In this article, we’ll look at a range of content marketing tools every content team should be using for optimum efficiency and productivity.
What to Look for in Marketing Tools
Before we dive in, let’s go over what makes a marketing tool useful, productive, and effective.
- Scalability: Is the tool going to grow with your business? If a tool is only usable on a small scale, it may not be worth investing time and money in.
- Customization: How can the tool work best for you? Are there options to customize settings or multiple features that your team needs?
- User-friendly: Can you seamlessly implement the tool in your team or will you need time and money for training and troubleshooting? Make sure the tool is working for you, not the other way around.
- Excellent customer support: What are the customer support options? Is it a phone number, email, or chat box? Problems will always arise, but make sure that your tool has easy, accessible, and helpful customer support to make those problems a little less stressful.
- Track record and reputation: Does the tool have a large customer base? What other businesses are using it? Check online customer reviews and testimonials to see what other users have to say about it.
- Pricing: What’s the cost? While most tools will have different pricing options depending on your needs, always see if there’s a free trial before making a commitment.
7 Content Marketing Tools for Your Team
1. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a cloud-based platform with lots of essential content marketing tools and features, including content discovery, content research, media monitoring, and influencer research. While the pricing is a bit higher than other content marketing tools out there, it does give a lot of bang for its buck.
✔ Best for SEO and content marketing campaigns
Some features include:
- Generates evergreen and trending ideas
- SEO insights
- Discovers “real questions” your target audience wants answers to
- Identifies keywords
- Compares trends over the past five years
- Analyzes your competitors’ content
- Monitors mentions of your brand on social media platforms
- And much more
Pros and cons of BuzzSumo based on online customer reviews:
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
✔ Provides several content marketing tools wrapped into one ✔ Trending topic alerts ✔ Connects brands with influencers ✔ Monitors social media content ✔ Analyzes competitor content ✔ SEO optimization and analysis ✔ Research ✔ Builds backlinks ✔ Scalability ✔ Free 30-day trial | ✘ Sometimes buggy when integrated with other platforms and tools ✘ Costly ✘ Interface could be more user-friendly |
2. Semrush Toolkits
Semrush offers a wide range of content marketing tools for SEO and content, advertising, competitive research, reporting, and social media management.
✔ All-in-one marketing toolkit with a focus on SEO
Some features include:
- Finds trending keywords for your target audience
- Optimizes your existing content
- Conducts SEO analysis
- Builds backlinking
- Analyzes competitors’ content
- Schedules social media posts
- Provides daily ranking insights
- And much more
Pros and cons of Semrush based on online customer reviews:
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
✔ Free trial ✔ Competitor reporting and analysis ✔ SEO reports ✔ Backlink analytics ✔ Keyword overview and analysis ✔ An “academy” to show users how to use the interface with training videos and tools ✔ Scalability | ✘ Some data reports can be delayed by a day ✘ Price ✘ Only provides data for Google ✘ Interface could be more user-friendly |
3. Asana
Asana is a web-based and mobile app management dashboard that streamlines communication across teams and businesses. It helps teams stay connected and up to date on projects, tasks, and deadlines.
✔ Best tool for project management
Some features include:
- Timelines for projects so teams can visually see progress
- Compares how teams are performing against company objectives
- Monitors and tracks team performance
- Tracks hundreds of projects in one place
- More than 200+ integrations
- Provides real-time insights
- Protects sensitive data with several security features
- And much more
Pros and cons of Asana based on online customer reviews:
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
✔ User-friendly ✔ Good customer service ✔ Provides training and webinars for teams ✔ Customizes projects and tasks ✔ Mobile app integration ✔ Timeline features for tasks and projects ✔ Calendar, boards, and lists available ✔ Integrates with 200+ other tools ✔ Free basic plan ✔ Scalability ✔ Affordable premium and business plans | ✘ Requires time to integrate and customize the software ✘ Number of features may be overwhelming for some users ✘ Limited customization features |
4. Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO compares how well your webpages perform against top-ranking search engine results. After it compares your content, it provides a tailored guide on how you can optimize it to rank higher.
✔ Great on-page SEO tool for copywriters
Some features include:
- Generates briefs and headlines in seconds
- Writes and optimizes content in several languages
- Ensures content authenticity
- Integrates with other tools, such as Google Docs, WordPress, and Jasper
- Shows topic clusters
- Develops content strategies
- Writes content
- Repurposes existing content
- Identifies SEO errors in existing content
- Has an AI growth management platform
Pros and cons of Surfer SEO based on online customer reviews:
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
✔ User-friendly ✔ Lots of useful features ✔ Provides a detailed plan for optimizing content and ranking higher on Google ✔ Great for updating existing content ✔ Content editor feature ✔ Keyword optimization ✔ Scalability | ✘ Software experiences delays and glitches at times ✘ Limited backlink data ✘ Quality of content written in languages other than English could be better |
5. Canva
Canva is a creative design tool that teams can use for social media, videos, websites, presentations, and much more. You can easily create visuals for all your content needs with its variety of templates.
✔ Best for creating visuals and design elements
Some features include:
- Easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface
- More than 50,000 ready-made templates
- Editing features
- Customization options
Pros and cons of Canva based on online customer reviews:
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
✔ Great for social media content creation ✔ Suitable for beginner and novice level ✔ Many templates to choose from ✔ Ability to share creations with other accounts ✔ Can download your design in different formats ✔ Mobile app ✔ Free plan ✔ Helps ensure brand consistency across platforms | ✘ Creating designs from scratch can be difficult ✘ Missing some fonts ✘ Customer support could be better |
6. Google Analytics
While planning, organizing, and writing new content are all important for any content marketing team, nothing is more important than understanding how your content performs. Google Analytics is a free and easy-to-use tool to measure, track, and gain valuable insights into business metrics.
✔ Best for tracking growth and audience behaviors
Some features include:
- Predictive capabilities
- Proactive insights
- Real-time reporting
- Engagement, acquisition, and monetization reports
- Integrations
- Data collection and management
Pros and cons of Google Analytics based on online customer reviews:
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
✔ Completely free ✔ Tracks online traffic ✔ Analyzes user behaviors ✔ Improves online ads ✔ Can help improve SEO and content marketing ✔ Creates data reports | ✘ Beginners and novices might struggle to understand how to use it ✘ Provides a wealth of information, which can be difficult to digest ✘ Requires a certain level of knowledge and skill to use all its features and benefits ✘ No access to raw data |
7. Proofed for Business
Proofed is helping businesses around the world scale their content creation with their editorial services. No matter what type of content your business creates, the final step is always the same: proofreading and editing. Proofed is dedicated to ensuring high-quality, error-free content for all its business clients.
✔ Best for business editorial services
Some features include:
- A curated team of editors working on your content
- A customized style guide applied to all documents to ensure consistency
- Scales your content creation
- High-quality and error-free content
- A dedicated project manager
- 24/7 support to address all your needs
- Integrates with your team’s tools and communication channels
- Quick turnaround times
Read about how we cut Grantify’s content creation timeline by 40% to see how we can streamline your editorial needs.
If your business is in need of high-quality editing and proofreading services, schedule a call with us today to see how we can help!