Content creation is one of the most vital aspects of digital marketing – posting content that will inform, interest and amuse your online audience so that you’re one of the first places they turn to when they go online. This means creating content of a consistently good quality on a continual basis. That's a pretty tall order, even for the most imaginative of digital marketers. The biggest challenge faced by B2B content marketers is producing enough content, closely followed by producing the type of content that engages the target audience.
I listed 25 content creation ideas that business bloggers can use when they run out of ideas for attention-grabbing new content. But besides ideas you need more to create content better.
Most professionals use a toolkit of some type or another and that’s just as true for content creators. Today we’re looking at some of the most useful content creation tools that you could add to your content creation toolkit, including some tools that will help you to post some great visual content – we all know that images, GIFs and videos pack a powerful punch when it comes to getting the marketing message across.
The Content Tools
1. ContentIdeator
Great content begins with a great headline and if you head over to ContentIdeator they have a nifty little tool you can use which not only generates great headlines, but these headlines actually provide you with ideas on what to actually write the content about. It couldn’t be simpler – you just type in a keyword, hit the Enter button and you’re immediately presented with a varied list of titles, some of which may cover aspects of the subject that you wouldn’t have dreamed of writing about!
Freemium: free titles, $29/month if you want to see the stats.
2. Evernote
Has a free version that will sync across your devices (2 max, in the free plan), mobile and desktop, to help you organise yourself when writing. Whether you’re using it for to-do lists, to keep your research notes or even to write whole chunks of articles, Evernote keep all your data constantly up to date and available to you.
Freemium: upgrade plans give larger uploads, larger note attachments.
3. Grammarly and Correctica
are both free tools that you can used to check for grammatical errors in your content. There is so much badly written content online nowadays and many customers are reluctant to buy from an online retailer whose content and descriptions are poorly written – after all, if they can’t be bothered to check their content for errors, how reliable are their products or services going to be?
Freemium.
4. Copyscape
A plagiarism checker web app that’s surprisingly cheap to use – each search costs just $0.05 and credits can be purchased by credit card of PayPal. Not only does Copyscape check that your content is original, you can also use it to see if your content is being ‘lifted’ and used elsewhere.
You can use the Copyscape comparison tool to check what percentage of your content appears elsewhere online and use it to make an informed decision on whether or not to publish. This is a particularly handy feature for those who write content with plenty of jargon or technical terms or content featuring quotes and interviews.
Copyscape is essential if you outsource your content creation activities or feature guest blog posts.
5. Hemingway App
An editing tool that can be used to assess your writing and find ways of making it simpler and more succinct. Just paste your content into this free to use web app and it will let you know how readable it is and deliver suggestions that can be used to improve the content.
Freemium: web app is free, desktop app is paid.
6. Giphy Chrome
A Chrome extension that will help you find the perfect animated GIFs for social media posts. Once you’ve added it to your Chrome browser, you just open it, choose a GIF and then drag and drop it. The tool works in Gmail, Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms and it’s a great way to quickly add some visuals that will pep up your posts.
All the power of BuzzSumo but portable; browse the web, hit the button, and you get to see that page's stats right away. Excellent way to research content opportunities.
...and more
The tools I’ve listed are just some of the many resources available to content creators. There are many others!
Hubspot provides a library of free and royalty-free stock photos. PlaceIt can be used to create images or your product in a real world environment. You can use Infogram to create infographics, charts and data visualisation or you can use Canva to create fabulous visual content quickly and easily with pre-made templates to which you add your own images.
The main thing to remember is that these are all tools that you can use to create high quality, readable and informative content that’s relevant to your target audience – however, it’s still up to you to find a way of combining and using these tools to make your job simpler and more enjoyable.
Hand-Picked Related Articles:
- 5 Tools To Test If Your Website Is Really Mobile Friendly
- Pinterest Tools For Marketers And Social Media Managers
- 10 Priceless & Powerful Content Curation Tools
* Adapted lead image: 
Public Domain, pixabay.com via getstencil.com
I’m personally big fan of grammarly. Though i’m using free version but it has rectified my many punctuation mistakes. I was making lot of spelling mistakes when i was newbie blogger.
But grammarly have saved lot of time now. Now i write my article and installed grammarly on my email and microsoft word. Thanks for wonderful article.
I didn’t see nameboy on that list. I find it to be a helpful way to find quality names. No the site doesn’t give a big list, but enough to find something good.