Marketers need to build digital relationships and reputation before closing a sale. – Chris Brogan, CEO, Owner Media Group
Marketing has always been about building trust, confidence and interest from customers. That’s why review sites and user generated content are so important. Why you instinctively prefer organic search results, instead of paid ones. Why some of the most loved adverts are stories. There’s a feeling of authenticity in content.
The reality is that content marketing is laborious. Building good content just takes time and effort. Which is why having the right tools is so important. There’s probably a tool to cater to every niche you can think of, and many will overlap, so choose carefully. Here’s some tools that I think will help craft your ideas into reality:
1. InVideo
Video content can be expensive and usually requires a fair degree of skill, if not a good eye. So any marketing tool that makes this easier if worth it’s weight in gold. InVideo has a great library of stock videos and template, it really does it what it says on the tin. Building videos shouldn’t be this easy.
PromoRepublic is really a social media scheduling tool, but it has a great in-built graphic design system. I use it to build all sorts of really neat little graphics that I use in everything from my emails, WhatsApp messages (don’t ask) to social media. One of the best features though is it’s suggested posts. If you’re really starved for ideas it’ll keep throwing things at you till you find something you like. It’s also a helpful way to make sure you’re posting on a regular schedule. (There was a great appsumo deal on this btw)
3. Venngage
Venngage is one of oh so many infographic design tools that can turn reams of ugly data into attractive, eye-catching content. It’s got plenty of themes, customizable templates, and icons. Like many of the graphics & video tools, this makes design work easier (not easy) especially if like me, you’ve got no design skills.
4. Upfluence
Upfluence will help you find influencers that best match your brand. It’s got plenty of features to support a complete influencer marketing campaign, and to provide detailed reports. There’s a selection of influencers across most of the major social media platforms (Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc.). Which is especially helpful if you’re relying on social content to meaningfully engage with your audience. Ofcourse if you’re not a big brand or aren’t ready to pay big bucks for this type of campaign, think about doing some direct outreach to micro-influencers (10k followers-ish) in your niche. You’ll be surprised how effective, and how reasonably priced it can be. Lots of micro-influencers will actually promote services for free – because they genuinely value it. That’s really what gives them their power though isn’t it?
5. Templafy
I constantly harp on about brand consistency, and this is something that’s particularly important given the current pandemic. There’s lots more people working from home, or in a distributed manner – making access to the right materials more difficult. Templafy is an enterprise grade platform to make managing all your brand assets and templates easier. It doesn’t matter how big or small your company is, spend a little time and effort to make brand consistency a habit. It’ll pay off. Check out: https://www.templafy.com/
6. Frontify
If you’re not an enterprise, but want to use something better than Google Drive for template management, check out Frontify. It’s got some great features and pricing that starts at $0 – perfect for freelancers or small distributed teams.
7. Moz Pro
The big daddy of SEO is of course Moz Pro, which has everything you need to boost visibility and optimization. This is probaby the best SEO analytics tool you can buy. There’s plenty that’re cheaper, they usually don’t do quite as much – or aren’t as good. IMHO it’s worth investing in something that’ll do the job properly. Meaning everything from keyword research, keyword ranking, to link evaluation and performance reporting.
8. Fiverr
For everything else, there’s always fiverr. I’ve commissioned so much great work from the awesome freelancers on fiverr. Respect! If you haven’t used it yet, it’s because you’re doing something wrong.
