If you create contenꦜt for a living to drive traffic, leads, and sales for your company, you know how hard a struggle it can be.

But with machine learning and AI, new tools are coming to market ꦑall the time to make the proceꦐss easier. 

The challenge today, then, is to use these tools smartly wit💖hout sacrificing the human elements that real༒ly matter: Expertise,ღ storytelling, emotion, and insight. 

Below, I'm going to share the apps and tools I use regularly to produce a good portion of the content you interact with on this very websi🎃🌞te.

I'm not talking about 澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:marketing automation software or 澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:website hosting in this list, though. While those are critical to digital marketing operations, this list is all about the invaluable tools and apps (many of them free!) that help the content sausage get made.

Below, I'll list out XX of my favorites, incl🎉uding screenshots, links, and other goodies so you can see what you'll be work🍨ing with.

Get ready to make your life easier!

The true aim of content marketing

Before we dive into the list, remember this: The true goal of content marketing should be educating your customers. At the end of the day, the slickest, sꦗleekest blog article will get passed over for one that's genuinely helpful and candid.

The central purpose of your content should be answering customer questions. If you've got this in mind — what we call 澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:They Ask, You Answer — you're on the right track.

And these tools will help you move forward more smoothly, more quickly, and more efficiently than you have before🌃.

24 Content marketing strategy tools and apps

These first ones are 澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:content marketing tools and apps for when you're putting together content strategies, performing keyword research, and so 𝔉forth.

1.

Let's start strong with Semrush's end-to-end Content Marketing Platform that helps you to build a data-informed content strategy 🎉focused on your audience's needs.

This tool is super helpful when planning each step of the content marketing workflow, from ideation to planning, ဣcreation, optimization, and measurement.

This🌠 is my go-to to♈ol for keyword and traffic research.

You can actually add topics to your editorial calendar right within the platform. That way, you can manage all your activi🅘ties (along with your colleagues) and track campaign perform꧂ance.

To get started, type in a keyword you want to focus on. Then, the platform generates a brief with optimization tips taken from your top competition in search results. It will deli🤪ver recommendations on everything — ideal length of your content, the number of links and sema𓃲ntic keywords you should include, and much, much more.

The platform also has a rich-text editor, where you can test the 🐎content that targets a particular keyword. It gives tips on SEOꦗ, readability, and tone of voice. This is available as a Google Doc add-on and WordPress plugin.

Then, yo𝄹u can use the AI💦-powered composer to edit, tweak, and wordsmith what you've already produced.

And there's more.

After writing your content, you can audit it right within Semꦐrush. Combining data from Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Semrush right in the platform, you can analyze any content that is published on third-party sites — either your guest posts or your competitors’ art♏icles.

There are paid and free versions. .

2.

Ano🙈ther great content ideation and strategy planning tool comes from Ahrefs and is called . This tool empowers you to peruse the ಌtop-performing content pieces online for a specific topic:

Ahrefs offers a free trial of the product, but i🅺f you like it, you'll have to buy it.

3.

Answer the Public is a powerful visual keyword research tool. It looks like this:

It﷽'s similar to Semrush's Keyword Magic tool, but it's a lot more visual (obviously), wh🐲ile also delivering more "human" ideas about what searchers are asking about a given topic.

The only thing to keep in mind is that you are limited to a cဣertain number of free search queries pꦛer day – it♊ used to be unlimited, but as of this update, that's no longer the case.

4.

There are a lot of other robust tools and apps ouཧt there to help you with your content marketing, but Google Trends is not one to skip.

The si𝄹mplicity of Google Trends be𝓡lies its usefulness.

This is an incredibly valu🐓able tool for you to quickly compare related terms to see which has higher search volume, catch topics in your niche on th💛e rise, and so on.

It's a must-have. And it's free.

Content creation tools and apps

This next batch contains content marketi🧜ng tools and apps for when you're creating content or collaborating with colleagues.

5.

Since its release in the fall of 2022, ChatGPT has been a game-changer. Parent company OpenAI has dropped i🔜m🔯pressive updates and sleek new tools with ever-improving performance. 

You can access the less powerful ChatGPT-3.5 for free, but 🦄the state-of-the-art ChatGPT-4 wil🍰l cost you $20 per month.

You can use plugins to help the tool do more — like read a URL or do SEO research — and you can design a custom GPT for a specific task. (In this post, my colleague Mandy York explains how she bui🏅lt a cus💃tom GPT that saves her 20 hours per week.)

Personally, I use ChatGPT for summarizing and pulling quotes from transcripts, which had been a laborious proce🍰ss. I also use it as a brainstorming tool. Remember, if you're going to publish anything generated by AI, make sure you fact-che✤ck it first. AI can hallucinate and plagiarize, so it's on you to double check. 

