Although no content marketing tool is perfect, a solid strategy and skilled people can make the job easier, more efficient, and better.
There are many content marketing tools available, some of which can be very expensive or free. They can also be used for collaboration, content management, content optimization and other purposes. Every year, the content marketing landscape grows.
This is exciting because if you have an issue, there’s probably a solution. It can also be overwhelming. It can be overwhelming. How do you decide which of the dozens of tools is worth your time?
This blog post will help you make those decisions. This blog post will highlight the 17+ best content marketing tools.
Let’s explore!
What is content marketing?
Content marketing refers to using content to offer value to the receiver in a strategic and informative way.
Let’s take a look at the definition. Content can include everything, from blog posts to ebooks and webinars. The marketing part is about how to distribute it and which channels you use.
The blog post is what you publish on your website. Marketing is about deciding how and when you want to promote it. You might be able to determine the best times to share it based on historical data from previous blog posts.
Content marketing is not about trying to control a customer. Instead, your content is used to build trust and authority with your customers so they can associate you with the topics covered.
If a customer is looking for the right eye makeup palette, and they are already considering it, they will remember the video that you posted detailing basic eye makeup.
That’s it for content marketing.
What is the purpose of content marketing?
Content marketing tools are essential as they help answer questions of your audience. A content marketing tool can help you connect with customers, build trust, increase conversion rates and generate leads.
A content marketing tool can be used to help your business achieve the following:
- Inform your leads and prospects about the products/services you offer
- Automate repetitive tasks to speed up content creation, optimization and promotion. Intelligent algorithms can be used to reduce unnecessary steps.
- You can ensure consistency in brand voice by managing all content production through a single platform
- Increase customer loyalty by building relationships with your customers.
- Your brand can be a part of a community.
When choosing a content marketing tool, here are some key questions
You’ll be able to find solutions that work for you once you have a better idea of your content marketing goals.
It’s important to ask yourself questions about the alignment of each content marketing tool with your business and marketing strategy before you commit to using it.
- How much do you have to spend on your ongoing expenses? Consider not only the initial cost of the software, but also the ongoing costs of maintaining it. When deciding on the ROI and investment, you should also consider additional hardware requirements, licensing fees, support, training, and maintenance costs.
- Is it easy to use? It may look complicated, but if staff members can’t use the system because of its steep learning curve, it will be useless. Consider who will use the tool, what their skills are, and how much training they will need to fully integrate the platform into your daily workflow.
- Does it work with existing systems and tools? You probably already use other software tools for your day-to-day business operations. It may be okay to use a new tool to replace certain platforms, but you must also ensure it works with your essential marketing software such as your CRM system and email marketing platform.
- How flexible is this tool? Will the tool scale as your business grows? Can your content marketing adapt to changing needs?
- What support channels are available to you? If you have any questions, does the tool provide a 24-hour help desk? What is the service agreement and when can support tickets be answered?
- How many other users have the platform already? Are there any positive reviews and a track record?
As you can see, there are many things to consider. It’s not easy to compare the features of different tools or what they have. It is important to think about your goals, the features you are most interested in, and how the tool will fit into your business workflow.
We have done all the work for you. Here are 17+ top content marketing tools that you can use for reference.
17+ Best Content Marketing Tools
1. HubSpot
HubSpot has been a rapidly growing company since its inception in 2006. When the content marketing revolution began, HubSpot was a hot company.
Hubspot can be used by content marketers with all levels of experience and skill. However, it is recommended that newcomers become familiar with the various tools. HubSpot can help you in the future if you start using it early.
Hubspot does not focus on a specific area of content marketing strategy. The company describes it as follows:
HubSpot connects your marketing funnel from attracting customers to closing them.
Tools that can assist you with 10 different tasks are available to you, including:
- Search engine optimization (SEO).
- Blogging
- Social media
- Landing pages
- Management of the leader
- Marketing automation
- Calls-to-action
- Analytics
You can create SEO-friendly content strategies that convert using its blogging tools.
