Before moving into my apartment in DC, it never crossed my mind that I needed a toolbox. I thought I could get away with just a tape measure and a hammer; yet, that all changed when I needed some pictures to go up along with a hook to hang up some clothes.
This will go down in my own history as one of the most idiotic things I’ve ever done (and I probably could get a number of criticisms…bring it on!), but hey I attribute it to this being the first time I’ve lived on my own. I decided the hook needed to go up first and saw that it required screws to hold it in place. In the back of my head I knew that nails go with hammers and screws go with electric screw drivers. Did I have the latter? Nope and I quickly justified with myself that a screw could function the same way as a nail.
Two holes in the wall and a picture over top of them held up by some heavy duty tape later, I know now that screws DO NOT in fact function the same as nails. Wall-patch donations are now welcomed.
Besides the former lesson learned, I also learned that I need more tools than a little hammer and tape measure.
For my own content marketing tool kit, I don’t just have two tools. So, I’m a little surprised with myself that I didn’t make that connection with my own apartment toolkit.
Theres a number of different tools I use daily, weekly and for different channels. Putting together a huge list of all of these tools helps avoid silly errors, like confusing the functions of nails and screws. I’ve separated each content marketing tool into a category which describes them with the function they provide and the last category with Refreshers are a list of resources to keep packed away for those moments when your brain just blanks out.
Social
There are an endless amount of social tools out there, but there are the obvious standout ones to improve interaction,engagement and ones to narrow your target audience. These tools range from scheduling to impression targeting that will help all of your social outlets.
-SocialBro- A nice real-time dashboard telling you which followers are tweeting at the given time along with some other nifty tools. It syncs up with Buffer too.
-Followergen- Targeting tweets for more impressions
-Tweriod- Want to know the best time to tweet? Download a quick and free report
-Tweetdeck- Counting favorites, you can see how many favorites Twitter users have with this app. Tweetdeck also makes it easy to view all of your twitter feeds.
-Buffer- Schedule your Tweets and Facebook posts easily and efficiently.
-Slideshare- An underrated social media outlet that can also generate some qualified leads as well.
-JustUnfollow- Grow your follower count quickly
-Hootsuite- Another tool to schedule social media posts and customizable data too
Curation
Curating content is just as important as creating it. All of these tools help collect the right content you are looking for and some enable to help you share it with your team as well.
-Feedly- RIP Google Reader and welcome the reader that has a beautiful interface and easily organizes everything for you to read for the day.
-Learnshark- A TrackMaven favorite. Curating content for all of your team to read and you can also create learnpaths for your new hires that will get them up to speed quickly.
-Flipboard- Makes your own personalized magazine in a gorgeous, simply format.
-Pocket- Want to read it later? Pocket-it and you can read it on the go too.
-Evernote- A huge step up from your average note-taking and gathering
Content
You’ve collected content to consume and share, but here are some tools to help you manage and churn out your own. Gaining inspiration and then pushing out into words for your audience, all of these items below will assist in creation.
-Google Key Word Tool- What exactly do your keywords look like and how many people are searching for them?
-Parse.ly- Content management tool providing insights in the content you are publishing.
-Contently- A Story-Telling Platform working with journalists, media companies, publishers etc. They have a pretty awesome blog too.
-Portent’s Content Idea Generator- Simple to use and a little silly, but it helps get your ideas churning when you’re drawing a blank.
-Quora- Check out the questions people are asking and answer them in your content.
-Branch- All about conversations. Talk about your content here and get some discussion out of the conversationalists in this outlet.
-Google Drive- You can create and keep all your your docs, forms, spreadsheets etc. in one place.
-Thesaurus- Stop using the same words over and over again. Synonyms anyone?
-MW Dictionary- Didn’t know what that word meant? That’s what a dictionary is for.
Organization
If you can remember everything and organize things into their proper place perfectly…I should include your name on this list. Until then, here are some apps that will help you hunker down on exactly what you need to accomplishment. Managing tasks to incoming leads just got a little easier with some of these things.
-Remember The Milk- Multiple lists, tags and it can connect with Trello!
-Wunderlist- The mobile app is very easy to use and syncs with all of your other devices, so you can keep all of your lists up to date.
-Trello- I’ve often wondered if I can Trello everything in my life because they make it so easy to maintain goals, create checklists and outline different processes.Share and store all of your files easily.
-IFTTT- Create different recipes that allow for all of your apps to work the way you want them to. One great recipe is for Instagram photos to be instantly create into Twitter pics, so your followers can see that image in a twitter card.
