Cool Content Creation and Marketing Tools

For content creators, the right tools can help in several ways, from helping you organize your thoughts, come up with great ideas, and create a wider variety of content. And for content creators who also manage contributions from others, there are tools that can help streamline the pitch, submission, and editing processes.

Here are 25 Cool Content Creation and Marketing Tools that help.

Editorial Calendars

Whether you are a one-person content creator or part of a content development team, editorial calendars can help you keep things on track. For businesses that tend to focus on revenue-generating projects, editorial calendars also keep you from forgetting to update the blog that attracts business.

Here are some tools to use.

Google Calendar

Looking for something simpler? Google Calendar also does a great job at allowing you to manage content dates with people both inside and outside of your organization. If your content creation lies within your organization only, Outlook Calendar also works.

Trello

Trello is a project management tool that can easily be utilized as an editorial calendar for content. You can create a board for your blog, multiple lists that represent different stages of the editorial process (idea pitches, article submission, editing, publishing, promoting, etc.).

Content Management Tools

Having content creators enter their content into WordPress is a great way to simplify the content submission process. For those who prefer to keep access to their CMS restricted to a small group, or those who have outside content contributors for other platforms such as YouTube, SlideShare, etc., here are some tools that will help convene content into one place.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a popular file sharing service that allows you to create shared folders with others to send content files such as documents, images, videos, and other media.

Google Drive

Google Drive (formerly Docs) is also a great file sharing service. It's especially helpful in the editorial process as multiple people can edit and leave comments on documents as well as upload files related to each piece of content.

OneDrive

OneDrive is the one place for everything in your work and personal life. It gives you free online storage for all your personal files so you can get to them from your iOS device, computer (PC or Mac), and any other devices you use.

Project Management Tools

Tools like Trello, Basecamp, and other project management tools can help you incorporate your calendar, file sharing, and editing all into one tool. Most allow for file attachments per task.

Topic Generators

If you're stuck on coming up with new content ideas, here are some tools that will help you discover what your audience is interested in and even lay out titles for you.

Content Forest Title Tool

Content Forest's Title Tool allows you to input a keyword and anywhere from 10 - 100 blog title ideas to go with it. Be sure to save the ideas and use them for future reference.

Portent's Title Maker

Want title ideas plus fun quips and tips? Try Portent's Idea Generator. You supply the keyword, and it supplies some witty titles to go with it.

Idea Generators

If you want to spark even more ideas for your content, here are tools you can use to see what your audience wants.

Feedly

Start by subscribing to popular blogs in your industry using Feedly. This will allow you to view lots of titles in one screen. You will also get to see which pieces of content are the most popular on social media.

Rank Tracker

Want to know what your audience searches? Rank Tracker will give you the top suggestions for keywords that you enter, which could leave you with over 200 new content ideas.

Image Creators

Great images are vital for content - they make your articles stand out on social networks when shared by others, they can help you get traffic from both Google web and image search, they turn dull presentations into captivating ones, and so much more. Here are some tools that make image creation simple

Canva

Canva is a free tool you can use to create images for different purposes, including blog posts and social media. While there is a specific category of templates for blog images, you may want to go through other categories to find different sizes, designs, and text options.

Jing

Jing allows you to capture custom-sized screenshots for your content. You can also annotate your screenshots with text, boxes, and highlighting to make them even more valuable for your audience.

Survey Tools

Surveys can be the foundation of great content. You can use them to collect expert tips, customer insights, and much more. Here are some tools you can use to collect and analyze survey data.

Survey Monkey

SurveyMonkey is a popular survey tool that allows you to collect responses for a survey, analyze the data, and export it in PDF format for easy sharing amongst other content creators on your team.

Google Forms

If you prefer a free survey solution, Google Forms are the answer. You can create a Google Form with different question formats, and Google will automatically create a spreadsheet to collect the answers. While there is no automatic analysis or easy PDF export of the responses, it is easy enough to copy and paste the answers out of the Google Spreadsheet and into a document.

Screencasting Tools

Screen recordings can make for great video content, especially tutorials and demos. Here are the top two popular tools for creating them, depending on whether you are PC or Mac.

Screenflow

Screenflow is a Mac-based software for screen recording and editing for video demos, tutorials, training, and presentations. You can connect Screenflow to Google Drive, Dropbox, Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms for faster sharing and publishing.

Camtasia

Camtasia is screen recording and editing software for both Mac and Windows users.  It's great for collaborating with content creators, regardless of whether they are using Mac or Windows. It even has a feature for imposing yourself within the video with a green screen effect.

Social Curation Tools

Sometimes, you don't have to actually create content yourself - you can use social media content that's already out there and ready to publish. Here are two ways to embed social media updates and turn it into a unique piece of content highlighting the views and opinions of others on specific topics.