HubSpot users may feel that it is too complex for them because of its many tools and features. This shouldn’t stop you.
HubSpot is more sophisticated than other content marketing tools. This is a good thing. You can learn how to use it and grow with the software as your content strategy evolves.
Pricing plans:
- Starter Plan: Starting at $50 per month
- Starts at $890/month for Professional Plan
- Enterprise plan: Starting at $3,200/month
2. WordPress
WordPress is the most popular CMS (Content Management System), worldwide. WordPress powers more than 500 websites each day, compared to 60-80 sites built on managed platforms like Squarespace and Shopify. WordPress powers 14.7% of the most popular websites in the world.
It’s an easy-to-use platform for non-technical workers and can be customized to meet individual needs. It powers both your website’s backend (where you log in to make changes) and the frontend (the visible, public part that visitors see when they visit).
WordPress can be used if you have access to Microsoft Word. It offers outstanding SEO features and training to help you create SEO-friendly titles, meta descriptions, permalink customization, XML web sitemap generation, and many other useful features. You can also customize your website using the plugin structure.
It is important to know that WordPress comes in two versions:
- WordPress.org – This open-source, free software is available for download and installation on your web server. Although it doesn’t cost anything, you will need to have a hosting account (a website server) in order to use it. This often comes with a fee.
- WordPress.com This version hosts your site for you. You don’t need to have any domain or hosting. It is completely free to start. Access WordPress.com to create an account and start building your blog or site.
3. Google’s free tools
Google’s tools for content marketing are free and open to all.
Google’s free tools are often listed in the top ten marketing tool lists. These are the most powerful and impressive tools for content marketing:
- Google Drive allows you to organize, store, and collect shares from your entire team.
- Google Docs has the best platform to collaborate, and it’s so simple to use. It is used by the majority of content marketers.
- Google Trends plays an important role in keyword research. The platform allows you to see when terms that are relevant to your business are most popular so that you can take action.
- Google Tag Manager lets you add or modify tags as required and provides a variety of ways to track activity across your sites and apps.
- Google Search console can help you increase your visibility and rank in the Google SERP. Reports that reveal who visited your site and how they interacted with it will provide you with actionable insights.
- Google Analytics allows you to track and measure key metrics and KPIs that are important for audience growth, engagement and conversions.
4. AVADA Email
Email marketing is still the best content marketing tool.
Email is an essential part of any online marketing strategy. AVADA email is the ideal solution.
AVADA Email Marketing allows you to quickly set up and manage all your email campaigns, including follow-up emails and abandoned cart emails.
This amazing tool provides the following features:
- Email templates that are beautifully designed. Premade templates for different brands. With a simple drag and drop editor, you can quickly get your newsletter campaigns up and running in minutes.
- Forms. AVADA Email Marketing offers Newsletter Popup/ Spin To Win to make it easy to collect emails. Exit Intent Popups allow E-commerce store owners and managers to send out promotional and useful content to their customers.
- Marketing automation. This tool generates pre-built automation emails to follow up at all touchpoints with your audience. It allows you to reach, engage and convert your audience into customers and raving fans. It can also set up welcome emails, follow-up emails and cross-sell or upsell emails.
- Segmentation. Segmentation is a great way to increase your chances of winning if you only sell your product or service to those who really want it. AVADA Email Marketing allows you to send messages to the right people with its advanced segmentation features.
- Advanced reports. Comprehensive reports make it easy to track your email performance and view multiple KPIs such as opened, clicked, sent, clicked, unsubscribed, revenue and so forth.
It’s also free! You can send up to 15,000 emails per month and have 1,000 contacts. The AVADA support staff is professional and friendly, making it an investment worth every penny.
5. Yoast
Yoast has been a favorite tool for creating SEO-focused content.
This tool can be described as a WordPress plugin that does everything. It optimizes content for keywords, previews and edits URL slugs, meta-descriptions, simplifies technical SEO tasks and suggests relevant internal links.
Yoast is rated 4.9 out 5 stars on the WordPress marketplace and has over 90,000 downloads. You can update the tool to reflect Google’s algorithm once every two weeks so that you are always up-to-date with your SEO.
