10 Apps to Make You a Better Content Marketer

The savviest marketers, whatever their concentration (SEO, social, email, etc.), know that acquiring and retaining customers on today's Web, starts and ends with good content. Whether that content is in the form of informative articles, share-worthy social posts, attention-grabbing ads, optimized landing page copy, clear calls-to-action or engaging emails, success is defined by the experience that users have with brands and content plays an integral role in that experience.

Content marketing can take on many forms, but at the end of the virtual day, creating copy or images that understand an audience's wants and needs and then publishing it in the most targeted way possible, is what impacts a brand's bottom line.

Here are 10 apps that any content marketer can use for inspiration, organization and distribution.

Inspiration

Feedly

Content marketers can cut down on research time with Feedly News Reader by browsing the content of their favorite news sites, RSS feeds, Tumblr blogs and YouTube channels - all from a single news reader. Additionally, marketers can keep their audiences in the loop by sharing content on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ directly or using Buffer. What's perhaps most useful for bloggers or those who have to produce informative pieces, is that they can save articles for later when they have time to explore a topic further.

Quora

People genuinely want to help other people. And, whether that is to show off their own skill-set or knowledgebase or simply help out of the goodness of their hearts, that's for you to determine, but Quora is a terrific resource to ask questions and get real answers from real people, with real experience (who truly want to help). Quora can  be used to generate content ideas (what questions are people asking and what answers are genuinely unavailable or misconceived), as well as to share content from your websites. 

Prompts - For Writers

Sometimes all a writer needs is a little nudge to get their thoughts flowing. Prompts for Writers offers more than 1,000 starting lines and creative writing prompts to inspire authors and perhaps improve their writing. Writer's block is a complete time suck, so Prompts can not only save a content marketer time, but it can also help them manage it, as the app includes writing stats to see which days and times users are at their best. 

Organization

Wunderlist 

Big content marketing projects - we're thinking white papers, magazines, webinars - are typically not put together by a single person. Instead, multiple people have different assignments. Wunderlist can enhance a team's productivity and get assignments turned in on time thanks to the ability to set due dates, share to-do lists and break big tasks into small achievable goals. 

iThoughts

Finally, an app that can map your mind (OK, with a little help). Typical uses of iThoughts include: task lists, brainstorming, project planning, goal setting and meeting notes. For content marketers, iThoughts can be used to organize ideas very similar to how we were taught to brainstorm in school (with a chart).

Evernote

Most Website Magazine readers are all too familiar with the concept, "always on," as they likely fall in this category themselves. The free Evernote app helps support that connected lifestyle by allowing users to remember everything across all the devices and products they use (computers, smartphones, tablets, Facebook, etc.). For those responsible for creating content to promote their businesses, Evernote enables them to research, store ideas, draft copy and more.

Toggl Time Tracker

It's easy to get caught up in rewriting content (and then rewriting it again). Toogl keeps content marketers honest by tracking the amount of time they spend on a certain project.

Dropbox

By 2016 the number of people who work remotely will reach about 63 million according to Forrester Research and all those people (some of which are definitely content creators) will need an efficient way to access and share files. Dropbox is about as good as it gets for this purpose. Remote teams, however, aren't the only ones using Dropbox for cloud storage. In fact, more than 4 million businesses use it to work smarter. It's really a heck of a lot easier to drop files into Dropbox than it is to organize and keep up with countless email threads. 

ENGAGEMENT

Google+

Google rebukes the idea that social signals are incorporated into its algorithm that ranks websites. More specifically, Matt Cutts who is the head of search spam (and also the face), said +1st have no direct impact on search rankings, but Google+ does hold a lot of digital goodies for content marketers who leverage it, including the ability to turn Google+ content into ads, Google authorship and much more. It's absolutely time to actively distribute content using Google+. Content marketers should treat this app the same way they do their Facebook or Twitter ones.

Snapchat

Savvy brands are beginning to use the newest social platform to engage users with unique content.

Did we miss your favorite? Let us know in the comments below!