helps with understanding the type of content you need to create. Ever feel like you don’t have enough time? So, analyze the content your audience engages with the most and invest valuable time creating more of it.

Do you want to know the best places to post content or how to run profitable paid ad campaigns? Track referral sources so that you know which platforms send the most visitors back to your website. Below you’ll discover tools for tracking how well content performs and gain insight into audience interaction.

20. Link Explorer Essential Content Marketing Tools

Moz puts out a free tool called Link Explorer, and you should use it to investigate how well your website stacks up against competitors. Moreover, Link Explorer reveals the domain authority and backlink profile for any website. In addition, track whether your content generates backlink activity. Check competitor backlink profiles to uncover new partner possibilities that push your content up in the search engines.

21. Feedly Essential Content Marketing Tools

Feeling overwhelmed when it comes to following important topics and websites? Look no further than Feedly. It’s a one-stop-shop for keeping up with great content to share, news, and fresh topics to add to your content marketing calendar.

22. MonsterInsights

Always pay attention to your content marketing analytics. So, it’s the only way to know whether your strategy is working. MonsterInsights makes this tracking process simple because it sends the KPI reports and metrics. So you need it to make quality decisions straight into your WordPress back office. Connect Google Analytics to MonsterInsights and get more details added in about the following areas:

• Firstly, time on page
• secondly, pageviews
• Demographics
• Sessions
• Top-performing posts
• Bounce rates
• Finally, referred traffic

Use MonsterInsights to track other important metrics like optimum publication times and SEO scores. In addition, integrate other platforms such as WPForms, WooCommerce, and Adsense.

Headline Optimization Tools

I think you’ll agree with me when I say: Your content marketing plan suffers if you can’t get readers interested in your headlines and titles. Excellent titles improve search engine results page click-through-rates and result in improved rankings.

Great headlines entice your audience to dig deeper into your main content. As a result, our subscribers and sales. The next set of content marketing tools will help you write the titles in addition to headlines that drive your entire content marketing plan.

23. Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer

The Advanced Marketing Institute’s free tool. The Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer gives each headline a score. In addition, this headline analyzer checks how well your headline affects certain emotions in your readers. More specifically:

Intellectual: Words that produce effectiveness when decisions about a purchase require careful evaluation or reasoning. Empathetic: Words that create impactful, positive emotions and resonate in an empathetic way. Spiritual: Words that hit people with deep emotional impact.

24. Headline Analyzer From IsItWP Essential Content Marketing Tools

Nothing works better when it comes to creating headlines than adding a second analyzer to your bag of tricks. Moreover, IsItWP offers a Headline Analyzer that rates your headlines based on structure, readability, and word usage.

This tool provides a score after looking at the following factors:

• Uncommon words
• Word balance
• Emotional words
• Word count
• Common words
• Headline length
• Power words

IsItWP’s analyzer also shows you how each headline shows up in your email service provider or Google’s search results so that you can make adjustments “on the fly.”

25. Answer The Public Content Marketing Tools

Did you know that questions make powerful headlines? So, use Answer The Public to research questions your target market is asking.

This tool generates several questions based on your keyword that you enter into the search bar. Moreover, answering the questions your headlines and titles ask serves your audience in a meaningful manner. It also helps your content get found when searchers enter those questions into the search engines.

26. Sharethrough Headline Analyzer

Another headline analyzer? You bet!

The Sharethrough headline analyzer provides an impression and engagement score based on neuroscience. So, you and your team can’t use enough headline analyzer tools to consider how much click-through rates affect your Google rankings.

27. Blog Ideas Generator From HubSpot

How would you like to generate a group of headline ideas all at the same time? Enter up to five nouns into HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator, and your wish gets granted. Repeat the search as often as you’d like for more ideas.

Content Upgrade Tools

Think about it: There’s no point in creating content and distributing it if you’re not focused on generating leads.

The following tools help you create content upgrades that build your email marketing list.

28. Attract.io Essential Content Marketing Tools

Attract.io makes creating lead magnets a breeze. In addition, the tool helps you decide which type of lead magnet is best for your current project:

• Firstly, a case study
• Secondly, a checklist
• How-to guide
• Finally, a resource guide

It then provides a selection of templates based on a list curated from real businesses. Select a template, add your images and color scheme, and you’re left with a stunning content upgrade. Attract.io then provides a usable link so that your lead magnet is instantly shareable.