6. & 7.

Dall-E and Sora 𓄧are image and video creation tools powered by OpenAI. At this po🐬int, the outputs still have an inauthentic look to them, but the technology is progressing so rapidly that you must pay attention to them.

For example, here's Dall-E's output from the following prompt: Create a colorful view of the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset, with birds flying in the distance and a large boat going under the bridge. 

If you're stuck paying Shutteꦉrstock for images, it probably won't be long before generat𝓰ive AI can be a viable replacement.

Sora looks even more impressive, generating photo-real video from simple promptsꦜ. While it has not yet been widely released, the initial outputs look stunning:

8.

Trust me when I say Noisli is life-changing.

I used to spend so much time at work trying to find the 澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:perfect w🌞ork playlist on Spotify to keep me on track, but most of the time I find mys♈elf distracted by mu♍sic.

is a stunning, minimalist (and free!)🧔 ꦅbackground noise generator. Or, as they like to say, Noisli is “your productivity companion.”

There are  showing the positive effects of๊ ambient noise o꧃n productivity. Now, I’m a total convert, and it’s pretty much all I listen to when I’m trying to get wor🎶k done.

With my free Noisli account, I’ve created and saved custom blends of sounds— which you control using the soundboard shown on the left — that can set the tone for my entire working day.

Sound options include rain, thunderstorm, wind, forest, leaves, water stream, seaside, water, bonfire, summer night, fan, train, coffee shop, white noise, pink noise෴, and brown noise. Not sure what those are? You'll have to check out the app!

There are a lot of ambient noise soundboards out there, but Noisli takes the cake for me because of its simplicity. Within secoꦰnds of firing up the totally free website, my Chrome extension, or the app, I'm off and running.

Fun fact: You can also share blends of sounds wi♓th other people.

Noisli is available for free through the website. There is also a  and  available for $1.99.

9.

If you think back to high school and cringe at the cluttered and distracting writing experience of Microsoft Word, check out .

Bear (available only for iPhone, iPad, and Mac) is an app that's all 🦩about𓄧 empowering users to "write beautifully." And it does that so very well.

For a long while, it was my go-to for the drafting of every piece of content I created – blog articles, pillar pages, scripts, you name it. Especially since, in addition to 澳洲幸♏运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:comprehensive and lengthy content creation, Bear can also be used ✱as an Evernote-esque n✱otes application, making it quite versatile.

Bear is free, but if you splurge on the paid version ($2.99 per month), you can enjoy custom themes, syncing across multiple devices, and exporting capabilities.

10.

Ulysses is a neat alternative to 𒆙Bear, and thousands of writers and content creators swear by it for their writing and drafting needs.

Fair warning, Ulysses (which is subscription-based) is not for the faint of heart. However, it only took me five minutes of using it to become a full convert. (Like Bear, it's also only available for folks who have a🉐 Mac, iPad, or iPhone.)

The wide range of fea🧜tures is positively bananas. Because this app has such a devout following, it has the revenue stream that allows it to be more developed and less buggy than other competitors.

To be clear, I don't think this app is for everyone. For 🤪some, it may be overkill♔.

That said, if yo🔜u're someone who creates a ton of content, and you're struggling to find a way to bring order to the disorganized mess of Google Docs folders, Ulysses is for you. If you want the ability to set goals, see stats, and easily create polished, designed versions of your creations with a couple of clicks, give Ulysses a try.

After a free trial, Ulysses costs $5.99 per month, with cheaper options for students.

11. 澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:Blogabout

Blogabout is a tool we created at IMPACT to help you al🎃ign with your buyers. Ever wonder what questions are on your customers' minds? The best way to find out is to talk to actual customers and to y🌃our sales team.

The second best way is to use Blogabout. Just enter a bit of inf🅠ormation and you'll get dozens of blog topics to help you fill up that content calendar. 

12.

Descript is an all-in-one video and audio editing tool. You can e🐈dit videos as easily as you can edit a Google doc, you can pull transcripts from videos, and you can splice in🐭 AI-cloned voiceovers when someone flubbs a line. 

Honestly, the tool is p🌠retty impressive, and it adds new features all the time — including the AI-powered ability to keep your talent's eyes on camera.

There is a limi𓄧ted free version, and paid tiers start at $12 per mont🔴h. 

13.

A year ago, 🌄I hated being on camera. Today, while I'm still a little squeamish, I'm pretty sure I use the Vidyard Chrome Extension more than any other tool in my arsenal.

