Creating high quality content for a brand takes time and talent. No one knows that better than Amy Fitzgerald, a content marketing writer who helps two wedding-based brands, Ever After and Chapel of the Flowers, create content that converts viewers into customers.
On a daily basis she’s creating articles, monitoring and posting content to social sites, finding and editing images to accompany content, looking for content trends that fit the industry, handling customer comments online and delegating PR requests. With that kind of workload, it’s no wonder this VP of marketing and self-proclaimed “curator of awesome” sought out a few tools to cross tasks off of her to-do list.
“I use a set of tools to help me create relevant, sharable, SEO content as efficiently as possible,” she says.
We know many small brands are in the same boat as Fitzgerald. You want to market your brand, but find yourself strapped for time or resources. To help lighten the content load, we asked Fitzgerald to help us come up with a list of tools to make creating content a breeze (or at least, a little easier). Check out these timesaving tools:
1: Canva
When it comes to creating top-notch content, blog posts instantly spring to mind. However, blog posts aren’t your only option. Consider creating an infographic with tools like Canva.
When Chapel of the Flowers got a five-star review online, Fitzgerald turned to Canva to create a DIY graphic that she posted to the company’s Facebook page. Check it out:
You can sign up for Canva quickly and make graphics from ready-made templates right away. The interface is user-friendly and allows you to share your work with team members and through social media. Use of certain images will cost you $1.
Consider using the tool to create a nice graphic for a testimonial, to break down a recent study your brand conducted or highlight popular trends within your industry.
Other similar tools include Piktochart or Visme.
2: OutMarket
Social media is an integral part of content marketing, but it’s a time consuming task to update these channels regularly. Fitzgerald uses OutMarket, a social media automation tool to help her schedule and monitor Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.
“Social and content marketing can be a huge time suck,” Fitzgerald says. “Using scheduling times and tools is important to make sure you don’t get sucked in.”
Unlike some of the other automation tools out there, this one let’s you manage a variety of sites at once. However, it’s not free. Packages start at $300 a year. If that’s a bit steep for you, try tools like Hootsuite or Zapier.
3: Buzzsumo
Sometimes brainstorming content that’s on topic can be tricky. To take the guesswork out of this process, marketers are turning to Buzzsumo. With this tool you can search keywords that pertain to your industry and get a list of the highest ranking content (based on social shares) that’s out there. You can take this information and use it to inspire blog topics. Plans start at $99 a month.
This snapshot from Buzzsumo shows you how it works:
4. Storify
When you don’t have time to create a blog post about a trending topic, turn to Storify. This handy tool helps you create a list of social media posts around a certain topic.
For example, let’s say you want to post a story about a recent celebrity wedding. You put in the celebrity names and get a list of social media posts about that wedding. You pick and chose which comments you want to include and Storify creates a list-like post for you to share on your blog. Here’s what a story looks like.
You can sign up for free and then decide what kind of package fits best.
What tools do you use to aid in content creation?