Pricing plan: Yoast is a free plugin for WordPress. However, you can upgrade to the premium plan for $89 per year to get more content insights, internal linking suggestions and redirect management. You also have 24/7 support.
6. Ahrefs
The Ahrefs homepage provides all the information you need:
Ahrefs is a great SEO tool that allows you to rank higher in search engines and receive more traffic.
Ahrefs allows you to keep track of your progress and monitor the performance of your competitors. Ahrefs is more than a tool. It offers seven tools to help you track your progress.
- Site Explorer
- Content Explorer
- Positions Explorer
- Position Tracker
- Crawl Report
- Ahrefs Alert
The Content Explorer tool can help you quickly identify the types of blogs that are working in your niche. The Position Tracker tool can provide accurate and current ranking data. You can track keywords by language and country, as well as see how you do on mobile devices.
This tool is great for researching before writing content. Ahrefs crawls over 5 billion websites every day, so you will have all the information that you need.
Pricing plans:
- Lite Plan: $99/month
- Standard Plan: $179 per month
- Advanced Plan: $399/month
- Agency Plan: $999/month
7. Grammarly
Grammarly is a great resource for anyone who doesn’t know how to spell and use grammar.
Even if you do everything you can to market your content, spelling and grammar errors will make it difficult for users to trust you or engage with you. Normal spell-checkers are unable to always check for grammar errors or take into account context.
Grammarly is the best tool for this purpose.
This tool is great for anyone who uses social media to save themselves from embarrassing grammar and spelling mistakes. It is focused on readability, effectiveness, as well as mistakes.
Grammarly won’t catch all errors, but it is great for proofreading content before publishing. Grammarly can catch mistakes in word usage, squinting modifiers and overused words.
This tool can be installed in Chrome from any tab or window. You can edit your content without leaving the browser and simply copy and paste it to Grammarly.
Pricing plans:
- No Cost Plan
- Premium Plan: Starts at $11.66/month
- Business plan: Starting at $12.50/member/month
8. Hemingway Editor
This handy editing app is named after Ernest Hemingway who is well-known for his concise writing style. Make your content more readable. This app is free and will analyze your writing and help you to simplify it.
Hemingway Editor
Hemingway editor highlights long, difficult-to-read sentences and asks you for a shorter version. It offers suggestions for replacing difficult words and phrases by simpler ones, and it also suggests omitting unnecessary adverbs.
Editing your writing can improve your readability and your writing style. This will allow you to create outstanding content for your website or social media channels.
9. Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo can be used for multi-purpose content marketing research.
This tool does two things for you as described on its homepage.
- Analyze which content is most effective for any topic or competitor
- To promote your content, find key influencers.
Using all the information, you can determine which content is most effective for specific keywords and how to create content in future. This approach will give you a clear picture of how to compete against the best players.
Backlinks tools show you which websites have links to the most relevant content for a keyword. After you have created your post, you can reach these websites to request feedback and a link.
This tool is easy to use. It takes only a few minutes to perform a search. This will help you better understand your niche and the search engines and social media leaders.
Pricing plans:
- Pro Plan: $99/ month
- Plus Plan: $179/ month
- Large plan: $299/month
- Enterprise Plan: $499+/ month
10. Evernote
Are you looking for a better way of staying organized?
Are you looking for a space to share your thoughts with others?
Evernote was created to meet these needs. It is useful at all stages of the writing and editing process, from research notes and to-do lists to writing whole articles.
Its desktop, mobile and web apps all sync automatically so long as you have internet access. It will sync if you are offline and it will do so the next time you connect to the internet. It is also saving and automatically syncing your work, which is crucial for content creators such as us. This makes it a safe place to store and write.
Evernote can be used to organize ideas, take notes and store inspirational articles or ebooks. It also helps you plan your editorial calendars and social media publishing schedules.
Pricing plans:
- No Cost Plan
- Premium Plan: $7.99/ month
- Business plan: $14.99 per month
11. Trello
Many companies approach content marketing by having an entire team that is dedicated to it. Trello is a great tool!
