The average blog post takes between three and four hours to write. That’s before image creation, distribution, and any internal review processes.
While you could hack together your content marketing strategy with Google Docs and email, there’s a host of free and paid tools that can make the process easier and more collaborative, leading to more efficient workflows and consistent output.
In this post, we’re taking a closer look at 11 tools to help you manage your content marketing in 2024.
11 Best Tools for Content Marketing
Here’s a quick breakdown of the market’s top 11 best tools for content marketing:
- Trello — Best free tool for managing your content projects
- Asana — Popular free PM tool for content marketing management
- Jotform — Best free online solution for creating approval workflows
- Semrush — A must-have keyword research and competitor analysis tool
- CoSchedule — A great calendar-view post-scheduling solution
- Yoast — A simple plugin to boost your content in search engines
- Canva — Best for creating unique images for blogs
- Grammarly — Popular grammar and plagiarism checker for individuals and businesses
- HootSuite — Great for managing and scheduling posts on social media platforms
- BuzzSumo — A top choice for identifying content and trends
- ConvertKit — Best for email marketing
These solutions are best used combined. For example, Trello, Jotform Approvals, Semrush, Canva, and Grammarly make a killer combination for creating a solid content marketing strategy that delivers results. That said, the variety of tools you choose will be up to you.
Here’s a quick rundown of each of our top 11 picks.
1. Trello
Whether you have a team or do content marketing yourself, Trello makes it easy to stay on top of your content projects. You can manage multiple projects and organize tasks using Trello boards containing lists and cards.
This tool helps increase your productivity and is particularly useful for visual learners. You can use the boards to set up workflows that fit your business’s needs and customize boards to fit your projects, including incorporating due dates, timelines, calendars, etc.
Each board contains cards you can use to assign tasks, create checklists, include due dates, and more. As you complete tasks, you can move the cards through the different columns of your workflow, so you always know what’s happening with your projects.
Trello also offers Power-Ups and integrations to help you further customize and improve your productivity. There are several plans, including a free plan, so try Trello free today.
2. Asana
Asana makes managing, setting up, and tracking projects easy for your team. Communicating and collaborating from the start to the end of a project is a breeze. This flexible platform allows you to customize your workflow for your team’s needs.
You can set up tasks, create to-dos, customize fields, and more. You can also select from different project views, such as lists, timelines, and boards. Overall, Asana will save your team time and increase efficiency so that you can stay on track with your content plans.
Asana offers a free Basic project management plan for teams or individuals. Pricing for paid packages starts at $10.99/user/month when billed annually. Try Asana for free now.
3. JotForm Approvals
With JotForm Approvals, creating approval workflows for your content marketing processes is easy.
Whether you’re writing blog posts, publishing case studies, recording videos, or simply posting to social media, there’s a good chance that at least a few of these marketing assets will need to be reviewed by several people.
If you already use JotForm’s forms for approvals, they can feed directly into your publication workflow. You can also set up custom notifications, submission links, widgets, IF/THEN conditions, parallel approvals, and autoresponders.
The best part — it’s free to sign up and get started, so try JotForm free now.
4. Semrush
Semrush can help you improve your SEO ranking and search traffic, as well as assist in researching your competitors. You can monitor your business’s progress and competitors, including keywords, mobile ranking, and more.
You can use this tool as part of your content planning process to identify topics that will help you improve your reach. Semrush can then help you monitor and measure how your content is performing.
You can become a free user or opt for one of the premium plans for unrivaled insights. Pricing starts at $119.95/month.
5. CoSchedule
If you want to organize your marketing in one convenient place, CoSchedule can help. The Marketing Calendar displays all of your projects in a calendar view. This makes it easy to see your progress and the big picture so your content strategy and team stay organized.
The Marketing Suite option helps you publish more content efficiently and saves time. It shows your content in a calendar view that updates in real-time. It also helps you streamline your editorial process and centralize your publishing and promotions.
Pricing for the Marketing Calendar starts at $29/user/month when billed annually. To learn more about pricing for the Marketing Suite, contact the CoSchedule sales team.
6. Yoast
Yoast’s plug-ins help you get more traffic from search engines by optimizing your SEO strategy. The plug-ins take care of the code and many technical aspects of SEO so you can focus on your strategy.
Yoast can help you increase engagement, get your content found by search engines, and attract visitors from social media.
Depending on your plan, you can use Yoast to help improve your keyword optimization, get warnings about out-of-date content, see stats about readability, get internal link suggestions, and more. It has a free version that includes many critical features.
The Premium plan, which has more features, costs $89 for one site for one year.
7. Canva
You need beautifully designed content with quality images to help your blog and social media posts stand out. Canva makes adding images and designing your content simple.
Canva provides templates and layouts for different social media platforms, flyers, presentations, and more. The templates and preset layouts ensure your images and designs are the correct sizes for the platform you’re using, saving you time.
It also allows you to customize your images and designs to express your brand the way you want. Canva offers a free version with over 250,000 free templates and over 100 design types to get you started.
8. Grammarly
You want your content to be professional and error-free. Grammarly helps you identify grammar and spelling errors to present easy-to-read content to your readers. Additionally, Grammarly analyzes your writing and provides a plagiarism checker.
You can install Grammarly on your computer, and there’s also a free Chrome extension to check your writing across the different programs you use. Besides the free option, pricing for paid accounts starts at $12/month.
9. Hootsuite
While sharing your content across various social media platforms helps you grow your business, it’s also time-consuming. Hootsuite makes it easy to manage and schedule your posts in one place.
This platform also helps you schedule your content at the right times for your target audience. You can draft posts, check your social media calendar, share content, and view your most recent posts across all platforms from your dashboard.
The analytics dashboard gives you insights into your top-performing content, and the tool also makes it easy to respond to customers quickly.
10. BuzzSumo
If you want help identifying topics that will lead to high-performing content or analyzing your content’s performance, BuzzSumo can help. It helps you hone your content marketing in four critical ways:
- Review and identify high-performing content so you can create content that will get likes, shares, and links
- Analyze your content marketing strategy, so you have data to help guide you
- Discover influencers that may be a good fit for your brand
- Monitor trends and comments so you can stay up to date and respond swiftly
Pricing starts at $99/month if paying month to month and $79/month if paying annually. BuzzSumo also offers a free 30-day trial.
11. ConvertKit
If you’re looking for tools to make email marketing more efficient, ConvertKit can help. It makes it easier to streamline your email marketing to reach your audience. For one, you can create landing pages using templates or your own customized designs.
You can build and nurture your relationship with your audience through email and segment your audience into groups to send personalized emails that convert better. You can also create sales pages to sell digital products and automate your sales funnel.
Better yet, you can integrate ConvertKit with the other tools you use in your business. There’s a free plan for up to 1,000 subscribers that includes unlimited landing pages, forms, email broadcasts, and more.
Paid plans start at $29/month for up to 1,000 subscribers and offer additional features. Pricing increases as your subscriber base grows.
Conclusion
Content marketing is essential for growing your business and staying engaged with your audience. That said, it doesn’t need to be time-consuming. Finding the right tools for your content marketing strategy will save you time and increase your productivity and consistency.