Why you need these 10 Free Content Marketing Tools

As an entrepreneur, you are on a budget and probably need some tools to get to your audience or get your business idea off the ground. To achieve this without compromising the quality of your marketing efforts, I will share a list of 10 free content marketing tools that you must have as a business owner.

1. Generate unique topic ideas: HubSpot blog topic generator

   Before writing your content, you must have an idea of what you want to write about. Often, content writers suffer from getting this their ideas together. A viable tool to have when you need the inspiration to create a topic is the HubSpot blog topic generator. All that you need to do is type three nouns that are related to the topics you want to write on, and there will be tons of suggestions to pick.

2. Have a winning headline: Coschedule Headline Analyzer

   What people observe first in good content is the headline. As a content writer, you have to capture the heart of your readers by having a nice headline. Coschedule Headline Analyzer helps you make the right choice when it comes to choosing headlines. It will analyze and tell you how great your topic and headline is, and the need to tweak it more for a better rating.

3. Content creation: Grammarly, Hemmingway and any useful plagiarism checker

   This will be a 3 in 1 tool because you need all of them to create good content. When writing or typing down your ideas, mistakes can happen due to the way you are flowing. You have to use these tools to be confident of what you have written, to ensure that your content is grammar and spell check free, readable and have no plagiarism.

4. Find great content Ideas: Buzzsumo and ContentIdeator

   A good writer learns from the best, while your writing has to address a problem by presenting a viable solution. You need tools that will help you find content ideas that will be used in creating your contents. With these tools, you can find trending topics and related content.

5. Content Organization: Evernote

   The organization of your content is critical when it comes to content marketing. As a blogger or content writer, you want to keep track and write out that idea that comes to you every time. The ability to organize and prioritize your plans will allow you to capitalize on opportunities. Evernote as a free content marketing tool lets you capture your ideas, inspiration and current trends in a comfortable and accessible way. Whether you are on phone or laptop, you can store that idea, market research, and competitor analysis.

6. Social media management and engagement: Buffer and HootSuite

   As a business owner, you need to interact with your customers on a daily basis. Social media is a robust platform and you have to leverage on this marketing initiative. Buffer is a social media management tool that will help you streamline your posts, increase the number of your followers, engage your customers and build your brand. HootSuite, on the other hand, allows you to sync across three social media profiles while allowing you to respond to posts real-time with an easy to use dashboard.

7. Visual Design Tool: Canva

   A picture speaks a thousand words. Visual content is now becoming popular as a form of marketing tool. From custom illustrations down to fully designed sales proposal, you are assured of a credible business and a professional appearance online. Several free graphic design tools are now available online, but Canva is the most intuitive and easy to use and it is free. You can choose from its array of fonts, templates, illustrations and so on.

8. Email marketing: MailChimp

   A successful email campaign is essential to the success of a business. While social media engagement is good, you need a platform you have control over while having an intimate interaction with your customers. Email is a platform that allows you have control over your business and also nurture your leads. MailChimp is a free email marketing tool that is easy to use when it comes to email marketing.

9. Customer Feedback: SurveyMonkey

   Surveys are used to collect information from your customers and secure insights on your business. SurveyMonkey is a free favorite online survey tool. You can design, create, and use the free available templates to publish your business survey.

10. Optimize your website: Yoast

    As a content writer and business owner, you must optimize your website. A tool that you can use to achieve this is Yoast. This tool will give your page SEO ranking, allow you write meta descriptions, and give you readability score to improve your SEO ranking. It is a free WordPress plugin that you can add to your website.