Chapter 6 – 20 Free-Of-Cost Content Marketing Tools Which You Must Know About And Utilize

Content marketing strategies can allow any business to get a taste of success. That is why marketers realize the necessity of content marketing. They recognize it to be at the pinnacle of the food chain of marketing.

We have been uncovering all the fundamental concepts of content marketing in our Open Learner’s Guide to Content Marketing. The information given here is all-encompassing and explained in simple and lucid language. Every beginner will understand content marketing once they finish going through this EBook.

About the guide

In our Open Learner’s Guide to Content Marketing, we shared information regarding what is content marketing. How to create content marketing strategies specific to your business? How to be consistent by creating and posting valuable content with the support of a content marketing calendar? Finally, how to identify the audience to frame content marketing strategies?

As a continuation

You can generate content for your company, but it will all be a waste if you aren’t aware of the right tools. Before you create and distribute, it is crucial for you to learn about some tools that you must use. So, in the sixth chapter, you will come across a list of twenty entries. All of them are excellent content marketing tools which are going to ease your journey. The best thing about them is that they are all free-of-charge.

Here is the collection of twenty free-of-cost content marketing tools. Digital marketing experts recommend them for both beginners and veterans.

The first tool: Google Keyword Tool

As you already know now, there is no content without an appropriate keyword. The use of tools like the Google Keyword will let to research perfect keywords for strategizing your content. You can place the keywords anywhere, including the body and the heading of the content. Google is a search engine which resorts to keywords and their usage. Hence, you need to create content marketing strategies by learning keywords that users type in. The keywords keep on changing, and so, it is essential to consider researching them.

You should utilize this cost-free tool to frame effective content marketing strategies and make the most of them.

The second tool: Grammarly

You can be a scholar of English, but it is quite possible to make a mistake with “they’re” and “there” and other such words. You can’t afford to make such errors in your content marketing campaigns. With Grammarly, which is an English grammar rectification tool, you can scour through your content. It will pinpoint all minute grammar-related faults and help you in solving them. It is an entirely free-of-charge tool.

Apart from segregating the mistakes, it also offers several variables to overly used words.

However, if you want opinions regarding the voice of a sentence, you will have to resort to the paid version. Otherwise, the free-of-cost varietal should prove useful enough for your writings.

The third tool: Canva

One of the easiest and safest content marketing tool, which helps you in framing problem-free creative designs is Canva. The design of this particular tool aids non-graphic designers who don’t have knowledge of Photoshop and other designing applications.

The truth is that design software can be difficult to handle and master. You will need several weeks or months to learn all the usage tricks.

On the other hand, Canva is a simple drag-and-drop tool which eases the task of designing. You can create beautiful fliers, Facebook covers, presentations, business cards, blog graphics, posters, EBooks, e-magazines, posters, pamphlets, cards, banners, etc.

The fourth tool: CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer

As a content creator, you have to pay particular attention to the headlines.

You may put a lot of effort into creating high-quality content, but it would become worthless if you don’t work on the headline.

You can evaluate the efficacy of the headlines of your contents by using CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer. The tool announces the scores of your heading based on the balance of words, keywords, length, and sentiments.

Apart from that, it provides email subject line preview and Google preview. Through it, you will know how the content appears before the readers.

The fifth tool: BuzzSumo

No content will be worth its while if you don’t strategize the right marketing plan with it. There is no shortage of content marketing tools, but only a few are competent enough to generate results.

BuzzSumo is one such tool which is highly effective in terms of content marketing. It can ai marketers in two different ways.

• Locate key influencers for content promotion.
• Analyze which content performs efficiently for any competitor or topic.

The tool is easily manageable, and you won’t require more than a couple of minutes to search for it. It will help in contemplating the necessities to fulfill for competing against top search engine and social media performers of your position.

The sixth tool: SEMrush

It is a tool which helps in the identification of your competitors rank on Google. It comes in both paid and free-of-charge versions. It further offers you an in-depth analysis to engage and learn with SEM (Search Engine Marketing) on your personal website.

This tool for content marketing purposes serves organic traffic. However, you can take a look at your rival’s advertisements, compare domains, and spawn comprehensive analytics reports.

The seventh tool: Kred

Undoubtedly, sharing content on social media is a task that no content marketer can avoid.

Influencer marketing is yet another standard method of promoting or sharing valuable content on social media. You will find hundreds of such brands doing it through influencers in the forte.

Then again, it isn’t easy for beginners to find influencers in their domain. Kred is such a content marketing tool that measures the influence of people by analyzing their social media activities.

Kred will aid you in locating the right influencer for your company. Other than that, this tool gives you a chance to build your own statues. You can improve it and easily promote your content by enforcing awareness and trust.

The eighth tool: MailChimp

This tool earned the reputation of being the most accessible email marketing tool. You can use it to share your content through emails to the clients included in your content marketing list.

You can create and share exclusive business-related content via this tool. While using it, you’ll also fuel up new subscribers to your email list too.

It helps in engaging with users, locating a new audience, and develop your brand awareness.

You can design successful email campaigns according to your requirements by utilizing the simple drag-and-drop templates.

MailChimp is full of features, but creating email lists with subscribers engaged with your content should be useful for you. You can even track click rate and open rate in this tool.

The ninth tool: Trello

There is yet another exclusive free-of-cost tool with which you can organize everything from ideas to media on organized cards.

You can align your content ideas while collaborating with your team members by accumulating votes on specific cards. This system will let you avail real-time feedback on the best content for further pursuing.

The tool can also be beneficial in organizing content marketing strategies while interacting with sub-mates at the same time.

The tenth tool: Evernote

Now you will learn about a multi-organizational platform which professionals prefer to use. It is known as Evernote, and it remembers everything including your personal life and your business.