Visuals
The bulk of your content is text, but that’s not to say visuals take a backseat. Make sure you images are just as advanced as the words you are writing. Here are some tools that can step up your visual game.
-Skitch- Working along side of Evernote, you can doodle, highlight and type over all of those notes you collected. You also can add arrows to things you want to point out in visuals for your content.
-Resize.it- A site to easily resize all of your images quickly.
-Visual.ly- Beautiful infographics. They even have a corgi one!
-Piktochart- A way for you to create your own infographics. Time to put down that stock photo.
-Easel.ly- Not just a way for you to create infographics, but a way to share too. Sharing is caring, right?
-Tableau- Numbers look at tad boring all alone, time to visualize some of that data.
-Wordle- Tool to generate sweet word clouds.
-Issuu- Create online magazines.
-FotoFlexer- In a bind and can’t use photoshop? FotoFlexer has some basic and advanced editing features that can be matched up to Photoshop.
Collaboration
There isn’t an “I” in team, so make sure as a marketer you are in fact working with your team in order to produce the best possible content. Some of these tools we use as a team, the other ones are for collaboration outside of our team to interact with other marketers.
-HipChat- We use HipChat at TrackMaven. An easy way to communicate with everyone on the team. Also, here’s a little secret…
-Yammer- Another communication platform for the office.
-GoToMeeting- Good meetings or webinars. Interact more with your customers.
-Google+ Hangouts- Sometimes I forget about Hangouts, but this is a good way to host events or webinars in a more collabortive way especially since you can organize them by community in Google+. Check out Marketo’s Marketing Happy Hour on Google+ Hangouts.
-Twiddhla- Have a white board in your office taking up too much room or is it a little crusty from all of the marks? Here’s a web-based one, so you can collaborate without all of the aforementioned stuff.
-ScreenHero- Sharing your screen, but you want the person to interact with the project too. ScreenHero allows for collaborative screen sharing.
Technical
The rise of startups, pure marketing growth and the blending of the role of a CMO, it’s essential to start to know how to code and the more technical side of things as a marketer. Take a look at some of theses resources to expand on your marketing knowledge.
-Treehouse- Step-by-Step courses on how to build websites, apps, coding and other valuable lessons.
-Codeacademy- I’ve done several lessons on Codeacademy and all of the lessons were great. They are easy to follow and satisfy my competitive urge by giving me a slight “gamified” experience.
-CodeSchool- I like how there are set paths and video lessons. An easier way for you to begin coding.
-Rickshaw- Want to create your own interactive graphs? It’s a little more technical, but it’s a free source for you to display your data.
Data and Interaction
A/B tests, heat maps, personalized messages, clicks, traffic, links etc. can all be seen and tracked with these tools. No more fluffy marketing please, we want the data behind it too.
-Intercom- From who is logging on to targeting users with specific messaging, Intercom makes it really simple.
-Google Analytics- Providing insights, analytics and data to your site.
-SessionCam- What are your users doing? This takes a session of your user’s session inside your product.
-CrazyEgg- Heatmaps, scrollmaps, a confetti and an overlay tool all show what content the user is interacting most with your site.
-Bit.ly- Super useful link-shortener that can also be connected with your Buffer account. I set up two accounts to look at the clicks for Twitter and Facebook too.
It’s not time to mourn the passing of email because it’s far from being dead. Did you know that People who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than people that do not receive email offers? Time to spruce up those email campaigns and you can do it with some of these tools.
-MailChimp- Create email newsletters and campaigns easily.
-Campaign Monitor- Another email campaign tool.
-Rapportive- Who is this person emailing you? Or trying to figure out an email of someone important? Rapportive makes it instantly easier showing a contact’s picture, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or other information. It’s a gmail plug-in.
-SendGrid- Useful email deliverability tool while also monitoring open-rates and click-throughs.
-Contactually- Have so many contacts that you can’t keep up with them? Or forget to follow-up with them? Contactually makes it so much easier and fun too with their bucket game.
Refreshers
-SEOmoz’s Beginner’s Guide To SEO
-CopyBlogger’s Content Marketing 101
-Contently’s Beginnger’s Guide to Content Strategy
-Unbounce Google Adwords Webinar
-All The Resources You Need To Answer Your Facebook Marketing Questions
-Hubspot’s Marketing Grader Tool
-MailChimp’s Voice & Tone
-Epic List of Content Strategy Resources (Collected by Jonathon Colman)