Embeddable Social Media Posts

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Google+ allow you to embed public posts from their networks. Just look for the option to embed posts, which can be accessed using the "more" link when you hover over a tweet, the triple dots at the bottom right of an Instagram photo, or the dropdown arrow at the top right of Facebook and Google+ posts.

By embedding social posts, you automatically give credit to the original source. If you can include an embedded post from your own social networks, you can encourage even more discussion about the topic on your own platform.

Storify

If you would prefer to select posts from multiple networks and embed them with one piece of code, Storify is a great curation tool to try. You can grab content from Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Getty, Flickr, Instagram, and other sources.

Interview Recorders

Instead of just relying upon yourself to come up with great content, rely on others through one-on-one and group video interviews. In addition to giving your audience a new perspective on a topic, your interviewee will likely help you with the promotion of your content. Here are some tools that most are familiar with when it comes to recording interviews.

Skype

Skype allows you to conduct one-on-one and group video calls with up to five people. Use this when you want to record interviews to edit and share at a later time on your blog or YouTube channel.

Google+ Hangouts

For one-on-one and group video interviews with up to 10 people, try Google+ Hangouts. In addition to recording the video, you can stream it live and give your audience the ability to chat live with you and your guest(s). It's almost like having a webinar, but on a free platform.

Content Marketing Tools

Content marketing is a large part of SEO strategy today. According to new research from Content Marketing Institute, MarketingProfs and Marketo (B2B Enterprise Content Marketing 2015) bigger companies use more tactics to target more audiences and have a more difficult time with overall effectiveness and measuring ROI – especially compared to small businesses and B2B content marketers overall.

According to the report, enterprise marketers are more challenged with nearly every aspect of content marketing when compared with B2B marketers overall. Last year 70% of marketers were creating more content and in this year’s report, 65% are creating more. But is more better?

As it can be difficult to determine what content to publish when and where, marketers need plenty of valuable tools in their arsenal – it is even more difficult to calculate that content’s return on investment (ROI), manage the content marketing team, and curate content.

TrenDemon

TrenDemon is the perfect tool if you’ve been struggling to quantify ROI of your content marketing efforts. The tool analyzes your content and provides real-time, personalized recommendations to help boost your conversions.

ClickMeeting

ClickMeeting offers a teleconferencing software that makes it easy to meet with your team and flesh out the next phase of your content marketing plan.

Share your desktop with others to make it easier to demonstrate tasks. Save your teleconferences for later viewing, in case a team member could not attend the live event. The software is also useful for creating webinars that can be used to train team members on any company specific workflows. Since the webinars can be saved and shared later, you can create quick and easy a training library to make onboarding new team members easier.

CoSchedule

CoSchedule is a platform that allows you to work your social media activity into your editorial calendar, right within the WordPress platform. Multiple people can access the calendar if need be, and tasks can be assigned so you can easily see who is responsible for what. By managing your editorial calendar and social media posts in a single place, you save time.

The tool makes it easy to re-share old posts and bring fresh traffic. It integrates with many other tools besides WordPress, tools like Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Analytics, Buffer, and more.

Curata

Curata offers content curation software and a content marketing platform to make your content management more efficient. It helps you cut through the “noise” on the Internet and find out what’s most likely to be relevant and interesting to your audience no matter your niche. Then, it gives you the chance to go through the list of resources, take notes and organize all so you can choose what to share, what comments to add, and where you want to share it.

Curata makes it easy to take the content you find and share it across all your channels on whatever schedule you choose. It integrates with many popular content management systems, social channels, and email marketing platforms to make sharing content easy.

With all these tools, content creation and marketing management becomes much easier. You’ll have everything you need to easily track and monitor ROI, communicate with the team behind content creation, curate content, and more. what do you think?

Why Domain Age Is Matter!

One Search Engine Optimization Related question which is often asked is how much domain age is important for SEO or Why Domain Age Is Matter?

Some marketing professionals might suggest that domain age is “not to worry about.” The truth is that domain age evidently matters – but there are other reasons beyond Search Engine Optimization concerns as to why this is true. We will count a number of different reasons.

However, before we continue, it is important to realize that domain age is not about how long that specific domain name has been in your possession. Instead, it means the amount of time that has passed since Google first indexed that particular domain (or saw a link to it). Remember, the site has to be indexed by Google for it to mean that Google considers it 10 years old. Just because you have registered the domain a decade ago does not mean the same thing.

Established Reputation

Many companies are spending a great deal of their advertising budget to build up trust and reputation among their consumer and target audiences.

There are Many websites where you could buy aged domains with established trust and good reputation. While it is hideous task to build and manage online reputation; You might be getting a shortcut towards reputation management when you buy a domain that has an established reputation over time.

Where to buy old domains?: Here's few websites offer Domain Auction.

