The saying “content is king” has been around for a while, and with good reason. It's absolutely true.
In a nutshell, content marketing involves creating helpful, high-quality, valuable content that’s relevant to your target audience and your business. Blogging is the most common form, but it’s not the only one. It also includes email, social media posts, and video/audio.
A well-executed content strategy helps to increase your business’s visibility online. It allows you to convey your expertise, establish trust, and build a relationship with your target audience. A recent report from SEMrush found that 97% of the content marketers surveyed say content plays an essential role in their overall marketing strategy. In response to what tactics brought them the most success, 55% said improving content quality, 46% said search engine optimization (SEO), and 41% said increasing video/visual content.
In short, content marketing can be a valuable tactic for attracting, converting, and retaining customers. However, there’s a lot that goes into developing an effective strategy. The right content marketing tools can help.
20 Must-Have Content Marketing Tools 2022
There are countless paid and free content marketing tools available. Let’s take a closer look at 20 of the best ones to use:
1. WordPress
WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) available, powering 39.5% of all websites on the internet in 2021. It’s an open-source system that makes hosting and building a website without any coding experience a breeze. Easy-to-use templates and WordPress’s plugin architecture allow you to customize your website and your blog to meet the needs of your business.
Cost: Free. Paid plans start at $4/month.
2. Grammarly
Grammarly helps ensure error-free, higher-quality content by detecting misspellings, grammatical issues, hard-to-read text, poor formatting, and potentially harmful language. It also goes the extra mile by offering suggestions to improve your writing. You can use it on a variety of platforms, allowing you to optimize your blog posts, emails, and social media posts.
Cost: Free with limited capabilities. More full-featured plans start at $12/month.
3. Hemingway Editor
Hemingway Editor is a word processing and proofreading tool that, like Grammarly, helps you avoid typos and grammatical mistakes. It uses different colors to highlight errors and areas for improvement, including misspellings, hard-to-read sentences, passive voice, overly complex wording, and more.
You can access Hemingway Editor online or download it directly to your desktop. Alternatively, you can integrate it with WordPress or import copy from Microsoft Word and other word processors, avoiding the need to copy and paste your content between two separate programs.
Cost: Free online. Download to your computer for a one-time payment of $19.99.
4. Compose.ly
When you’re busy running your business, you might not have time to craft the content you need for your content marketing strategy. Rather than cram another task onto your already full plate, outsource. Compose.ly features a team of best-in-class writers with experience in various industries. You can commission blog writing, white papers, newsletters, website content, and more for a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time in-house writer.
Cost: Managed Content Service starts at $999/month. Self-Service Marketplace pricing varies based on the individual project word length.
5. AnswerThePublic
If you can’t think of something to write about, AnswerThePublic can help. Within seconds, this free online tool shows you a variety of questions people are asking related to the topic or subject matter you provide. In essence, it helps ensure you never run out of content ideas.
Cost: Free. Pro plans start at $79/month.
6. Feedly
Feedly is a topic research-focused tool that can help you generate additional inspiration for content ideas. You tell Feedly’s AI (who goes by Leo) what’s important to you, and he’ll read through your feeds to flag relevant insights from blogs, news sites, social media, and more.
Cost: Free. Paid plans start at $6/month.
7. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is another excellent research tool. It performs numerous helpful functions, such as identifying top-performing content, pinpointing relevant influencers, and analyzing your competitors. Your search results show you what’s doing well and can help spark new content ideas.
Cost: Free with limited features (including ten searches/month). Paid plans start at $99/month (discounts available for paying yearly).
8. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO tool that can handle various tasks, from basic research to in-depth performance reports. You can use it to keep track of your keyword rankings and see how your competitors stack up. It also contains features such as a site explorer that analyzes backlinks, a content explorer, and a site auditor.
Cost: Plans start at $99/month
9. Yoast SEO
There are nearly 60,000 WordPress plugins, including an array of options devoted to improving your SEO. One of the most popular is Yoast SEO, a comprehensive and easy-to-use tool that analyzes your content and offers suggestions for improvement. It can help you optimize content for a given keyword, write more effective meta descriptions, and even craft better social media posts.
Cost: Free. Yoast SEO Premium is $99/year.
10. Keyword Tool
Keyword research is a critical part of creating optimized content. Keyword Tool helps you identify what your target audience is looking for related to a particular topic by giving you a list of keywords from Google autocomplete. It also provides suggestions for YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Amazon, and even the Google Play and Apple App stores.
Cost: Free with limited features. Pro plans start at $69/month.
11. Canva
Images play a vital role in content marketing. Rather than use stock images (which your competitors might also use in their content), Canva makes it simple to create your own. Anyone can use it, even those with little to no graphic design experience.
What makes Canva so great is that you can use it to create all kinds of images for your content marketing needs, including blog cover photos, social media images, infographics, pie charts, and more. You can start with a template or design your graphic from scratch.
Cost: Free with limited features. Unlock access to premium features for $119/year for one person.
