Here at GAIN, we are huge fans of marketing tools to improve productivity. We often write about tools for workflow productivity and ways agencies can use their time better. Almost all marketers participate in some form of content marketing. From email marketing to social media marketing, the writing never really stops.
Though sometimes debated, marketers know that content is still king. But it’s not just any content that will boost your brand; marketers have to write useful, strong content to get attention.
Luckily, there are many tools to help marketers write better. Here are our favorites.
Brainstorming Ideas
There are many “blog idea generators” out there, but top marketers know those rarely work. Simply jumbling keywords together doesn’t always come up with great topics. Instead, marketers must create useful content that aligns with the buyer personas, customer pain points, and opportunities.
Ideaflip is a web app that helps teams brainstorm ideas together. This tool is especially great for those introverted team members that may not speak up in meetings. Ideaflip allows teams to brainstorm and then move forward with the best ideas for content.
For marketers that want to write about a trending topic, try Google Trends. One of the best features of this tool is the “Related queries” search, which allows marketers to see which searches are the most popular.
If your team is really stuck, try these six brainstorming exercises to get creative juices flowing.
Improve Writing
Marketers must have an editing tool they use often; we recommend Grammarly because it checks for spelling, style, passive voice, plagiarism, and more. Sometimes marketers write about the same topic over and over again, and clients will not tolerate plagiarism, so this is a great checker to use.
ProWritingAid is a great tool that checks for weak words, passive voice, and more. These days a simple spell check isn’t enough, so marketers should use a tool like this to improve their writing overall.
To truly make a better piece of content, marketers can also try TwinWord. This writing tool analyzes the tone (so writers can shift it to positive or negative, depending on client wants) and generates relevant tags or keywords. The tool allows marketers to highlight sections for suggestions on how to rewrite. Lastly, it counts how many times specific verbs are used, so writers can be sure not to use the same words over and over again.
Lastly, for those picky clients, marketers can use Cliche Finder. This tool is especially helpful when writing for an international client who may not understand certain cliches.
Analyzing content
How marketers truly improve writing is by measuring which content pieces are popular and which are not. Then marketers can start to understand what style, tone, and topics work with their target market. To analyze content, we recommend using BuzzSumo which counts all of the social shares. Marketers can see which pieces of content were spread around on social and which were not.
Google Analytics obviously plays a significant role, too. Marketers can see which content pieces prospects clicked the CTA and then if conversions are set up, actions they took along the sales funnel. Marketers can see which content helped with website conversions and then duplicate that type of post.
Approvals made easy
Of course, marketers cannot measure anything until their content is approved. It can be incredibly frustrating for marketers, who after writing a blog on a trending topic, have to wait on edits and final approvals to publish. A lot of this waiting time is due to unorganized approval processes. Even if marketers share a Google Doc and invite managers to edit the piece, it can get confusing on who has the final word and if the piece is approved or not.
This is just one of the reasons why we created GAIN. Once marketers write useful content, it should be a seamless process getting the content approved and loaded up for publication. For marketers that find themselves going back and forth with managers on which blog is approved and which is still in the editing phase, see how GAIN can help.
