As far as marketing on the World Wide Web is concerned, it’s safe to say that the most important aspect of it right now is inbound marketing. As opposed to shoving your service or product down your customers’ throat and sounding like a used car salesman (“For you, my friend, I make special price!”), and doing so through paid campaigns, spam, or online ads, you need to be more focused on providing high-quality content, such as blogs, ebooks, or webinars potential customers can actually use, before they decide to pick your product as a solution to their problem.
Providing informative content establishes you as an authority in the field, and instills trust into your reader’s minds, which are then more likely to make a purchase, because you went the extra mile to help them. This approach works because it’s organic, and it’s here to stay.
That being said, inbound marketing does require a lot of work, and you need to have a skill set that is broad enough in order to produce versatile, high-quality content. This is the reason behind our list, which contains 12 simple, yet effective tools you will go crazy over, and which will help you create amazing content.
1) Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator
One of the key aspects of inbound and content marketing is consistency, which means you should make the effort to publish new posts several times a week, which can be challenging, especially if you are doing it alone. Hubstop’s Blog Topic Generator is a helpful tool which allows you to enter up to three keywords, after which it will create topics based around those same keywords.
2) Übersuggest
In order to make your blog or website more visible for search engines, you need to make sure that your content features some carefully selected keywords that are pertinent to your niche.Übersuggest makes this process a lot simpler. All you have to do is submit a term, and it will generate useful keywords for you. Easy as pie.
3) Gravity
Gravity is an immensely powerful personalization engine which enables you to practice targeted advertising and suggest content for each reader based on their personal preferences, location, age, and plenty of other factors. Because it collaborates with 50 of the most powerful companies on the Web, you can rest assured your content will be able to attract the right type of audience.
4) ZenPen
As a content creator, there are at least two strong reasons for you to use ZenPen. First of all, there is its minimalistic interface that helps you battle distractions and really focus on creating crisp written content. Second of all, you can save your work in HTML, as well as plain text, which means it will be ready for implementation on your blog or website with no need for complicated conversions.
5) Ginger
Keep in mind that your websites, blogs, newsletters, and ebooks are the face of your company or business, and as such, they need to be perfect, which means there is no room for poor grammar and spelling. To help you polish your content, as well as improve your grammar skills, check out Ginger, one of the most accurate grammar-checking apps on the market today.
6) EduGeeksClub
If you prefer to have human editors go over your text, get in touch with EduGeeksClub, where you can receive professional feedback from both writers and editors on how you can improve your work. Apart from proofreading, their writers can also help you in creating fresh high-quality content your readers won’t be able to resist and which will keep them hungry for more.
7) PlaceIt
PlaceIt is probably the best app anyone running an online business could ask for. It allows you to create high-quality images featuring your app or product being used in real life. All you have to do is upload a screenshot of your product and let the tool do its magic. It will save you countless hours, because it does this automatically for you, which would otherwise take hours of work in Photoshop.
8) Share as Image
Share as Image enables you to create some potent eye candy for your blog. You can turn any sort of text or image into attractive and shareable content in minutes, thanks to a wide variety of fonts, high-quality photos, and filters offered by the app itself. Nothing like some custom images to help you dazzle your audience.
9) BeFunky
BeFunky is a multi-functional image editor which allows you to produce beautiful visual content, even if image-editing and graphic design aren’t one of your stronger suits. Its functionality is not limited to just creating images, though. You can come up with striking collages and your very own custom graphic designs. Best of all, it is browser-based, so you can access it anywhere, anytime.
10) Easel.ly
Everybody loves infographics, and so do we, but if you have ever tried to set out and create one, you would know how complicated it can be. However, things can be a lot simpler if you decide to check out Easel.ly, an online infographics editor which enables you to create stunning infographics with very little effort, thanks to its large selection of pre-made, customizable templates.
11) Djpod
Podcasts are another powerful, yet somewhat underrated method of inbound marketing that provides potential customers with an incredible amount of useful data. Djpod is a podcasting tool you can use to both create and host your podcasts, and its features allow you to share them throughout social networks or iTunes. You also get unlimited storage and access to detailed statistics.
12) Powtoon
Custom animated videos and presentations are another effective way of making your content more unique, which should help you have the edge over your competitors. We recommend that you use PowToon, which is not only easy to use, but it produces professional results. You will be amazed at what it’s able to create.
Content creation is a demanding industry which requires you to wear many hats. These 12 incredible tools should be your digital Swiss Army knife when it comes to inbound marketing. If you take the time to master each one of them, you will soon realize the benefits.
