Back to School: Your Fall Checklist for Content Marketing Supplies

By Kristen Geil

I’m not ready to admit it either, Here are five content marketing tools that you should have in your content marketing toolbox. but fall is right around the corner. Before you know it, the leaves will be changing colors, you’ll be swapping out short sleeves for fleece pullovers, and pumpkin-flavored everything will be overwhelming your senses. Going hand-in-hand with the fall season is back to school everything. Now, you may be a few years removed from heading to the nearest Office Deport with a school supply list in hand, but it’s still a great time to reevaluate your content marketing checklist and stock up on the latest supplies. Here are five of the best content marketing tools that should be in your backpack, so to speak:

Quora

When we’re trying to plan a piece of content, or build out a client’s blog content calendar, Quora gives us insight into what questions people are asking and what they’re searching for. A Q&A website curated by users, Quora and its counterpart Yahoo! Answers are great content marketing tools to spark ideas during the brainstorming part of content marketing, so that you can give the people what they want.

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a free keyword suggestion tool that we’ve found especially helpful for finding long-tail keywords. After you fill in your keyword search, Ubersuggest adds a letter or digit and then extrapolates suggestions for you. You can even click on each word to get further ideas for keywords.

Buzzsumo

One of our favorite tools here at DTC, Buzzsumo lets you analyze how any content on the web performs- whether it’s for you, your client, or your competitor. You can enter a domain or a few keywords, and even filter by the type of content (article, infographic, video, and more) and date, and Buzzsumo will show you the top performing content associated, along with specific numbers for social media shares. You can view who shared the content (for example, see the Twitter users that tweeted out an article). Another valuable aspect of Buzzsumo? Its “Influencers” search, in which you can enter a few keywords (for example, “Chicago SEO) and immediately view a list of relevant influencers- a crucial outreach tool when you’re marketing your content.

Creative Commons

Need an image for a blog post or background music for an explainer video- but want to stick to a budget and avoid paying for the media? Creative Commons is your savior. This website lets you search and discover creative commons licensed media (images, video, etc.) to use for your content marketing. When we’re editing our Internet Explorers video series, we use Creative Commons music to set the tone. Sure, it’s not as flashy as Pitbull’s latest hit (if they can be called hits), but for the unbeatable price of free-ninety-nine, you get a vast array of high quality music, sound effects, images, and more to use.

Sprout Social

A crucial part of content marketing is promoting your content, and social media is one of the most effective marketing tools at your disposal. Sprout Social aggregates all of your social media to-dos and makes it easy for you and your team to execute your social sharing tasks. From scheduling posts across different social media platforms, to analyzing and displaying the data on your social media campaigns, to helping you assign tasks to your team, Sprout Social is a complete social media tool for your content marketing team.   Start your new “school year” with freshly sharpened content marketing tools, and you’re sure to make straight A’s. What other tools do you use for content marketing?