Our thanks to Linda Craig for this guest contribution with tools that can help your content marketing efforts.
Content writers are mostly focused on one aspect of their jobs: content, of course! Some of them ignore the importance of marketing, and others are interested in promoting their pieces in the best way, but they encounter challenges that are not easy to surpass.
Before we get to the tools that will help you become a more efficient content marketer, let’s understand the most common issues you face during the process of writing and promotion:
- You have to add more meaning to your words by using the right images, videos, graphics, and other types of visual content. It’s hard to find images that will fit into the color scheme of your website and capture the essence of your posts at the same time.
- You need to commit to a writing schedule. The more content you publish, the more successful you’ll become. However, it’s difficult to preserve a high level of quality when you’re focused on quantity.
- You have to understand what your audience needs before you start writing a new post. That’s one of the most important parts of content marketing: you don’t write content just because you want to write on a particular topic; you write it because your target audience is interested in it.
- You have to maintain consistent presence on different social media platforms. It’s important to post regular updates on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, and other social media at the right time when the activity of your target audience reaches its peak. How do you handle those tasks without wasting too much time online?
Can we find tools that solve these common content marketing problems? Of course we can!
4 Tools that Solve Content Marketing Problems
The visual appeal of your website is just as important as the content you publish. That’s why you need to feature an image that effortlessly captures the point of your post. Sometimes it’s easy to find royalty-free photos that are just right for your posts. When you’re not that lucky, you probably choose to pay for stock photos or feature some of your own photographs. The only problem is: how do you maintain the harmony of colors on your site with so many different images?
PicMonkey is the tool you need. You can easily edit and touch up any image. You can adjust the temperature, saturation, contrast, and sharpness of the images to match your style. You can also resize the image and add text that will make it more unique.
No matter how hard you try to meet the planned due dates and publish high-quality posts every single time, it’s sometimes impossible to achieve that goal. You might be occupied with personal issues, you may be too busy at work, or you simply don’t have the needed knowledge base to cover the topic, so it takes too much time for you to conduct a proper research.
There is only one solution in such cases: delegate. AssignmentMasters is a great writing service that connects you with talented writers with degrees in a relevant field of study. They can help you cover the research, writing, or editing stages with success. Instead of missing the scheduled publication dates when you’re stuck with a post, you can simply get the needed assistance and launch an incredible piece of content exactly when your readers expect it.
You’ll start making better decisions when you understand your audience. What topics are they interested in? Do they like simplistic style, or do you target an audience that prefers slang or a more intellectual tone?
Sumall is a tool that brings all your followers from different social media together. You’ll see them in a single interface, so you’ll easily monitor their activity. You’ll get reports and insights about your social reach and the engagement of your audience straight to your inbox. You can use that data to improve your social media campaigns. Plus, you’ll be able to understand and predict the interests of your audience, so you’ll start delivering content everyone will love reading.
Posting social media updates is a huge part of the content marketing workload, so it would be great to save precious time while achieving the same effects. Edgar is the tool to use for that purpose. All you need to do is save some updates to Edgar, select the social networks you want them to be posted on, as well as the time of sharing.
For example, if you notice that most of your Facebook followers prefer using this network in the evening, but your Twitter audience is active during the mornings, you can set the tool to post automatic updates during activity peaks. Once you save the posting schedule, you can stay calm – your followers will get the updates while you’re taking care of other posts, blog maintenance, or anything else on your schedule.
Content marketing does take a lot of work. However, you can definitely boost your efforts by using the right tools. Check out the 4 tools recommended above and you’ll immediately notice growth in your popularity among the target audience.
Linda Craig is a productivity geek, editor and current Post-Graduate student. She is an organizing enthusiast and eager contributor to Lifehack.
Thanks Linda; tons of good info.