Not too long ago, blogs were better known as online personal diaries or journals open for public viewing and reading. Blogs contain any topic, under and over the sun. Nowadays, blogs are used as an effective marketing tool online, and it doesn’t matter which industry the company belongs. Startups businesses to big time corporate companies have turned to this marketing strategy as it has been proven effective in gaining more sales.
The changing media habits of consumers and the accessibility of different media content online have changed the landscape of marketing for companies. More and more people now have become wiser when purchasing online. Before they dive in and make the purchase, they research first about the company and the product before they make a purchase. Traditional advertising techniques are no longer as effective as they had been in the past as consumers now refuse hard selling. It was found in survey from Ropers Survey that 80% of consumers prefer reading articles about the product they are planning to purchase than from the advertisement of the product itself. In that same survey, 60% of the consumers claimed the articles help them make better purchasing or buying decisions.
Search engines like Google are useful to consumers in helping them find the appropriate articles or websites related to their searches. To make the searches more accurate and useful, search engines regularly update their web crawling algorithms to improve the quality of search results. Articles overly stuffed with keywords are spammy and are considered red flags by search engines. With this, it is important to regularly refresh and update the content of articles to make them not just user-friendly but SEO-friendly as well.
While creating content may not be as easy as ABC, there are many tools available online to help boost your marketing. Below are 7 great and dependable tools and resources you can use to creatively create and edit, or research and design.
Evernote
The app offers free and paid versions users can choose from. The basic or free version is several-features less than the paid version, but suits perfectly well for basic writing and editing purposes. In addition to that, the mobile, desktop, and web Evernote applications are easily and automatically synced to each other using the internet. It can also be opened and used offline though syncing your files will have to wait until the internet connection resumes.
Hemingway App
Named after the well-known writer Ernest Hemmingway, this grammar and revision web tool is perfect for making your content bolder and clearer. It works by highlighting the sentences that are too complex and lengthy, which are basically difficult to read, and common errors in your content. It also provides you hints of other words you can use to replace a lengthier word you have used. Passive sentences are also highlighted so you can spot them. The app highlights those words and phrases that “weaken” your content too. Within the app, you can do the editing of your content and compare it later to your original.
Correctica & Grammarly
These editing tools assist in checking grammatical errors and help in making sure that all necessary corrections are made. Additionally, Grammarly has a feature for making sure that the document is plagiarism-free before it gets published.
Google Webmaster Tools
This wonderful tool from Google will help you out when you’re keyword searching and doing SEO. It allows you to regularly track the performance of you content and evaluate it by showing you how many indexed pages are there on your website, and more. This tool also allows you to post your website to have it web crawled and indexed by Google. The app also steers you clear from bad inbound links. Aside from search queries that it provides you, Google Webmaster Tools also shows you the clicks, impressions, and clickthrough rates or CTR of your website. When you make good use of these features, you can be assured that your content can become relevant and remain as is. All these may sound so technical and confusing but once SEO gets into your system, it is actually easier than you can imagine.
Feedly
This app keeps you updated with the current and latest trends in content marketing. It provides you with filtered news, guides, and tips on content marketing they have gathered from content marketers from all over the world. The content it sends you will always be relevant to your needs and will never give you spammy returns on your searches. While Feedly is easy to use, what’s even better is it is also free of charge.
HubSpot ROI Calculator
The tool helps you calculate the monthly sales of your website and the efforts put in for lead generation. It is great tool in identifying which marketing efforts need to be optimized.
Coffitivity
Basically, this app is not a content creation tool. However, it works to help get your creative juices out into your content writing. It recreates ambient sounds from cafes or other workplaces to create white noise, which is useful in helping you focus on your task. It may sound contradictory, but white noise is proven to be helpful in increasing productivity aside from improving your focus. To quote a study from the University of Chicago, “A moderate level of ambient noise is conducive to creative cognition.”
There are tons of other content marketing related tools online. Listed above are only among those commonly used.