5 Tips and Tools to Use for Smart Digital Strategies  

Across industries, content marketing is considered a top priority for digital marketers this year, given that it is seen as an affordable way for brands to engage and subtly influence customers. To do so, brands are creating material like articles, whitepapers, infographics, videos and other creative pieces that essentially make end-users forget they are interacting with a company, even though the latter is trying to (ultimately) sell them a product or service. It’s the future of influence and advertising, and companies who have yet to develop a content marketing strategy risk falling behind. In fact, according to a new report from Ascend2, the most effective search engine optimization (SEO) tactic is in fact content creation.

More than halfway through 2015, however, those responsible for creating content to attract, retain and engage current and existing customers may be in a slump. To the rescue: the tools listed here that can provide marketers the spark they need to create (efficiently and smartly!) the amount of content expected from them today.

Portent’s Content Idea Generator 
From fictional characters to newsworthy people, Portent’s free Content Idea Generator can take a topic (let’s use the theme here of content marketing) and then return offbeat ideas about how one should build off that subject.  An example: “Homer Simpson’s Guide to Content Marketing.” While quirky topics like that can get writers thinking, and make the process amusing, they can find some real gems in the more business-oriented options like “Unbelievable Content Marketing Stories,” since success stories can motivate readers based on what has worked for their peers. Users of Portent’s Content Idea Generator can continue to refresh the results until one of them inspires them enough to begin writing.

Google Trends 
A single topic like content marketing can take on many forms, from how-to articles to case studies. Streamlining this process is the handy Google Trends tool that not only shows interest on a particular subject over time based on mainstream Google searches, but also via related searches. Why is this important? Because related searches can be used as a starting point for alternative content.

So, for instance, a marketing agency or software provider seeking to create material for business owners on the use of content marketing could see the popularity of searches for “What is content” and go on to create a piece for beginners like “101: What is Content?” Or, they could instead realize they have yet to address content marketing for social media (see image below), and address that issue.

Quora 
In addition to being a valuable website to prove a person/company’s authority on a subject, question-and-answer website Quora provides a wealth of searchable content ideas. For example, a quick search of “content marketing,” yields user questions like, “What are the best content marketing metrics?” and “What’s your biggest content marketing challenge?”

From there, marketers can create content that answers these timely questions, like an infographic titled “29 Essential Content Marketing Metrics.”

Canva 
For those marketing teams without in-house designers, a variety of Web-based infographic-building tools exist that make quick work out of creating these highly visual pieces.

Canva, for example (billed as “amazingly simple graphic design software”)  offers a free drag-and-drop interface that is highly customizable, since users can change the images, fonts, backgrounds and colors. Canva’s library is packed with hundreds of elements marketers can use for their marketing material, most of which are free, and premium elements will never be more than $1.

The appeal of infographics as a way to present information lies in the fact that they are easily perused (read here why that’s important — most readers apparently have an 8-second attention span!), they are compelling, they can increase traffic, and they show expert understanding.

Fiverr
Although the adage “you get what you pay for” is certainly true when it comes to online marketing, Fiverr presents an opportunity for businesses to (truly) create useful content for just $5. So, for example, a real estate agent could use this person who is offering to customize a promotional video for them for only five bucks, while any business could hire this person to create an eight-week content marketing plan for, again, just five dollars.

While Fiverr should be approached with caution and common sense (e.g. don’t buy links, and make sure to run purchased content through a plagiarism service), it is very much a viable option for creating content when in a bind, or being able to rely on someone else’s expertise to get a job done. What’s more, marketers can even use it for copyediting their work, getting a whiteboard video made and more. Finally, often “gigs” have upsell opportunities, which means a gig that has a baseline of $5 could cost hundreds of dollars based on the options selected.

For marketers, services like Fiverr could be an effective way to meet professionals wanting to take on freelance work as needed, as well as venues like Freelancer.com and 99designs.

The Race for Content

While the majority of enterprises are producing more content than ever before, many are still struggling to connect a return on investment from their efforts. This means that marketers will have to be their own advocates when it comes to managing the content expectations of their employers.  Why? Because it is more important to have less content that is nevertheless highly optimized for trends and readers’ interests – rather than more content that is created simply to have something to post.