Recently, I started thinking about the content marketing tools the Squirrly team uses, and I came to the conclusion that there are so many. From the moment we open our laptops to check our tasks for the day, until we leave the office, we’re constantly using the tools I’m going to talk about in this article.
I even tried to imagine what it would be like to work without these tools, and my conclusion is that it would be nearly, if not 100% impossible.
The pen and paper era is pretty much extinct for those of us that work in an online business (except for the moments when we write something down on a post it, and stick it on the cork board in front of us).
Clearly, we couldn’t do our job properly without these content marketing tools (we probably would, but it would take us a lot more time). I believe that this is a great list for those of you that are new to content marketing and are looking for what tools to use or for those of you that are looking for new tools and ideas on how to improve your work.
Without further ado, here are the content marketing tools Squirrly uses every single day.
1. Trello
Trello was one of the first tools I started to use at Squirrly, and I love it. Trello is great for organizing your work. You can create boards (as many as you want). You can add members to your boards. On these boards, you can create lists. For example, yothat this is a great list for those of you that are new to content marketing and are looking for what tools to use or for those of you that are looking for new tools and ideas on how to improve your work.u can have a list with work that needs to be done, and then you have a list where you move your work when you complete your tasks.
You can assign as many members as you want to a task, if more members from your team need to work on it. You can set deadlines, and these can be either soft (which means they are not urgent), or hard (they need to be resolved ASAP).
Trello helps us a lot in organizing our work flow. It helps us keep track of what we’re working each day, and on the progress we make with our clients’ articles because thanks to the deadlines we set, we know when and how many articles need to be ready.
2. Squirrly SEO Plugin
All the content we write, whether it’s for our blog, or for our clients, is fully optimized. To optimize the articles we write both for humans and search engines, we use our SEO plugin, Squirrly.
I find that it’s extremely important to use a plugin that will help you optimize content, whether it’s Squirrly, or another one of your choice. For example, with Squirrly you can search for keywords to see if there’s a high competition for it, and if people are searching for the keyword you want to use or not. Keywords matter if you want your articles to rank high in Google search results.
3. BufferApp
After you optimize your content, you want to promote it on social media. BufferApp is a great tool to use for social media management.
We use it to schedule posts for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and it definitely makes our social media manager’s job a lot easier. Obviously, we don’t promote just our articles, but content we believe our audience will relate to as well.
Buffer is incredibly useful for our content marketing because we have all of our social media channels in one place.
4. Quora
Quora is an amazing resource. Content marketers can use it to find new ideas for their articles, new perspectives, they can engage in discussions and they can even ask questions to get a discussion started.
You can follow people on Quora including your clients, your audience, and even your competitors. This way, you’ll be able to track their interests and what topics they’re engaging in the most. This technique will help you create more relevant, attention grabbing information for your audience.
5. HARO
HARO is a tool I recently started to use, even though it’s been around for a long time. HARO is the abbreviation for ‘help a reporter out.’ This tool is free to use, and it targets both reporters and PR specialists, since both have something to win out of this relationship.
This is how it works. If you make an account as a reporter, you can submit a query, which basically means that you seek certain people to help you gather information for an article. On the other side, are people that want coverage, and they’re more than happy to answer your query, if they fit the profile of the person you’re looking for. HARO is an easy way to reach out to people who otherwise would be difficult to get in touch with.
On the other hand, you can use HARO as a source. They send you emails three times per day with queries from journalists/reporters that are related to a topic you’ve chosen from your profile. If you find a question you know you have the expertise for, this is your opportunity to respond and gain some exposure. As content marketers, it’s also good to appear on different media outlets.
Heroic Search wrote a detailed article about HARO, and how to successfully submit your answers. You can read their article here.
6. Slack
We started using Slack when one of our team members realized that we stopped noticing the comments we posted on Trello at the different cards we created. Even if we tagged the person, it’s easy to get lost with all the notifications and sometimes, even if we saw it, we forgot to answer the message.
That’s why we started using Slack, which is an awesome communication platform, and it helps us, as a content team, to be connected in one place.
We created different groups based on the topic of discussion we’re going to talk about. Also, this tool is easy to integrate with any email address, and you can customize it so that you can receive an email alter about a new post in a group discussion, or in a private message. It’s also possible to download the Slack app to your cell phone and receive notifications that way too. We did this, and we also customized it so that we receive alerts whenever there’s a new card related to our content services.
7. MailChimp
Every content marketer needs to use a tool that will help you send your email marketing campaigns, newsletters and articles to your readers and subscribers. We use MailChimp for this process.
If you don’t want to copy and paste every single email address in Bcc, then this is a handy tool. Not only does it make your job much easier and faster, but with MailChimp you can track how many people actually open your email. You can target the people you want to send the email to, check your email’s conversion rate and enjoy many other features.
With a tool like MailChimp, based on the analytics, you’ll be able to figure out what you’re doing wrong and even tweak your email subject lines so that more people open them. You’ll easily identify weaknesses and where you need to improve your content.
8. Inbound.org
Inbound.org is the place to be for basically anyone that wants to establish authority. Here, you can share the content you create for your blog. If your article is valuable, it’ll receive upvotes and encouraging comments. That being said, it’s a great place to promote your content, and if the community favors it, they can share it as well on other social media channels.
Inbound.org is an amazing community where you can find what type of content is best appreciated, and use this as inspiration for future articles.
9. Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics for a few different things. First of all, it helps us figure out how much traffic we get for our articles and where it comes from: Twitter, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, or any other social platforms.
Also, with Google Analytics we can track what pages our website visitors look at, identify what path they use to get there, what they do after they read an article, etc. This data helps us create a better flow for visitors, so that we can respond to their needs.
Content marketing tools are a must for your business!
We plan to include more content marketing tools on this list, so that we can improve the way we relate to our customers, and our potential customers as well.
Now you know what tools Squirrly uses in order to make content marketing much more efficient. It’s your turn to share what content marketing tools you’ve used thus far and which ones you’d recommend we try. Looking forward to your responses. Leave them in the comments down below.
