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With 2018 just around the corner, this presents a perfect opportunity to boost your content marketing efforts much better than you did in 2017.

There’s never been a better time in history where we have had access to so many tools and software that can help us grow our businesses.

So, if you didn’t have a clear strategy in 2017, take a look at these 8 tools to turbocharge your content marketing efforts in 2018.

Google Docs – Content Calendar

Sometimes the best tools are the free ones, believe it or not, and Google Docs is pretty much one of the easiest tools to use for collaborative editing (when you have a team).

If you’re just starting out on your content journey, we need to help you get organised. Having a content calendar is part of that process.

So, why have one?

It keeps you organised and is shareable among your team. This means you can allocate certain tasks to specific individuals within your team, whilst also keeping track of publishing dates, goals, keywords being used and the channels you’re going to distribute it to.

Feedly

feedly

In order to stay and keep ahead of the competition, you need to write and produce content your readers will love. One of the best ways of doing this is using a blog-curation service like Feedly.

What Feedly does is collect news feeds from a range of different publications in one place – you can have access to a whole host of different articles and blogs posted online.

What is particularly useful is the fact that you can categorise these articles into different tabs on the left-hand side of the software for easy access to specific topics of your choice.

There is both a free and Premium service at the time of writing – the free service is really all you need, especially if you combine it with Buffer to create and schedule your content.

Buffer

buffer

Probably one of my favourite automation tools that we use for our clients at the moment is Buffer.

If you want a smart way to publish your content to social media in 2018, Buffer has got to be at the top of your list for tools to make your business more efficient.

What’s great about Buffer is it puts all of your social media platforms in one place and helps syndicate all your content that can be scheduled at specific points in time.

It also makes your business more efficient since you don’t have to juggle so many different software applications for your social media marketing on multiple tabs in your browser.

Almighty.Press

almighty press

If you want to take your contact marketing to the next level then Almighty.Press is, by far, one of the best tools you can use today for content discovery.

Almighty.Press helps you locate pre-viral content by utilising specific algorithms to find highly engaging content, ranging from some of the most popular keywords to key phrases.

Use this tool to find stories with really strong virality and then basically create content around them… This can be additional news on the topic videos or even infographics.

This is one tool that will help you get ahead as you can track trending topics before they are too popular, giving you a great advantage to producing content the algorithms of both search and social media will love!

SumoMe

sumome

If you’re looking to grow your audience and extend the reach of your content, then SumoMe probably has the best list-building tools you can find online at the moment.

Just remember, none of the tools I mentioned within this article is based on theory – we use these every day to give us the edge in content marketing.

This tool helps you get more customers, more traffic and you’re able to track your success within your own dashboard on your website.

You have such features as:

  • a welcome mat
  • scroll box
  • smart bar as part of your list-building suite.

These tools have been tried and tested over the last few years and I can categorically say nothing works better to capture an audience than SumoMe.

I love that it gives you a free trial so you can get to grips with your list-building efforts, whilst not spending too much money in the process.

Check it out, I highly recommend it…

Ninja Outreach

ninja outreach

If you are looking to find influencers in your niche more easily, Ninja Outreach has got to be the tool for you!

The way it works is, you enter a keyword into the search bar and the software goes away to find thousands of business leads, specific bloggers and social media influencers.

It also provides a really great platform to manage and contact these influencers within the software.

The icing on the cake, though, is the fact that you have pre-written email templates that are available on the dashboard which makes it easy for you to find and send emails to industry leaders in your niche.

After you’ve done this, you are able to analyse the results by replies, clicks and email opens. I can honestly say that I haven’t seen a better piece of software for this specific task.

SendGrid

sendgrid

SendGrid is one of the best ways to build customer relationships in your niche. You can integrate it into almost any website of your choice, creating great email funnels where you can a/b split-test to see which one works the best.

If you’re worried about deliverability, then just think about this for one minute:  SendGrid sends over 18 billion customer engagement emails every month for corporates users like Airbnb, Pandora,  Hubspot, LinkedIn and even Uber. Just those companies alone should give you the confidence to use this service for your small business…?

Here’s a long ever-growing list of their features:

SMTP Service
Custom API Integration
Open & Click Tracking
Email Template Engine
Unsubscribe Tracking
Reputation Monitoring
Suppression List Management
Dedicated & Multiple IP Addresses
IP Whitelabeling
SMTP API
ISP Monitoring
SPAM Filter Testing
Domain Level Load Balancing
Parse Webhook
Feedback Loop
DKIM Customization
SMTP Relay
Sub-user API
24/7 Support (Phone and Chat)
Marketing Email Services

Pushwoosh

Yeah, I also think this is a silly name, but just bear with me for a minute and let me explain why this is a really great service to boost your content marketing efforts.

Pushwoosh is a handy tool for sending notifications to desktop computers, mobile application and devices.

What’s great about this is the fact that you have a chance to reach 100 per cent of the previous visitors to your website whenever you send a notification – any marketer worth their salt knows just how powerful deliverability is with your marketing efforts!

They also have a free developer plan where you can use it to push notifications to up to 1000 devices. After that, it has a developer, marketing and an enterprise level which in my opinion are all great value.

Final Thoughts

So, there you have it – these are the 8 tools we’re using for our clients going forward in 2018.

Hopefully, some of these tools will help you improve your efficiency and productivity, but cut down on the time it takes you to curate, schedule, and post your content.

I don’t advocate using all of these tools together but for example, using Feedly with something like Buffer is a great way of streamlining your efforts.

What tools are you using in your contact marketing?

I’d love to hear about it…?

Feel free to leave a comment below.

About the Author

Des Dreckett

Des Dreckett is the eCommerce and growth Marketing Director of XenMediamarketing.co.uk: a writer, blogger and a paid media specialist.

Writing content to help you grow and build your business.

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  1. Morning Des.

    I’m really a newbie in the social media space. Learning on the hop. Hopefully I can use it to help folk by drip feeding good tools for self management. I also appreciate your interaction with us all. 👍👍

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