Content marketing tools: an industry expert reveals the best

Even the most able multitasker would struggle to perform all of the responsibilities of content management single-handedly: researching, writing, planning, curating, distributing, monitoring and reporting.

Aside from being glued to a digital device 24/7, how can we manage our content to the best of our ability, spending our time on the most important tasks while maintaining some semblance of a life?

The answer is to not be afraid to get help. This is where tools come into their own. But with so many to choose from, which are most effective? Save yourself the research time and read our suggestions.

Knowing your audience

Tweriod is a free tool that analyses your Twitter account to let you know when your followers consume your content. Perhaps it’s first thing in the morning or it could be last thing at night, but it allows you to know when to load your most valuable content. It also analyses your past tweets so it can work out which updates worked best.

Planning

There are numerous free ways to manage your content planning, from Wordpress to Google Drive, but we are advocates of Trello. Free, agile and easy to use, Trello allows you to create tasks for different projects and assign them to different people. You can switch between task lists and a calendar view that tells you what content is going out when.

Reporting

There are so many great reporting tools but it’s important to report regularly on the things that matter most and to use your reporting to adapt and improve your content. I could recommend reporting tools all day long but Mixpanel is the best for understanding your customer behaviour, Crowdbooster for monitoring social media engagement and finally, the classic: Google Analytics to see how well your content is received and look at click through rate, dwell time and conversions.

Social listening

SocialMention is great. It lets you find out what is being said about your company, product, industry or specific topic across more than 100 social media sites. It also gives you quick access to great content or on-the-pulse industry news and events that you can curate and use. Google Alerts are also really good, specifically because they don’t rely on you visiting the site regularly to check. It emails you directly with the results and you can determine the frequency.

Distribution

Distributing your content can be a lengthy process as it involves research to know the best areas for placement. There are lots of tools for this; it’s a complete minefield. Facebook advertising is good for targeting content. BuzzStream enables you to create prospecting lists, target content, set follow-up reminders and record response rates, and I can’t write a section on this without mentioning Outbrain, the leaders in content discovery. These guys distribute content that adds value on your behalf.

Maintaining presence

Hootsuite allows pre-scheduling across all social platforms so you can have updates going live “out of hours”. A word of warning, though: you shouldn’t use it as a crutch and forget the all-important social aspect of social media.

There are some incredible tools around and these are just a handful, but should get you on the path to analyse your audience, plan your content, maintain a great presence, distribute effectively and report back, ready to adapt, adopt and get results and a tangible return on investment from your content.

Jess Collins is the director of Type Communications, a specialist content marketing company in the south-west. She tweets @TypeComms

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