When I first began content marketing, getting the jobs done that I needed to do was incredibly difficult. Had I known there were easier ways, I would have gotten off to a much better start.
Now that I have experience under my belt, I want to share with you some of the tools that I’ve discovered that make it easier to manage my content marketing. They also happen to make a lot of that marketing better.
There’s An App To Help With Everything, Including Content Marketing
Content marketing can be difficult, frustrating, and time consuming. Of course, anything worth the investment is going to be difficult. However, what if there were ways to ease some of the difficulty and make marketing your business through great content simpler?
Apps are the answer. As they say, “there’s an app for everything,” and using those apps correctly can change the way you content market. Put to use in the right ways, apps meant for all kinds of tasks can boost, enhance, or simplify your content marketing efforts.
Content Marketing Doesn’t Need Expensive Apps
While the apps we’re going to share with you here will help enhance your content marketing, they are by no means necessary. They’re a boost, and they’ll be totally useless if you don’t already have a content strategy in mind.
Don’t get so caught up in the technology that you fail to look at the finances. Many of these have a cost involved to get the best experience. However, while they make your life easier, you have to consider what you can afford and if the value is there.
The Apps That Will Boost Your Content Marketing
There are some amazing ways to boost your content marketing, and these apps will help you do just that. Here are 10 apps that we use as a part of our content marketing.
SoundCloud
Content marketing is best done when it takes many forms. One of the greatest forms that really gets your message spread is through a podcast. Podcasts are great for both demonstrating expertise and spreading awareness of your brand.
The SoundCloud app allows you to record a podcast right from your mobile device. No need for fancy equipment or expensive software. Just plug in your mic (the one on your headset works great), hit record, and start podcasting right away. Plus, your account comes with an RSS feed that allows you to get your podcast out to iTunes, Google Play Music, Spotify, and Stitcher.
Canva
Great content, both on blogs and in social media, requires great imagery. That’s what people are going to stop on more often than the title. The image catches their attention. You need to make sure you can produce what you need to with ease.
Imagine great graphics without the need for or knowledge of Photoshop. That’s what Canva is all about. It’s a browser native app with an iPhone and iPad counterpart, and it lets you easily create great graphics, PDFs, and just about any other image-intensive content you could need.
Hootsuite
Social media content takes time to do right. In most cases, it also takes time to get the posts out there. And, because some social media isn’t pre-schedulable (think Twitter and Instagram), you’ve got to remember to do it at the right times. That gets stressful after a while.
That’s where Hootsuite comes in to play. Managing all your social networks from a single phone app, you can preschedule your posts for every network they support. That includes Twitter and Instagram, too, which means you don’t have the stress of remembering if you posted often enough or at the right time. Just set your schedule and let Hootsuite keep you on task!
OneNote
Often, great ideas show up at inconvenient times. From articles you’d learn from to thoughts about future content, they’re ideas you don’t want to lose. But pen and paper doesn’t always work, and getting out your laptop isn’t always convenient.
That’s where OneNote comes in to play. Open OneNote on your mobile device and enter a quick note in to one of your “NoteBooks” (the way OneNote helps you organize notes), put it away, and move on. When you get back to your desk, there those notes are, waiting for you in the OneNote desktop app, automatically synced through your Microsoft account. Never lose your ideas again.
Wondershare Filmora
Vlogs are another great form of content. They help build your brand’s credibility more than podcasts with the use of added visuals. They also reach a higher percent of your audience because they use more than one medium of communication.
Filmora is one of the easiest to use high quality video editors I’ve ever spent time with. And, with a cost far lower than Adobe Premier (which is also very complicated for the average person), it’s a truly accessible way to edit video clips in to high-quality vlogs. It’s also got some great pre-styled animations for title and credit sequences to really help you out.
Audacity
If you’ve started podcasting using SoundCloud, you may want to step it up to the next level. Maybe it’s time to add a little intro and outro music, some special audio effects (if you’re in to that), or just clean up the sound recorded on a higher-end podcast mic. You’ll need software for that.
Audacity is a full-featured recording software that allows you to mix channels, edit clips, organize and mix tracks, and clean the audio clips you record. Plus, you can filter any of your tracks with their pre-installed filters. As an open-source software, you can extend it in any number of ways, including custom filters and controls. There is really nothing that Audacity can’t handle.
Facebook Pages Manager
Facebook Pages Manager has an interesting place in this list. The native Facebook app does a great job of managing your Facebook page on its own, as does Facebook in the browser. It’s Instagram comment management that kind of sucks natively.
Facebook Pages Manager handles your Instagram comments much better, allowing you to respond, reply, tag, and delete comments on any of your Instagram posts. Just pop the app open, respond, and mark as done. The to-do style notifications are a convenient feature too, allowing you to see what you’ve handled and check them off when you’re done.
Franz
Dear lord, the number of messaging apps out there are insane. Facebook Messenger, Twitter & Instagram DMs, Telegram, Slack, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Trello… The list seems endless. How can you possibly work with that many apps at the same time?
Franz is how. As a desktop-only app (no word on a mobile version yet), Franz is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It allows you to open all your messaging platforms in one window, giving you an ease of management that you wouldn’t normally see. Now you can communicate with your followers on any platform from one convenient location.
Adobe InDesign
Unfortunately, sometimes expensive software makes a list like this. Usually, though, I only include it when its value is beyond ignoring. That’s why I’ve included Adobe InDesign on this list.
InDesign allows you to format books, brochures, pamphlets, and other high-quality, multi-page material with accuracy and ease. Include the ability to insert vector graphics directly in to the content (without having to convert to PNG or some other rasterized format) and you have a formula for the best possible content publications out there. I definitely recommend this for eBooks, but use it for all of your PDF and print content.
Pixabay
Like I said when discussing Canva, great imagery is everything. However, finding good photos as a base can be expensive. In the ideal case, you want to have photos that are unique to your site and your content. A photographer is always the best bet.
However, when custom photography isn’t an option, stock photos are the way to go. When it comes to things like your website, if stock photos are necessary, opt to spend money on good ones. For your content, however, free stock photos licensed under CC0 or public domain. Thankfully, Pixabay as a site offers just that, and their mobile app allows you to get pictures that can quickly be shared over social media.
Connecting With Your Audience Is Most Important
Where content really shines is when it connects with an audience. Facebook Live, Periscope, and Instagram Live all have the unique ability to converse with your clients as the content. And that’s the real connection.
Learn to make your content become a real conversation and watch your results soar.