Trello elevates collaboration with its cards, lists and boards. Trello is a top-rated collaboration tool.
This is a great organization and productivity resource for scheduling content writing, sharing, or posting. This allows you to leave notes and share content with other team members in one place. It’s a great way to make sure everyone is on the same page about your content marketing strategy.
This tool breaks down projects into steps or cards and moves each step from ideation to completion. Users will find it easy to use the drag-and-drop functionality.
Pricing plans:
- No Cost Plan
- Business Class Plan: $12.50/user/month
- Enterprise plan: Starts at $17.50 per user/month
12. Airstory
Airstory offers a better platform for writers if you want to improve your writing skills and collaborate more effectively. Airstory might be a good option if you are constantly switching between Google Docs and Google Drive or Evernote.
You can save images and quotes and drag them into any program where you write. It is a great tool for collaboration and for authors who are working on longer-form content, such as books or ebooks.
Pricing plans:
- Pro Writer: $25/ month
- Heavy Duty Writer: $125/ month
13. Hootsuite
Your business will need content to share on a variety of social media channels. It can also take a lot of time.
Hootsuite is used by millions to manage social media posts in advance, based on peak engagement hours.
Hootsuite allows you to schedule the best content for you at the most convenient times. Hootsuite can be connected to more than 35 social media sites.
This tool allows you to schedule and draft posts, view your social media calendar and view the newest posts from your dashboard. It also lets you share content online without missing a beat.
Pricing plans:
- Professional Plan: $19 per month (billed annually).
- Team Plan: $99/month (billed annually).
- Business Plan: $599/month (billed annually).
- Pricing for Enterprise Plans: Custom pricing
14. Hotjar
HotJar has been one of the most popular user experience analytics tools. You can use it to create qualitative tools such as session replays and on-site polls.
Google Analytics can reveal the “what” as well as the “where” of user behaviour, but this tool can also help you to dig deeper into the “why”. It also has some quantitative tools like heat maps. These tools allow you to see clearly where your visitors click and scroll.
Pricing plans:
- Personal Plan: Starts at $0/month
- Business plan: Starting at $99/month
- Agency Plan: custom pricing
15. Loom
Loom can be used to create and embed videos for easy sharing. Loom is a great tool for communicating images and videos if that’s what you do best.
Although it’s simple, this platform has powerful uses beyond content marketing. It allows you to create, edit and share videos. It is also great for quick communication and explanations to other team members, without the need for a full meeting.
Pricing plans:
- No Cost Plan
- Business Plan: $10 per month
- Pricing for Enterprise Plans: Custom pricing
16. Canva
Although not everyone is born to create graphic designs, anyone can use this tool to make decent graphics.
Canva includes a wide range of pre-built templates and layouts that make it easy to create something your readers love. It’s easy to select layouts that work on the platforms you want to share them.
The template for a social media banner, for example, is designed to fit a banner. The template for an Instagram photo is also specially sized.
Canva offers so many graphics and assets for free that there is no need to pay anything if you don’t want them. You’ll need to pay $1 per each for more premium assets. There is plenty of value to be had for free.
Pricing plans:
- No Cost Plan
- Pro Plan: Starting at $12.95/month
- Enterprise plan: Starts at $30 per month
17. Vidyard
Vidyard, a powerful video marketing platform, allows you to share, promote, and host video content on your site.
To help you close more sales, the tool also has a sales solution. Vidyard’s video analytics are exceptional. You can do A/B testing, and personalize videos. It also allows you to gate videos at a certain time duration to capture leads.
Pricing plans:
- No Cost Plan
- Pro Plan: $15/ month
- Teams plan: $300 per month
- Business Plan: $1250/month
The bottom line
These 17+ top tools can help you create. However, it is up to you to ensure that your content is high quality. Still, you need to get to know your customers and understand their needs so that you can create content that addresses those issues.
What other content marketing tools are you using to create more content? We’d love to expand this list!