If you use Evernote, you will be able to keep track of your content idea. You can also frame content marketing calendars with this tool. It works on both mobile phones and computers.

The eleventh tool: SlideShare

SlideShare is a tool which a massive community across the world uses to share business or brand-related content through presentations. The platform hosts over sixty million visitors throughout a month. You don’t have to be specific and display presentations on SlideShare only. It even supports PDFs, webinars, videos, and documents.

This tool serves in achieving better ranks for your content on search engines. It is free-of-charge and easily manageable. You have to sign up and begin sharing your content.

However, there is an issue with SlideShare, as it doesn’t allow live links in the descriptions of the presentations. Then again, the reachability of the tool surpasses the drawbacks of its loophole. It will surely increase the visibility quotient of your brand while bolstering awareness.

The twelfth tool: Tweriod

This tool is mainly for Twitter, and it helps to determine and scrutinize the best moment to tweet your valuable content.

The tool will place your content before other tweeters to see, read, and judge. It arrives in the form of a simple report which informs the best time to tweet.

The thirteenth tool: ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is a content marketing tool which helps in the creation of the sales funnel effects. It further leads to the conversion of prospects to paying clients. With this tool, you will sell your services and goods in a fast and efficient manner.

The tool is user-friendly, and its layout is easy to understand even for beginners. There is a straightforward drag-and-drop interface with many templates to choose and work with.

Tools like ClicFunnel supports content creator in market research and segmentation of the audience. After all, those are the basics of developing successful content marketing apart from sales strategies.

The fourteenth tool: Buffer

The objective of content distribution is to maximize the reachability and impact of your content marketing strategies. Buffer is a content scheduler tool which lets you manage all social media accounts on a single platform.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re posting your content on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. This particular tool will queue up all your posts before time according to your calendar.

The fifteenth tool: Marketo

You’re strategizing for content marketing and planning to distribute your content on several channels. In such a situation, you might feel the requirement of a tool which could amalgamate all your efforts.

Marketo is the tool that you need because it can help in content marketing production as well as social media marketing. It can provide almost every service that a marketer will need.

The tool has a predictive nature and can locate the best content which will suit your website. The webpages, videos, blogs, etc. will enhance the results and target the right audience.

You can also rely on Marketo for email marketing necessities to engage prospects and existing clients. It supports in yielding results with customized emails.

The sixteenth tool: Visual.ly

The creation of visual content essential for inclusion in marketing campaigns these days. It is an acknowledged fact that readers find visuals more interesting than plain texts.

So, Visual.ly is what you need to create stunning graphics for videos or infographics and the like.

This tool allows you to rummage through more than thirty thousand infographic templates. These previously created templates have been inspiring content marketing for some time now.

The seventeenth tool: HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator

The creation of content is the result of an idea. It is possible that a creator may require support in generating content. There is nothing shameful in it because even experts need help sometimes.

Therefore, this tool will arrive to rescue you with ideas. You will get everything here based on the questions, objections, interests, and pain points of the audience.

If you type three nouns related to the topic of the marketing strategy, the tool will generate at least five ideas at once.

The eighteenth tool: Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an excellent content marketing tool well-acknowledged by digital marketers. It helps you to keep track of all backlinks, brand mentions, keywords, etc. It also informs you about the exploits of your competitors.

Ahrefs is more of a toolbox which is full of seven distinct tools. These include Content Explorers, Site Explorer, Ahrefs Alert, Positions Explorer, Position Trackers, Crawl Report, and Position Tracker.

You can stalk your keywords on multiple social media platforms to receive accurate data. It bestows the chance of tracking keywords upon you by country and language. You’ll also notice how well you are performing on mobile devices.

You will have a fortnight to use it, but once you do, you will recognize the difference in its impact on campaigns.

The nineteenth tool: Workflow

Your content marketing strategy won’t be worth a dime if you’re not following editorial calendars. You require it if you wish to be consistent with the task of publishing. Planning as early as possible is mandatory if you don’t want to miss a post while staying organized. The best option for you is to go with Google Calendar.

You won’t even have to create a new one as long as you have a Gmail account. All you have to do is create a new calendar for the content. You have to click the arrow beside ‘My Calendars’ and select ‘Create a new calendar.’

The twentieth tool: Asana

Finally, we are at the end of the list. We will finish it with Asana, which nixes the jeopardy of team projects. On the preliminary levels, you will need communities or teams or hubs to collaborate and distribute your content. The flexibility of Asana is that it is for both computers and mobile devices. Its task is to facilitate workflow management while easing communicability and making it seamless.

It has several features like project templates, visually engaging dashboards, team pages, etc. Up to fifteen members of a team can use the free-of-cost version of this tool.

To conclude

We believe that the content marketing tools mentioned above will prove helpful in creating marketing strategies. With them, you can distribute valuable content to the audience. Since there are numerous content marketing tools currently available, you won’t face any problems in finding the ones you need. You can pay for them or rely on the free-of-charge versions as per the necessity of your business and marketing teams. Just be sure that the tools serve the purpose that you need them to.

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The Open-To-All Learner’s Guide To Content Marketing:

• Chapter 1 – What is content marketing? Why is it essential to your business?

• Chapter 2 – What is the relationship between content marketing and marketing funnel?

• Chapter 3 – How to construct an advanced content marketing plan for your business?

• Chapter 4 – How to recognize the audience for content marketing strategies?

• Chapter 5 – How to craft a content marketing calendar based on your business?

• Chapter 6 – 20 free-of-cost content marketing tools which you must know about and utilize

• Chapter 7 – How to prepare immaculate calls-to-action for your content marketing strategies?

• Chapter 8 – How will you measure the ROI of content marketing?

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