Businesses all over the world are using content marketing to attract consumers. It is a great way to drive traffic to your website as well as to build customer trust and confidence in your business.

However content marketing is not easy. It takes time and effort to implement. It presents many challenges whether it is coming up with new content ideas, creating quality content consistently, or just thinking of new things to share on social media. Fortunately, there are several free tools that can help with your content marketing efforts.

Here is a list of five great content marketing tools that you must use if you want to succeed with content marketing. If you are not already using it, make sure to try them today and see how it can help your business.

5 Must Have Content Marketing Tools

1. Google Reader

One of the biggest challenge with having an ongoing content marketing strategy is coming up with new topics to write about on a constant basis. Most publishers follow relevant blogs to get inspiration as well as ideas about new content to cover. This is where Google Reader can help. It is essentially a Feed Reader, i.e. an app used to subscribe to content of your favourite blogs. It can be used to follow any website that has an RSS feed.

Google Reader is a must use tool for any content marketer. Whether you want to research new topics or simply to keep on top of the latest content in your niche, Google Reader can be a very valuable asset. Almost all publishers and Internet Marketing experts I have come across rely on and use this tool daily.

2. Flickr

Flickr is one of the most popular image sharing websites. Not all content marketers are heavily involved with producing images. So you may be wondering why Flickr deserves to be in this list. The answer is simple. Whether you produce images, inforgraphics or other media files on a regularly or now, the chances are that you are already using images in all your existing content that you produce as part of your content marketing efforts e.g. in blog posts, articles, eBooks, Tutorials, White-papers, etc. Instead of hosting your images on your own server, you can benefit  by hosting your images on Flickr. In fact many bloggers already use this approach. Flickr makes this very easy by providing you with the exact HTML to include externally on any of the sites.

How Can Flickr Help?

• You will get more coverage for your images
• You will build your profile on Flickr which in time will contribute to your online authority and influence
• You will save bandwidth on your server
• There will no added pressure on your site if someone decided to reprint your articles on their site

3. Content.ly

While the other tools on this list are multi-functional tools that can prove useful in many aspects of Internet marketing and website management, Contently is specifically designed to assist with content marketing.

Content.ly is a must have content marketing tool that you may not know about. It lets you manage your entire content creation process. It can be a great asset for managing your publishing strategy. I have tried this tool and found it be very useful for managing my list of topics and collaborating with others. It is particularly effective if you have more than one member in your business involved with writing content. It offers a centralised platform for managing your content and contributors. It is a good all round tool for planning and implementing your content publishing schedule.

4. Google Keyword Tool

This is a free tool originally released to assist Google Adwords advertisers to find relevant keywords to target with their ads. However, it is equally beneficial for other aspects of online marketing.

From a content marketing perspective, it can help in several stages. You can use it to find popular topics to write about. I often use it to refine my blog post titles. Before publishing, I run my titles through this tool to determine how many times users are searching for the topic.  Based on the suggestions received, I try to refine my title to include the phrases that have high search volumes.

5. Google Analytics

Any content marketing plan without proper analytics is unimaginable and not likely to produce the desired results. This is where Google Analytics can help. Google Analytics is a free enterprise level monitoring and analytics software. You probably already use it to track your website statistics. With the right customisation, it can prove equally effective for monitoring the effectiveness of the content produced as part of your content marketing efforts.

You can use it to monitor how the content on your website is performing as well as how much referral traffic content published on other sites are generating. It also offers an insight into what readers are typing on search engines to find your content. You can use this to determine the topics you can cover to get the most traffic. It also lets you see what external sites offer the best potential so you can spend more time targeting sites that produce the best results.

You must have Google Analytics set up properly to get the full benefits. Cross-domain tracking is one feature in particular that is vital to configure properly if you want to measure content performance across several sites. Custom goals are another feature that you must utilise if you want to track leads generated by various types of content you create as part of your marketing effort.

Conclusion:

One of the main drawbacks of content marketing is the amount of time and resources businesses need to implement an ongoing strategy. Your business can take advantage of the tools above to make your content marketing more efficient and productive.

What About You?

Do you use content marketing to promote your business? What tools and services do you use? Please add your responses by leaving a comment below.