Content used to mean the words and pictures on your website. Over the years, the scope has widened and now includes email marketing, social media, videos, motion graphics, slideshows, blogs, podcasts, webinars, chatbots, and infographics. In addition, you need to generate ideas for all of these forms of content. That covers a lot of ground, far more than we can discuss in this article. Therefore, we’ll zoom in on the core content creation tools you might need to get started producing great content.
Tools for Developing Ideas
You might need help developing new content ideas, especially if your website is mature. Here are some tools to help you collect, develop, and deploy ideas to drive content creation:
- Feedly: Streams articles from sources that span the web via RSS. You can configure it for the sources and types of information that you need.
- Buzzsumo: Lets you find trending social media topics. This is a paid service, but you can get a few free searches daily.
- Evernote: A digital notebook that lets you create notes, save web pages, save links, and more. You can save interesting ideas for future use.
Tools for Bloggers
These tools help you create content for blogs, website pages, and other marketing channels.
- Playbuzz: Helps you create interesting blog content, plus provides tools to craft features like games, quizzes, tests, predictions, and stories.
- ClearVoice: A well-rounded package that helps you come up with new content ideas, find professional freelance writers, and manage the workflow to create content.
- HubSpot: A complete inbound marketing service with many tools, including ones to generate blog topics and titles. Includes a top marketing distribution platform, with features for building emails, integrating social media, and generating chatbots.
Image Creation Tools
Use these tools to develop professional-looking images.
- Canva: A free image creation tool for those who don’t want to invest the time to learn Photoshop. It is very versatile, easy to use, and comes with templates to help get you started. Beyond blogs, you can use Canva for presentations, banners, and much more.
- Giphy: This is a Chrome extension that finds GIFs for any search term you enter. You can then drag the GIF into social media platforms. With Giphy, you can add visual content to your website and then share it across multiple platforms.
- Nimbus Screenshot: Have you ever wanted to capture just a portion of a screen? Nimbus does this easily. You can take full or partial screenshots of web pages or any other browser content. You can also edit, crop, and annotate the image using a rich set of editing tools.
Infographics Tools
Infographics are a powerful way to impart information quickly.
- Visual.ly: An excellent internet repository for infographics. It provides the ability to create good, concise infographics that allow readers to assimilate information in an easy-to-digest format. This tool will help you add interest and increase traffic to your website.
- Easel.ly: This infographics tool contains many useful templates. You add data to accompany the template images. This lets you generate professional-looking infographics quickly and conveniently. A must for beginners.
- Animaker: Spruce up your content with animated infographics. Animaker contains a vast repository of charts, maps, icons, and other useful images that you can use for a video infographic. This is an excellent marketing tool that allows you to tell your story with motion and emotion.
Conclusion
We’ve barely scratched the surface regarding the many tools, often costing little or nothing, available to content creators. We advise you to consider using best-in-breed tools to add pizazz to your content, which can help you attract more visitors and ultimately sell more of your offerings. After all, that’s what your business is all about.