I use this free screen capture 🦂and webcam recording tool to:

• Create internal team videos. Since so many employees are remote now, sending a video is an easy and efficient way of communicating. It's the equivalent of walking over to someone's desk for a chat.
• Film short videos to include in blog articles to punch up an otherwise ho-hum piece of content really nicely.
• Provide strategic guidance to content creators. A quick video is the shortest path to alignment on content initiatives.

IMPACT's sales team also swears by Vidyard's Chrome Extension for personalized, one-to-one sales videos. (If your team isn't using 澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:video for sales, it's time to level-up your sales process.)

Vidyard Chrome Extension is 100% free!

14.

I don't want to bother graphic designers when I just 😼need simple graphics for a piece of content I'm creating, so I use Canva — a fantastic free design platform.

Obviously, Canva shouldn't take the place of your designers entirely. Canvaಌ works for putting together quick social media graphics, accent images for content you're creating, and so forth.

With an ever-expanding number of AI tools, Canva keeps upping its♕ game for content creato🥂rs. 

Canva is free, but it also has a , as well as for teams of 20 or more.

15.

Placeit is a webꦿsite for creating mockups — which can be richly helpfuཧl for content marketers. You can put an image on a computer, a phone, or pretty much anything else.

Do they look good? Well,ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ the end product is going to depend on your eye for what a good uploaded screen capture looks like. But the short answer is yes, definitely.

In fact, here are🔥 a few examples of ones I've made for other pieces of content...

(Used in an article on 澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:images⛎ vs. no im𝔉ages in email newsletters.)

(A quick little image I threw together of.)

The final product📖 of your Placeit mockup — whether it's a t-shirt, b𒉰ook, computer screen, smartphone, tablet, or mug — will depend on the quality and placement of the image you upload.

Placeit is about $10 per month for unlimited downloads.

Proofreading tools and apps for content marketers

Next up are the essential tꦦools to help your writing shine. Use 💮these to make sure you're always putting your best prose foot forward.

16.

Whether you’re a seasoned content creator or you’re a new kid on the marketing block, you undoubtedly know how hard it is to write and e🀅dit your own work — because you are🧔 too close to your writing to gauge its quality.

Thankfully, someone created .

The Hemingway app forces you to evaluate the readability of your work. It tells you what grade level your work reads at, and it scans your work f🐼or sentence complexity, passive voice, and overuse of adverbs.

While you have the option to write directly in the Hemingway app itself, I find these kinds of mark-ups to be very distracting while I am trying to form my ideas for the fi✤rst time.

Instead, I usually type my first draft in Bear and then🧸 copy it over to Hemingway when I'm ready to switch my brain over to editing mode. (But how you choose to use this app is entirely up to you!)

There's a🍨lso an AI-powered writing assistant at your beck and call.

You can use Hemingway for free through your web browser at , or you can download the desktop version for $19.99.

17.

Draftback is a free Chꦚrome extension that provides tons of insights into your writing process in Google Docs. You can see how long you spent writing a given document, when and how you made revisions, and more.

You can even watch a full recording of your actual writing process, should you ꦓwish to make yourself suffer.

Draftback is free!

18.

I kn🙈ow, I know. At first, this free-to-use website lo▨oks exceedingly straightforward — and it kind of is.

You copy and paste your text into a frills-free box, and you get some data about how many 🌠words you wrote.

But if you don't scroll down the page, you'll miss three of my favorite things about 🎉this powerful little website:

You can see how long it takes to 🐲rꦆead or speak your content!

On top of that, you get a slew of reading statistics. My favorite thing, however, is that it measures what's called "keyword density," where you can see how many one-, two-, or three-word terms or phrases you repeat thr𝓡oughout your ꦯcontent.

I love that last feature because, not only can I see how many times I feature a keyword (for optimization purposes), I can also catch one of my most common writing ticks with ease — constantly reusi♕ng the same words and phrases.

19.

Grammarly for Google Docs 🔯is not a separate tool from standard Grammarly. It's just a feature that is incredibly valuable for writers.

For those unfamili൲ar, Grammarly is a standalone desktop and web app that also has a Google Chrome e🌃xtension that scans your writing in various places across the web (or as input by you) and provides editorial suggestions.

It's not per💛fect. As with any technology, there are a few limitations to the tool, but it's great having a digital second set of eyes on what you're writing.

Please remember that no automated editorial assistant is infallible. Grammarly doesn't fully replace the need for you to proof your own work. You must review every suggested edit; never blindly accept them all.

Like everything else on thꦺe web these days, Grammarly offers an AI writing assistant that I've found marginal🌳ly helpful. 

