5 Helpful Content Tools and Sources for Digital Marketers Feeling like a hamster on the content treadmill? These sources can help.
By Thomas Smale Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Content creation can be a challenge all its own. But, what do you do when the content you're creating isn't driving leads or helping you optimize for specific keywords?
Related: The 7 Things Successful Content Marketers Do Differently
What happens when you feel as though you're on the content treadmill, just creating for the sake of creating?
If you aren't a content manager, knowing how to develop content that produces results can be an uphill battle, especially with major contenders for virtually every keyword available. If you aren't strategic, you will spin your wheels.
Fortunately, there are tools you can use to help you with your content marketing challenges. These will come in especially handy for digital marketers who know how content marketing works in principle, but aren't sure how to organize, execute and leverage their content assets.
1. Kapost
Kapost is a holistic content management tool that can help you execute your entire content marketing strategy from start to finish. For marketers and entrepreneurs looking to manage and track everything in a centralized location, Kapost is an ideal tool.
From within Kapost, you can brainstorm and store your content ideas, manage your writer team, run your editorial calendar, distribute and promote your content -- by integrating all your tools -- and even measure the performance of your content. This will help you stick to your deadlines and become regular with your content publishing, which is key to your success.
Kapost isn't necessarily for smaller teams, but if you're producing large volumes of content, and there are many moving pieces to your process, you'll find it invaluable. It's built to help you get your content chaos under control.
2. WordAgents
Businesses often require high volumes of content, whether that means articles for their own blog, guest posts for other industry blogs, content for internal use or press releases for news sites. In-house teams often have trouble keeping up with this constant demand for more content.
Related: What You Need to Know to Improve Your Content Marketing
WordAgents is a service you can use to outsource the content-creation process. While some entrepreneurs with experience might cringe at the thought of hiring another overseas team that isn't fully versed in the English language, you'll be glad to know that all writers working for WordAgents are American. They also have a specific process they follow to deliver quality content to their clients, from vision to quality assurance. This ensures consistent results.
Whether you're struggling with content volume or quality, WordAgents is a service you can use to supplement or replace your existing writing team to create relevant, targeted content for your audience.
3. Feedly
You've probably read about the importance of keeping up with industry news and trends before. But, what does that mean in practical terms? How do you stay on top of it all?
One of the simplest ways to curate, organize and consume relevant industry updates is with the use of a tool like Feedly. Feedly allows you to subscribe to various feeds, ranging from blogs and keyword alerts to YouTube channels and other noteworthy publications. Essentially, you can gather all pertinent sources into one place for easy consumption.
This makes it easy for you to do your research on relevant topics, but can also help you uncover popular content that people are already consuming. In turn, you can determine what to write about next, and generate a nearly endless supply of content and keyword ideas that will drive results.
You can get started with Feedly for free, and it's easy to use.
4. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a powerful content research tool that allows you to uncover popular content related to any keyword or domain name. It will show you the most shared content, on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest, related to your search. This can help you come up with ideas for your own viral content, which will get noticed and shared across popular social networks.
BuzzSumo also allows you to find and analyze influencers in your field. If influencer marketing is something you've thought about getting into, or if you're looking for experts in your industry to interview, this is an excellent place to start.
Many marketers, such as Neil Patel, say they often begin their research process with BuzzSumo to figure out their next steps. Developing content without knowing whether you have a chance at ranking for your chosen keywords is a sure way to get lost in the shuffle. If you want to generate results from your content, it's important to put in some work up-front to figure out the kind of content your audience wants.
Plus, as you'll probably find out, a clickable headline can often make all the difference in generating traffic.
5. Content Marketing Institute
The Content Marketing Institute creates resources for those looking to better understand the practice of content marketing.
The Institute publishes new content to its blog daily, shares the latest research, puts out the monthly Chief Content Officer magazine, and even holds live events to educate marketers.
Content marketing can be confusing, and can present certain challenges, especially in today's noisy world. The Content Marketing Institute can help you navigate the sometimes-perilous waters of digital marketing and achieve better results from your strategy.
Final thoughts
Creating a process for your content strategy can help you create predictable results.
In the end, you never know what content might succeed or fail, but at the very least, you'll offer a regular publishing schedule, which can help you engage your audience and keep its members coming back for more. You'll begin to rank for your keywords and generate more leads.
Getting to that point usually requires some patience and dedication. Even the best content-marketing strategy typically doesn't produce results overnight. Consistent application of the right principles is what leads to content-marketing success.
Related: 9 Things About Content Marketing You Can't Get Wrong and Succeed
Tools are meant to support that process. If they get in the way, eliminate or replace them. There's no need to stick with platforms that don't help you achieve your goals.
