5 tools I used every day to create content
Since I joined GDPR365, a startup providing a cloud-based GDPR software to demonstrate compliance, it was obvious that creating more content was needed to answer the user search intent. All our prospects may not know that such a solution exists, so I decided to create content to tackle down what prospect are looking for. So how do you get new ideas? And how do you give it birth?
How to get new ideas?
Every day you need to get new ideas. What you going to write about? Sometimes inspiration is not coming so here are the 2 tools helping me to create content.
Feedly to gather everything in one place
Instead of jumping from website to another, gathering all “feeds” in one place can help to see what you may want to write about. With 60% of the web running on Wordpress, you get any feed from any website by adding /feed at the end on the main domain. Hopefully, Feedly allows you to search for feeds and keywords to find the best source of information. It’s free, but you will rapidly see that upgrading to the paid version is inevitable. You will be able to add more sources, create thematic boards, and have more sharing options. In addition, if you connect it to Zapier, a new world of automation is opening before you.
Price: 5$/month
SEMrush to track and get fresh ideas
Writing content for the sake of writing content is not enough. You need to analyze the results of what you are doing, what your competitors are doing, and be sure what the users are looking for so you can match the demand.
Tracking is not all. With SEMrush, you can also track your competitors and monitor the well-being of your website. If your SEO is having a tough time, the software will tell you when it happens and you need to need to do every step of the way to recover a good health score.
It comes at a price, but if you are a content marketer or you want your blog to grow, it’s the solution. Think as if it was like hiring another marketer a fraction of the price.
Price: Starting from 99$/month
A fancy headline for your blog post
Every time you are reading something about writing for the web, everything is about to create the perfect headline. But when you have your headline, how do you know how it’s going to be perceive.
The Advanced Marketing Institute has created a tool helping you to evaluate the Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) your headline depending on the industry you are writing content for.
Not to get into details, that you can get here, the score given, will help you to attribute a emotional score to your title. Very helpful, to stand out the lousy crowd. By experience, the tool is giving you a real insight and add dimension to you piece.
Price: FREE
Create the best visuals.
After years using the fit-it-all software GIMP, I was satisfied with it. But I discover Adobe Spark. Once you have done your branding; logo and set of colors, you can create any type of visuals; social posts, eye-catching presentations, leaflet and so on. Since it’s an Adobe product, you can merge it to other Adobe product you may already use. You have a free plan to give it a try, but it’s quite limited.
Adobe Spark is a simply drag and drop tool with an easy visual editor. For marketer, resizing the visual for any social networks is a no brainer. Click on the format you want and everything will be resized. Download and share.
Compared to Gimp, Spark presents less possibilities, but if you are running the marketing of start-up on you own, the Adobe solution can save you time.
Price: starting at 12.99€/month.
Time to write
When you are writing, you don’t want anything to distract you such as a notification or a the recurring email snippet pop-up on the bottom right of your screen. So Microsoft word can do the trick but you want also to have a preview of the rendering. How is going to look like?
A few years ago, I discovered markdown editors. There are many of them. Working on a PC, I was using GhostWriter. Practical, and distraction free, it was the perfect tool to lay down words on my computer. But it can have some limitations. Especially when the Hemingway App integration was not any longer supported in the app.
Pursuing the quest of the perfect tool, I found Typora. Available on OS X, Windows and Linux, it’s easier to use with more features and can be use for the web or for writing other pieces like thesis or essays for instance.
With Typora, I can organize my files. The software is opening a folder and you can have all your drafts and media visible on the left. Also you can add tables, lines of code, table of content and even footnotes. When it comes to export, the classic extensions are available of course such as HTML or PDF. You can even export a epub format in case your want to read what you wrote on you e-reader. Last thing, the right click is easing the whole process of inserting content or refine the layout.
Price: FREE
And you what are the productivity tools you are using on a day to day basis? Let me know down below in the comments.
