The life of a content marketer is guaranteed to involve three things: two of them being coffee and a scattered brain.
Don’t get me wrong, being a content marketer is a dream come true. Twelve-year-old me is high-fiving 22-year-old me every day. And I know a lot of others that would say the same. However, the job presents a lot of responsibilities and even more information to keep track of.
Enter the third guarantee of a content marketing career: technology, a modern marketer’s lifesaver.
There are more tools available to content marketers today than ever before, which nicely complements the fact that in recent years, content has become king. It is a cheap way to bring traffic to your website and generate leads. As content jobs continue to become more sought after, marketers get busier and rely more on software to help them keep their sanity throughout the day.
Content marketing tools
Let’s go over a couple of tools content marketers cannot live without from the perspective of an active content marketer.
Email software
There isn’t a single job that can function without email.
Whether or not you use it for communicating internally, email software is the most convenient option for external communication. Email tools allow users to send, receive, and organize messages and attachments, get notifications, and create an address book of important contacts.
Project management software
Do you ever agree to do something to help a teammate but then you simply forget and when they bring it up you slap your forehead because you forgot?
Me too. Until I started using project management tools.
Project management software is basically an endless to-do list, but not in a scary way. In a way that means you can keep track of every single project you are working on because, well, the internet is forever.
Whether it be a daily checklist or long term mapping of goals, you don’t have to worry about remembering every little detail. Project management software will do it for you.
Web content management software
There are some tools that simply make content marketers’ lives easier, and there are others that they can’t do their job without. Web content management is the latter.
Web content management software enables all digital content production. Text, audio, video, images, you name it. These tools allow users to create, edit and publish all content. Some of those processes can get a little complicated, but web content tools make it simple for anyone who knows how to use a computer.
In addition to these essential features, incorporating a reliable social media posting tool into the mix can further streamline the distribution process, ensuring that the content reaches its target audience across various online platforms.
Web content managers also allow for collaboration among team members. Multiple people can manage the same pieces of content to ensure a desirable final product.
Customer relationship management software
Marketers create materials to get more eyes on their business and in the door or on the website to generate sales. They can’t do so effectively if they don’t know who is already buying.
Content marketers can use customer relationship management software (CRM) to understand who their company is doing business with.
- What are their likes and dislikes?
- What are their pains?
- What industry do they work in?
- How do they like to do business?
All of this information lives in CRM software, where the sales process of a business is automated. Marketers can find information on the business’ current customers to better craft their messages towards that group, and potentially other target markets not yet tapped into.
Marketing automation software
This is a pretty big one.
Marketing automation software streamlines the entire marketing process. It provides a hub for marketers to organize all of their necessary materials, a place for interactions and collaborations, and a source of valuable metrics that show the success of their current efforts.
Automated features for these tools include email, social media, digital advertising, and more.
The outcome of marketing automation paired with CRM software is a killer customer experience that will keep them coming back for more.
SEO software
In any job, strategy takes a seat at the table. Without it, reaching your goals is difficult if not impossible.
One of the key strategies used by content marketers is search engine optimization (SEO), a process that improves a website’s visibility in search engine results. SEO software aids content marketers in their efforts to boost the ranking of their content on the internet. There are a lot of ways to go about SEO, and it is constantly changing, but SEO software will always be a consistent tool in analyzing keywords, keeping track of your website’s backlinks, and seeing where your content ranks.
Digital analytics software
When working hard towards a goal, it is important, and satisfying, to track the progress and results of your efforts.
For content marketers, this information comes from digital analytics software, a tool that tracks website visitors and traffic. The point of creating content is to get eyes on your writing and business, and digital analytics software provides insights into whether or not your current strategies are working.
The best thing about these tools is that there is no guessing. The results come in numbers and cold hard facts.
Social media suites
While getting traffic to your content organically is a great sign that your strategy works, there are other metrics that matter as well. One of them being social traffic.
To get more social traffic, sharing your content on social platforms with the help of social media suites can bring that extra traffic boost your content needs. These tools can manage multiple platforms at once, so every time you post your content, you can manage and analyze everything all in the same place.
Good old pen and paper
While software is all fine and dandy, keeping track of all the tools in your repertoire can get overwhelming, and losing track can get expensive. There is nothing more satisfying than physically crossing something off with a pen and nothing more in-your-face than a brightly colored post-it note with a handwritten reminder on it.
Tools in the toolshed
Everybody can use a helping hand from time to time. And software is exactly that for content marketers.
Author bio:
Mary Clare Novak is a Content Marketing Associate at G2 in Chicago. A recent graduate, she is happy to be back working in her favorite city. In her free time, you can find her doing a crossword puzzle, listening to cover bands, or eating fish tacos.
