In a time where the power of content drives the internet’s functionality, content marketing has taken precedence over other forms of online marketing in digital marketing companies. The objective of content marketing is distributing valuable content to a niche audience and deriving a profitable action from it. The content should address the pain-points of your target audience and educate them thoroughly on the topic. In return, your audience will develop trust and loyalty towards your brand, thus giving impetus to your brand awareness and brand image.

So, how do you boost your content marketing efforts and get recognized as a top brand? The answer to this question lies in producing high-quality content for your website; by approaching a content marketing agency or creating it in-house. If you opt for the latter, various content marketing tools will help you achieve it. Here are some of them that will optimize your work to the desired level.

1. Analyze with Buzzsumo

The main purpose of content marketing is to identify the audience’s pain points and provide solutions for the same. To do that, you must research about the topics in detail and their articles that people prefer or like to read. However, scouring the internet’s greatest depths to uncover that information can be an arduous task. It is where Buzzsumo comes into the picture.

Buzzsumo is a powerful tool that lets you find popular content or website on any given topic. Instead of scanning pages after pages on google by, you can save time by using the content discovery feature, which filters the most liked content in the past hour, week, month or year. Moreover, you can also discover content trends through factors such as time-period, content type, content author, social network, etc.

Apart from content discovery, there are multiple benefits of using Buzzsumo. Let’s take a detailed look at them -

Content Curation - With so much content already published on the internet, creating unique content can be a challenge. It should add value to the lives of your readers. In such a situation, Buzzsumo’s content curation helps you out. By searching on any topic, it can tell you the most shared content within a particular time period. Thus, you will get an idea of the type of content that interests your readers. It also lets you know the kind of content that leaves a lasting impression on your audience and boosts your effort to create a good content marketing strategy.

Content Insights - To create content that resonates with your audience and improves audience engagement, you need actionable insights for your content. You need to know the type of content most shared, the platforms it received the most traction, which content type suits which topic, the ideal headline and length of a content, etc. Buzzsumo’s content insights feature gives you analysis based on all these factors and more.

Competitor research - Competitor analysis is very crucial to stay ahead in the game. You need to know the factors by which your competitor succeeding and how your content compares to theirs. By using this feature, you get to know your competitor’s most shared content, the platform where they received traction, and a thorough analysis on content comparison.

Influencer Marketing - Influencer marketing helps you drive traffic to your paid audience without using paid media. But, it is also important to find the right influencer for this role. Buzzsumo has that aspect covered. Through its influencer marketing feature, you can find the influencers, analyze their reach, influence & engagement level, and find the platform where they receive most traction. Based on these factors, you can choose an influencer and avail his or her services accordingly.

Brand Monitoring - Use this feature to monitor your brand’s performance with regards to content, by creating alerts for different aspects. For example, if you want updates on high performing keywords, Buzzsumo will send you an alert for the same. Similarly, you can set domain to monitor your competitor’s content as soon as it is posted.

2. Build your online influence with Kred

By creating content, you have diligently completed the hard part. The next step is to bear the fruits of your work by directing traffic to your blog posts. However, generating organic traffic can be difficult. To boost it, you can use influencer marketing, where individuals use their reach and engagement level to promote your content amongst their followers. How you approach them? By using Kred.

Kred will measure your influence by analysing your activity on Twitter & Facebook and suggest you influencers who can impact your business the most. You can judge a Kred influencer’s influence level based on a 1000-point scale. If the influence score is 600 or above, your influencer is amongst Kred’s top 21% users. You can also check their outreach score on a 10-point scale. If it’s five or above, it is a good score.

Kred will not only promote your content but boost your online presence as well. It will also increase your credibility as a source for content on a specific subject, and lead to more engagement.

3. Find the latest keywords on SEMRush

One of the organic ways of driving traffic to your blog posts is through keywords. By using high-ranking keywords in your headline and the rest of the content, your blog post can appear on the first page of a Google search. Upon liking what they read, your readers might look for similar blog posts, thus generating more traffic. Another added advantage is that readers will take an interest in your brand and navigate through your website to know more about it. So, how do you find high-ranking keywords to avail these benefits? By searching on SEMRush.