• GoDaddy Auctions
• Sedo
• Flippa
• Namecheap Domain Auction
• SnapNames

Traffic

If you are buying an aged expired domain, you are more likely to getting at least some traffic along with it. This is why many internet marketer are looking for a expired domain that has been around for some time. This can save you both time and money, but remember that you are likely paying more for a domain that enjoys a great deal of traffic.

Old domains may carry more weight due to their past records (i.e. old backlinks pointing to them) – this can be a good point to consider but then again if you are serious about your brand, keep in mind that an established domain already has associations and history before you own it and they might be hard to conquer.

The Trust Factor

It is important to remember that Google gives “trusted and user-friendly” websites higher preference on their organic ranking. This means that in order to safeguard against fraudulent websites that are here-today-gone-tomorrow. How many times have we seen a website flourish; only to be gone in a few months after potential advertisers have given them their money?

Simply put, established sites are more credible than those that are just starting up. Especially if you are starting an online business where you are going to sell products, it is important that your prospective buyers are able to look at your domain age and feel comfortable – assured that you are going to actually provide them with their purchased product.

SEO & Ranking in Google

As we already know about, There is a certain amount of debate about exactly how important domain age is to your ability to rank well, but testing and experience by SEO professionals paints a pretty clear picture that an older domain age competes for rankings a bit better. In fact, Google has even stepped forward to tell us a little bit about the importance of domain age, though as usual they’re still holding their cards close to their chest.

Here’s the basics of what we know:

• Domain age is a factor in determining Google rankings, and a part of our SEO.
• Sites are significantly devalued for the first few months after Google first discovers them. It is extremely challenging to rank well for competitive terms in those first few months. In fact, some SEO professionals simply won’t work with brand new domains.
• According to Google’s Matt Cutts, the difference between a domain that’s 6 months old and 12 months old is very small

What Google’s matt Cutts has to say on domain age, Here is a video from Google’s Matt Cutts on the subject:

One of the very important things to note here is that Matt does not say that domain age doesn’t matter. There are a handful of people out there who insist this is the case, and cite Matt Cutts as the source. In point of fact, he clearly indicates that very young domains will struggle to rank, and goes on to mentions the difference between domain ages, saying that they are small… clearly indicating that there is, in fact, a difference.

“The difference between a domain that’s six months old vs one year old is really not that big at all. As long as you’ve been around for at least a couple of months, you should be able make sure that you can show up in search results.”

But as with all things in the SEO world, domain age is just one of many, many factors and it is certainly not one of the biggest factors (those would be on-page optimization and backlinks). Older domains will certainly have a little bit of an edge, but the importance of their age is often confused with the fact that older domains also tend to have a lot more backlinks (and natural backlinks) just due to the fact that they’ve had so many years to acquire them.

What do you think about domain age? Share your tips and tricks in the comments.

Facebook’s New Logo

Image Credit: Facebook promotional photo

Jun 30, 2015, Christophe Tauziet, a product designer at Facebook, shared a shot of the new Facebook logo.

So far feedback on the new logo from Facebook’s 1.44 billion or so users is sparse, and that’s for a few good reasons. Most importantly, the design doesn’t appear to have even rolled out yet — a visit to Facebook.com (logged out) reveals the original logo we’ve known and tolerated for about ten years.

All we currently have to go on is Tauziet’s snapshot of the logo printed on a rolled up t-shirt, which conceals many of the design’s subtleties, but there are some clear changes:

Overall, the design is far more rounded, and a whole heap more friendly. There’s slightly less weight, aided by slightly more contrast, which makes the logotype less aggressive. It is far less corporate, in the ironic manner in which many web-era corporate logos are less corporate.

The "F" logo hasn't been updated to all pages just yet, including the Brand Permissions page. However, it has been added as the picture to Facebook's Twitter account.

Other official pages have received logo refreshes in the past few weeks, from the security badge to the privacy icon. The redesigned logos feature Facebook's signature blue color as a background to create a more streamlined, uniformed look.

What do you think of the new logo and icons? Will you miss the light blue line? Comment Below.

Why Infographics Still Matter in Search Engine Optimization

While 90% of cases infographics are poorly designed and researched, it’s unfair to write off such a valuable media type. A good infographic empowers reader understanding by breaking down complex information into digestible, visual chunks.

In this article, I’m going to explain why high-quality infographics remain an important weapon in the inbound marketer’s arsenal.

1. Infographics are Shareable, Linkable and Evergreen Assets

According to Hubspot, 40% of people will respond better to visual information than text, while photos/images on Facebook get shared five times more than text.

The infographic has jumped on the visual bandwagon, exploding as a form of shareable content and guaranteeing marketers measurable results.

Infographics also provide evergreen content. A controversial news story or survey might gain you a spike of social shares if it reaches the ”right audience” at the ”right time”, but from my experience this type of PR is a lot more hit and miss. With an infographic, you have a permanent linkable asset that retains relevancy and will get shares months after it’s published on your website.