29. Color Hunt

I mentioned picking your color scheme when explaining Attract.io above.  If you feel challenged in this area because you aren’t a designer, use Color Hunt. Moreover, this tool provides a variety of possibilities that help make selecting your content upgrade’s color scheme a breeze. Add their Chrome Extension for the greatest ease of use.

30. Canva Essential Content Marketing Tools

Use Canva to create lead magnets for your content marketing needs. So, you can create the following resources that make excellent content upgrades:

• eBooks
• Infographics
• Charts
• Checklists
• Workbooks
• Worksheets
• Cheatsheets
• Planners

In addition, this tool comes with a simple drag & drop editor, so you shouldn’t have any problems even if you’re in the design skills area.

31. Pixabay

A great content upgrade often requires interesting images. Pixabay offers quality royalty-free images that don’t require a budget.  So, simply type your keyword into the search box and download as many images as needed at no cost.

32. Audacity Essential Content Marketing Tools

Do you know what’s crazy? How often, the audio gets forgotten when it’s time to create a content upgrade.

We all know about the popularity of podcasts.  So, consider using Audacity and creating your next content upgrade by recording an audio file your subscribers can take on the run. One simple idea: Read your latest blog post and save it as an audio. You might find this method so popular that you start creating audio versions of every blog post and increasing email opt-ins each time.

Content Promotion Tools

Producing outstanding content isn’t enough. Your content marketing strategy must include a promotion plan. The following tools help spread your content across various Internet channels for maximum exposure.

33. Viral Content Bee

Formerly called Viral Content Buzz, Viral Content Bee offers a platform for getting your content shared by Pinterest. Twitter, StumbleUpon, and Facebook influencers. Moreover, their team keeps a watchful eye on both content quality and the social media influencers’ effectiveness that share your content.

The focus is on keeping the process free from automated social media interactions. So, expect authentic social media sharing as your content gets distributed and improves your lead generation and sales results.

34. Paid Ad Platforms

Do you need to get a jumpstart on your search engine optimization? So, use Google Ads and leap to the top of the search. Don’t forget about selecting a social media site or two and paying for advertising.  In addition, almost every social platform lets you pay for the right to expose new audiences to your content. Moreover, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn offer some of the best-paid content distribution opportunities.

35. Rafflecopter Essential Content Marketing Tools

Use Rafflecopter to create a giveaway promotion.

A giveaway allows you to share content, create social engagement, and create link building opportunities all at once.

Rafflecopter integrates into your blog, Facebook page, and other social media accounts. So that you can share content as your participants perform any of the following methods to gain their entry into the contest:

• Firstly, leave a blog comment
• Secondly, tweet the giveaway offer
• Like a Facebook post
• Twitter followers
• Follow on Instagram
• Follow on Pinterest
• Link to a blog post
• Finally, subscribe on Youtube

36. GoViral

GoViral helps you set up Thank You pages that “go viral.”  So, you’ll create a thank you page that all new subscribers see immediately upon joining your list.

The GoViral, thank you. Page encourages your new subscriber to share your lead magnet in addition to blog posts, videos, or any other landing page of your choice to their social media audience. As a result, a wave of new traffic, social shares. So, new subscribers as your content spread virally across your audience. As a result, it grows on social media platforms.

Extra 37. DesignCap

DesignCap is an easy-to-use online tool to make graphic designs for business, event, and social media. It owns all the powerful features you could expect from a graphic design tool.

You can create a wonderful design within just 3 steps.

Here are some key features:

1.Easy to use, a friendly UI interface, no graphic design skill needed.
2. Abundant templates for presentation, chart, report, social media, infographic, etc.
3. A large library of stock photos, charts, preset text styles, modules & backgrounds.
4. Ability to save your design to your device, share on social media, and print it directly.

It’s Your Turn Using the Essential Content Marketing Tools

Are you ready to start dominating by putting out the best content in your niche? Listen in. Firstly, most of your competitors won’t take the time to create content systematically and consistently.  However, you’re different, right?  Let’s recap what you now have in your content marketing toolbox. So, you have tools to win the five stages of content:

1. Research
2. Curate
3. Create
4. Promote
5. Analyze

Let me leave you with one final tip:

In conclusion, don’t try to use all 36 of these content marketing tools at once. So, pick one or two from each category. Use them, get used to them, and master them.  Focus on useful and engaging content.  Finally, analyze how your audience reacts. Give them more of what they like.

As a result, you’ll generate all the leads and sales needed to build a thriving online business.