12. Trello
When you’re producing multiple pieces of content, it’s easy for things to get jumbled or forgotten. Staying organized is crucial, and Trello can help keep you on track. This simple project management tool is particularly beneficial for marketing teams, especially if they aren’t all in the same place at the same time. You can use it to break projects down into smaller goals, assign tasks, and keep an eye on each project’s progress.
Cost: Free. More comprehensive paid plans start at $5/month when billed annually.
13. Uberflip
Uberflip is a type of content marketing software that focuses on helping you create better content experiences. It contains a variety of features, including lead capture, brand management, sales, tools, personalization, and analytics. Its content management feature allows you to manage blogs, videos, webinars, and other forms of content from a central hub, making your life a lot easier.
Cost: No pricing information provided.
14. Hubspot Marketing Hub
The Hubspot Marketing Hub is a well-known content marketing platform that provides a comprehensive all-in-one solution. It features a wide range of content and digital marketing tools like a form builder, popup tools, chatbots, and a WordPress plugin for marketing. It also includes email marketing automation and social media management tools. Best of all, it keeps everything in one central location, which can help simplify the marketing process.
Cost: Free. Paid plans with more features start at $45/month.
15. ClickFunnels
You can’t create effective content without a sales funnel. While you could create a sales funnel yourself, the process can be time-consuming. With features like templates and a drag-and-drop editor, ClickFunnels speeds things up, saving you valuable time and effort. It can also help reduce lost sales by pointing your audience in the direction of the products or services that best fit their needs.
Cost: Basic membership is $80.84/month. The Platinum plan is $247/month. These prices apply when billed annually.
16. HootSuite
These days, a presence on social media is almost a necessity for businesses. HootSuite is a social media management tool that can help you stay on top of your accounts and keep you at the top of your followers’ feeds. Key features include scheduling posts across different platforms, social media monitoring, and analytics. You can also keep a close eye on your competitors.
Cost: Plans start at $49/month. HootSuite does offer a 30-day free trial.
17. Sprout Social
Sprout Social offers another all-in-one social media management solution. With it, you can schedule your posts, create a social media calendar, view current trends, and monitor your competitors. Analytics and engagement features help optimize the presence of your accounts. You can also use a campaign optimization feature to develop effective social media marketing campaigns and increase your social media presence. Connect multiple social media accounts and post on several social platforms at once. This is a great tool for social media managers who want to improve their content.
Cost: Plans start at $89/month when billed annually. You can also take advantage of a 30-day free trial.
18. Sendinblue
Email is still a highly effective form of content marketing. It also still provides one of the highest ROIs. However, quality matters. With its drag-and-drop email builder, Sendinblue helps you craft great, personalized emails that hook recipients and drive more click-throughs. Email segmentation ensures each email gets to the right audience. Meanwhile, machine learning-powered send time optimization sends messages at just the right time.
Cost: Free. Paid plans start at $25/month.
19. Google Analytics
Google Analytics allows you to review and analyze traffic from your website. With it, you can see how visitors found your site and monitor their behavior. You can also see real-time data on page views, site sessions, bounce rates, and compare organic traffic with referral, direct, and other traffic sources. Google Analytics is a free tool to utilize and is a must-have for any content marketer.
Cost: Free.
20. Hotjar
Hotjar is another analytics platform that can help you understand the behavior of your website visitors. Features include heat maps, visit recordings, and qualitative tools like surveys and polls to get a better idea of how your visitors feel. The data and responses can help you take steps to improve your content and the visitor experience.
Cost: The Basic Plan is free. Paid options start at €39/month.
Additional Tools for Content Marketers
While these tools aren't on our must-have list, they're still useful for content marketers, SEOs, and others who want to create, keep track of, and develop their content strategy.
- Answer The Public: A popular website that allows you to find common questions people ask related to any topic.
- Google Trends: A popular tool for analyzing trends for certain keywords. This is a favorite content marketing tool for content planning.
- Google Docs: It makes sense that Google has a lot of tools available to make content writing easy. Not only are Google Docs useful in that they allow you to write content effectively, but you can further enhance Google Docs with additional add-ons. Google Docs allows you to easily share your post with your content marketing team for feedback, notes, and suggestions.
- MailChimp: If you plan to invest in email marketing, MailChimp is a must-have tool. Send email newsletters to your clients, further develop your email list, and create automated follow-ups to stay in contact with your customers.
The Right Tools Can Make All the Difference
Content marketing increases your brand awareness, allowing you to connect with your target audience and empathize with their pain points. It enables you to position yourself as an authority in your industry, builds trust, and showcases what sets you apart from the competition. It also keeps you at the top of your prospective customers’ minds, increasing the likelihood that they choose you when they’re ready to buy.
Including content marketing in your overall marketing strategy can help you attract, engage, and retain more customers, enabling you to drive more sales and grow your business. Having the right content tools can make the job significantly easier. The ones mentioned above are some of the best content marketing tools available. Test them out to see which ones work best for your business, and build a toolkit that helps you get the most out of your content marketing efforts.