2. Infographic Research can be Recycled into a White Paper or Press Releases

This is where most people completely miss the boat with infographics. They’re not just about making stand-a-lone visual assets. A clever marketer will re-apply the same research and data for a white paper, press release or investigative piece. If your editors and content marketers have spent days undertaking research for an infographic then they should re-apply that knowledge elsewhere to create additional inbound marketing opportunities.

3. Infographics Enables Brands to Gain Traction and Links in Difficult, Complex Industries

One of my favorite things about infographics is that they can penetrate industries where the traditional barriers for content and guest posts is set very high.

For example, high frequency trading (HFT) is a technologically complex industry that revolves around microwave transmission cables, exchange internalization, microchips and more. There’s no way our team would’ve been able to write an article to a high enough standard in this industry.

However, when we launched a really simple infographic showing a time-line for the history of HFT, it was picked up and published by half a dozen reporters and bloggers in this market. In this example, our infographic gave us a way of cracking into the complex world of HFT that we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to do.

4. Earn Links form Outside your Industry

Following on from the above, infographics also allow sites in niche, difficult industries with little natural linkage (e.g. gambling) to earn links from other markets. This is because editors will often credit you for the infographic regardless of the contextual relevance or credibility of your site.

I developed an infographic on RightCasino.com that used the luck element in gambling as a springboard to examine the chances of arriving at any single piece of web content. This earned links from authority sites such as Cheezburger.com and Business2Community.com.

5. Help Build Editorial links in Guest Posts

The world of guest posting is changing and it’s becoming harder to acquire natural, editorially sanctioned links to your content. Webmasters are adopting stricter external linking policies. Infographics help provide an excuse to link back to your site whist providing value to the reader.

The strategy for promoting infographics via content marketing largely depends on the contact method. For example, on Twitter you need to keep messages short and simple – just ask for RT if someone has lots of followers. When you’re sending out press releases to journalists you don’t really need to personalize it since it’s all about the headline. If you’re reaching out to bloggers or looking to do a write-up however, you should personalize emails and say you’re happy to get one of your researchers to contribute an accompanying article with some additional ”unseen data”. This gives them an extra incentive to publish your work.

Never ask for a link, it should be naturally embedded into the content anyway. Given Google’s recent stance towards devaluing auto-embed links, it’s the editorial links in content that you’re after.

6. It’s Easier to Explain Complex Data, Facts and Figures through Visual Form

The human brain has a hard time processing large numbers and information. However, psychologyexperts have proven that visual aids have massive pedagogic and mnemonic value. Infographics condense important tables, charts and data into a single canvas. It’s more user-friendly to show the odds of winning the lottery on an infographic than publish a rambling page of charts, illustrations and tables. Information has to be digestible for it to go viral.

7. ”Stat-Jacking”: Journalists will often give you Link Credit for the Stats

This may be cheeky – but you’re not to blame. Many journalists will give you link credit for stats in your infographic even though the stats are from elsewhere (as noted in your references). Incidentally, the references in your infographic represent important linking leads.

8. Infographics don’t have to be Expensive

I know that 90% of infographics look rubbish; therefore I don’t want to extol the virtues of a one-hour infographic from fiverr. However, this doesn’t mean you need to fork out thousands on an infographic design agency either. For example, you can find plenty of high-quality freelance graphic designers from sites such as PeopleperHour.com and Microlance.com for as little as $500 if you’re willing to spend the time looking for them and organize your own research and briefs.

9. Infographics are Great Tools for News-jacking

News-jacking is the art of taking news events or stories and turning them into major marketing opportunities for your brand.

Infographics are good for news-jacking because they offer something to editors when they’re reporting on news stories. They’re particular useful for data release and analysis since they help convey figures more effectively. For example, imagine if Congress suddenly announced that the US had a trade deficit of $5 trillion. You could then use this data to create an infographic that shows what you could buy with this money e.g. $5 trillion equals ”50 private islands in the pacific” or ”a Ferrari for every citizen in the US”.

Another good news-jack example is CNBS’s infographic, which compared social chatter of Twitter’s IPO to Facebook’s IPO shortly after Twitter went public.

10. Infographics have Measurable Results and ROI

In Rand’s white-board Friday, he argued how on-page visual elements provide more value to marketers than infographics. The problem with his argument however is that they’re two separate things – visual elements are a form of content development; infographics are a form of PR and marketing.

The advantage of infographics is that they offer quick measurable results such as social shares, backlinks, citations and traffic. These results allow SEOs to create a comprehensive ROI report for their clients. It’s much harder on the other hand to measure the results of dozens of individual visual elements and justify the content spend.

I hope that you see the full potential of Infographics: a way to get quality backlinks to your site. If you enjoyed this article, Share your tips and tricks in the comments.