With SEMRush, you can insert your or your competitor's website URL. In return, the tool will provide you with a list of high-ranking keywords, their positioning & volume, and the total number of backlinks used. As a result, you will find new keywords that will increase your ranking organically. You can also analyse your competitor's keywords and how they are implementing it in their content.

You can try out SEMRush on a 7-day free trial before deciding on purchasing it.

4. Tweet with Tweriod

Recently, Twitter shared its daily user base with the public and potential investors to give everyone an idea of the company’s growth since its inception in ‘06. The social media platform averaged 126 million daily users in Q4 of 2018, with the numbers only expected to increase manifold. With such a vast user base to capitalize, you can leverage Twitter to build your brand image, increase your brand awareness, and use quirky content ideas to promote your product.

However, you need to identify the characteristics of your target audience. Which are the best days to post? What time of the day are they most active? How often do they engage with marketing-related tweets? The answer to these questions is Tweriod.

Tweriod is a free analytics tool that uses predictive analytics to figure out the best time of the day for you to send tweets. You can also track when you’re getting the most mentions and replies. Tweriod will send you a visual report for the same and help you uncover the secrets to succeed with your marketing efforts on Twitter.

5. Email marketing made easier with MailChimp

Not a day goes by when people don’t check their emails, as it counts amongst their important daily routines. They not only address their professional commitments but also catch up with their family and friends. Thus, communicating with someone via email becomes a powerful way to connect with them. It is the fundamental concept of email marketing. You reach out to your target audience and make them aware of your product through a personalized email. This method of marketing is cost-effective, customizable, action-oriented (by adding CTAs), and mobile-friendly.

So how does MailChimp contribute to email marketing efforts? Through this platform, you can design email marketing campaigns. These campaigns will generate interest in your product amongst your target audience, and they, in turn, can subscribe to your email through sign-up forms for more updates. MailChimp also provides you with a dashboard where you can check users that engage with your emails, either on desktop or mobile. Furthermore, you can monitor metrics such as average open and click rate, average email subscribe and unsubscribe rates, etc.

6. Manage your social media posts with Hootsuite

Sharing your content on as many platforms as you can be useful for your business. But, if you think creating content is hard, then you will find posting links on various platforms and websites very cumbersome. To avoid this arduous task, you can use Hootsuite.

Hootsuite will manage your social media posts. The tool will suggest you the best engagement hours for your posts. Accordingly, you can create a social media calendar, draft copies of your posts, schedule a time for them and view their engagement levels through your provided dashboard. Hootsuite also has an inbuilt spell-checker, which makes sure your copies are error-free.

Moreover, Hootsuite allows you to post in over 35 social media platforms, which will help you drive traffic towards your content and your website. Therefore, Hootsuite is undoubtedly the best tool there is to manage your social media calendar at an optimum level.

7. Correct your grammar with Grammarly

The content you promote in your marketing efforts should not only provide value to the reader but should also be concise, grammatically correct, and free of spelling errors. To achieve the latter, you need a reliable tool for proofreading, a.k.a Grammarly. It proofreads your content on the following metrics -

Correctness - Grammarly corrects spelling errors, points out missing commas & other punctuation-related mistakes and removes fluffy words, thus making your content polished.

Clarity - Grammarly makes the article as precise as possible by shortening sentences and also making sentences more meaningful, such as removing passive sentences.

Engagement - Grammarly suggests engaging verbs and adjectives, which better suits the context of the sentence than the ones you used.

Delivery - Grammarly makes sure sentences end with a noun, verb or adjective rather than a preposition or a conjunction. It makes the sentence grammatically correct and looks incomplete.

Plagiarism - By comparing your content with the existing ones, Grammarly makes sure your content is unique and of high-quality.

By using these content marketing tools, you can organically take your engagement to the next level, without spending too much on various paid resources. Measure the results you get from these tools and identify the ones that will benefit you in the long run. Let this be the first step towards making your brand a household name!