25 Excellent Content Marketing Tools for Your Brand

Successful content marketing initiatives have many moving parts.

Creating powerful content that grows your business can be a discouraging process. It’s possible to spend countless hours producing something to help your brand reach the next level, only to discover that it does little in the way of improving engagement, traffic, or sales. The good news is that there are many content marketing tools available to help you streamline the process.

The team at Social Media Strategies Summit researched the marketplace of content creation, curation, promotion and distribution, and tracking/analytics tools to assemble the infographic below. It illustrates which brands use the 25 tools they reviewed, what’s great about each one, and who theywork best for. You’re sure to find something that will help you jumpstart your content marketing programs.

Content Curation Tools

These tools help you discover and gather content around the Web that is related to a particular topic, then display it in a meaningful and easily digestible format.

1. List.ly (free/paid)

Good for any brand or business with a blog, List.ly creates lists that can be shared easily, edited quickly, and embedded anywhere. It’s simple to curate, crowdsource, and engage readers. The availableWordPress plugin makes it easy to share your lists on your blog.

2. Storify (paid)

A favorite of many brands and media companies, Storify enables you to build multimedia timelines and tell stories using a combination of digital content. Stories can be public or private, and can be created by collecting content from 20 different social channels and websites.

3. Curata (paid)

If you’re looking to increase visibility and generate leads, Curata’s content curation software will help you find, curate, share, and analyze content on numerous issues and topics.

4. Magnify.net (paid)

Publishers and brands interested in video curation will find Magnify.net’s fully-customizable cloud-based app ideal for digital publishing. It’s easy to curate, upload, and aggregate content related to your content marketing strategy. 

5. Echo (paid)

Echo is a real-time comment and reaction-managing platform for companies and brands with vast amounts of content.

Content Creation Tools

Visualize digital content — without the need for designers — with these tools.

1. KnowledgeVision (paid)

Useful for all companies — from startups to enterprises — KnowledgeVision helps you create video and audio presentations and make them available via Web browsers and mobile devices. It’s a great tool for webinars, ebooks, and product demos.

2. Lingospot (paid)

Lingospot serves program-related content on TV viewers’ tablets and smartphones, anticipating what viewers of a particular show may be interested in.

3. Visual.ly (free/paid)

Great for all brands and media outlets, Visual.ly enables you to create or outsource the creation of infographics and data visualizations with a range of templates.

4. Prezi (paid)

Prezi is a robust tool for everyone. It’s cloud-based software helps users create dynamic visualizations and presentations. You can import your PowerPoint presentations and take them to the next level with this useful app.

5. Issuu (paid)

If you create digital publications, Issuu is for you. The platform makes it easy to collect, share, and publish ebooks, white papers, and any number of other content types and make them look their best for your audience.

Tools for Finding Content Writers

If you want to create great brand content, you need someone to do the heavy lifting. These tools help you find writers and designers to take your ideas and make them come to life.

1. Scripted (paid)

When you submit the kind of content you’re looking for, Scripted matches you with high-quality content creators who can fulfill your needs for blog posts, Web pages, white papers, tweets, Facebook posts, newsletters, press releases, video scripts, and custom photos.

2. Contently (paid)

Contently helps you find high-quality freelance writers and content creation tools, and offers applications to help you manage your workflow.

3. Skyword (paid)

This cool platform enables you to find writers, manage your editorial calendar, research keywords, and create writing assignments, then edit/review the content that’s created on your behalf. It includes SEO functionality so you can optimize for search and attract your audience.

4. Zerys (paid)

Zerys helps you plan your content strategy, create engaging titles, crowdsource qualified writers, review the content they create for you, and export or auto-publish to all of your brand’s platforms.

5. WriterAccess (paid)

If you need writers and help with content management, you should check out Writer Access. You can manage your workflow and publish yourself or via API integration. Each account is assigned to a manager, a strategist, and a talent manager/editor. Includes an editorial calendar and analytics tool.

Content Promotion and Distribution Tools

Make sure that your great content is seen and read by your target audience by leveraging these platforms.

1. Buffer (paid)

Have multiple social media channels? Buffer enables you to share content to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and App.net via custom scheduling. It also offers analytics, insights, and more than 50 apps and extras.

2. Outbrain (paid)

This content discovery platform offers audience recommendations based on their interests and distributes relevant content to premium sites as sponsored or related posts.

3. Content BLVD (paid)

This tool facilitates submission of sponsored or guest posts to blogs targeted according to reach and relevance, and manages it all from a simple dashboard.

4. Gravity (paid)

If you’re trying to drive awareness to a specific audience, Gravity will help you promote content or media coverage across its large publisher network. Includes tools to monitor customer preferences and interests.

5. OneSpot (paid)

Turn owned and earned content into optimized ad “spots” that are distributed across thousands of sites and social networks.

Content Marketing Analytics and Tracking Tools

Use these tools to track engagement and analyze the effectiveness of your distributed marketing content.

1. Webtrends (paid)

Webtrends helps you analyze and optimize digital campaigns with multi-channel and multi-platform measurement tools that are easy to manage via a dedicated dashboard.

2. Act-On (paid)

This cloud-based platform helps you organize social-media and email campaigns, measure performance, and manage leads.

3. Marketo (paid)

Another cloud-based platform, Marketo automates content distribution and helps you measure marketing ROI through a series of analytics apps.

4. Genius (paid)

This online sales lead metrics app tracks website visits, email clicks, and lead generation via an automation dashboard.

5. Pardo (paid)

Part of Salesforce.com, this suite of lead management, email marketing, and analytics tools includes modules to build, manage, and activate lead generation components such as landing pages, forms, lead nurturing and email marketing programs.

• via