Grammarly is free, although , as it scans for more nuanced grammar issues that can weaken the quality of your writing.

Content marketing collaboration tools and apps

These are project managemen🐽t and collaboration-type tools to help keep your ♛content marketing initiative humming along.

20.

I can't imagine my life without Trello.

I use it to manage all of my projects and tasks as an individual contributor, broken down by content I'm on the hook for creating, strategic content objectives, team management and administrative tasks, tasks that a🍬re currently under review, completed items, and stalled tasks.

And we've us🦹ed it to manage the pipeline for our video strategy:

I'm a long-time GatherContent devotee (and I'm going to talk about that next), but for ongoing pipeline management Trello can't be beat.

It🏅's lightweight and easy to start using immediately. You can set up automated notifications for when something is due soon, due now, or overdue. You can keep all communication around a single task ✤in one place. You can customize and adjust your Trello pipeline structure in mere seconds.

Honestly, I can't imagine going back to a world without Trello. I remember trying to wrangle a disorganized serꦇies of Google Docs and an endless stream of, "Hey, did you see m𓄧y comments on such-and-such draft? I'm not sure when it's due, but..."

With Trello, all of that pain went away.

Trello has a free version, . I've been using the free option for some time, and even at that level, it works really well!

21.

ClickUp describes itself as the one app to replace all the others.

At IMPACT, we've been all-in on ClickUp for a few years now, and I have to say thaꦓt I'm a total believer.

At its heart, ClickUp is a project management tool, and we use it ๊to collaborate, traꦆck comments, and stay organized and monitor time commitments as we move our complex tasks forward.

There's a𒁏 whiteboard feature, tons of integrations, a pretty nifty AI tool, and intuitive functionality that make keeping aligned easy.

ClickUp is also highly customizable and always seems to be rolling out new features, so it can d🐠o pretty much anything you need.

ClickUp has a free version, with higher tiers for teams and bigger companies.

22.

Video is one of the most powerful mediums of content you can create. If your company creates marketing and sales videos that require feedback from loꦺts of people — as they often do — you are going to ab♊solutely love Frame.io.

Frame.io is so easy, anyone can use it. Once a rough cut of a video is ready for ♛review by your teams, you can share a link. With a co🐓uple of clicks, folks can quickly add comments anywhere in the video.

Frame.io has a free version, as well as .

Images and photography

In the wrong hands, 澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:s🅰tock photography can be the kiss of death. That said, there are ways to leverage stock photography 澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线🐭查询开奖结果:so♏ it actually elevates your content. Custom photography is not always an option and, as we said before, AI doesn't🃏 always look right. 

Additionally, you need to read the licensing parameters for every photo or image you ever download. Otherwise, if you improperly use an image (for example, some are only licensed for editorial use, even if you buy them), or don't cite an image source correctly, if required, you could end up in a lot of costly legal trouble.

So, with those caveats in mind, here are my two favorite stock p🃏hotography 🍌websites.

23.

I love that I can sort images by orientation, image type, color, diversity, ge🐈nder, and so on. Shutterstock makes finding the right image quickly a cinch. Also, in addition to still images, you can find footage and music.

With Shutterstock, you can buy each image individually, .

24.

Keeping in mind that you need to be really ca⛎reful a🔯bout attribution and image use (unless you like inviting legal troubles to your doorstep), Pexels is a great stock image site if you're in a pinch.

Why? Because every image is 100% free and you don't need an ♏account to use it.

Keep in mind, however, 𒅌that the selection on Pex🥀els is extremely limited, compared to what you'd find on a site like Shutterstock.

But it's great for broad, thematic im🍨ages that fit a more modern (and a less 1990s, early 2000s) aesthetic.

Pexels is free. Hooray!

Remember, the best content hack is honesty

Even though all 24 of these tools and apps have revolutionized the way I think about and approach my work, the best piece of advice I can give you about h꧟ow to boost your content strategy and creation capabilities is this:

澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:Be honest and caꦓndid in your content. Speak to your customers the way you want to be spoken to when you're looking to buy. 澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:Answer their questions and think of yourself as a teacher first.

Remember, no a𒊎pp or program can tell you what your problem is or fix a writing or collaboration 🦋roadblock you can't identify; they can only help you once you have some idea of what pain point you’re trying to address.

Take a good look at your entire content c💫reation process and look for places a 🐎new tool could improve things.

So, while I think each of you will like at least one of these apps, I hope you’ll also do yourselves a favor. Figure out which are the most important content challenges you're trying to solve before you download anything I've recommended here.

And if you need help, 澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:talk to the IMPACT team. We know that the right content is vitaꦫl to b🅷uilding trust with your audience. We can show you how.