Five tools every marketer needs

In my previous post on how to create content for your blog, I had mentioned a few tools which I think can come handy for every marketer out there.

Creating impactful, value driven content every day is tough - especially if you are doing everything on your own and have no external help [read freelance designers, video editing friends].

To enable you to crate your blog content independently and quickly, we will go through a few tools that might make your everyday life a tad bit easier. Lets begin by identifying your everyday tasks.

1. Designing images / infographics
2. Writing content
3. Posting content
4. Sending emails

To make your everyday tasks easier, here are a few cracking tools that you will get addicted to:

1. Design

Canva

For the longest time, I reached out to a friend for creating the graphics for my blog. However, I always yearned to be independent. I struggled with a few tools, didn’t like them. Combined with my zero graphic designing and illustration skills, I was literally on the verge of giving up designing. Writing took ⅔ of my total blog time previously but now - I was not even able to get the content up because the graphics were not ready.

And then I discovered Canva - Ka-Ching!

And life was sunny once again.

I absolutely adore Canva now - you can design email headers, facebook ads, blog banners, infographics, with images from either their database or yous. Add to this their fantastic fonts repository and hey - I was back in business. I still do reach out to my friend, but only for more specialized work.

2. Writing

Grammarly

Nothing can be a bummer more than a poorly crafted sentence. Here you are trying to present yourself as a serious blogger and wham! That wrongly used punctuation can hit you hard.

I always thought of myself as someone who could write well. Grammar tools - well, they are not for me! My inner writing geek told me. But I was so wrong - because I was writing a lot more, I was leaving room for inadvertent errors. Unlike my previous writing stints, where volume was low - leaving me enough time to copy edit and proof read, here I was literally rushing to meet deadlines, creating and publishing content simultaneously - leaving me no time for review.

I knew that I couldn't sustain this intense writing schedule- I had heard of Grammarly -  started using it and since then found some peace amidst my crazy writing schedule.

You may also want to try out the SEO Writing Assistant by SEM rush- this tool evaluates your texts readability, shows related keywords which could fit your article and detects plagiarism percentage - now how cool is that?

Grammarly's algorithms flag potential issues in the text and suggest context specific corrections for grammar, spelling, wordiness, style, punctuation, and plagiarism. It helps you address common grammatical mistakes (like the misplaced comma - OMG, I am a victim of this) to the slightly more complex (use of modifiers).

Once you have written and sorted your content, you now need to post it. But hey, you cannot created afresh and post everyday. You need to create in advance and post later - Ta da! Enter the magic of scheduling and I do swear by Buffer on this.

3. Scheduling

Buffer

Buffer is remarkably easy to use, and saves time for busy marketers by scheduling posts, analyzing performance while managing all the accounts.

The free plan allows you to set up a scheduling for 3 social media accounts for one user with upto 10 scheduled posts per profile. The social media platforms covered include Twitter / Facebook / LinkedIn / Instagram.

I have also tried Hootsuite - but I love Buffer 😍

4. Promotions

Mailchimp

After having used notoriously rigid but paid, difficult email marketing tools, I stumbled upon Mailchimp and have been using it ever since.

But before that, why are we using email marketing tools to begin with?

As I mentioned in my previous post, How to increase your blog’s traffic - it is important that you spend time to promote your content. Ideally, i ‘d spend around 2 days writing and 3 days promoting [out of 5 days]. Thats when email marketing comes in - allowing you to ensure that your readers and visitors always are updated about whats new in your blog.

The free version of Mailchimp allows you to manage about 2000 subscribers and send around 12000 emails per month. However, the email and chat support lasts only for 30 days but hey, it is so easy to use - you can manage it all by yourself.

5. Images

Pixabay

Okay - you need royalty free images for your blog. Though there are plenty of other sites for royalty free images such as Pexels, Unsplash, Gratisography, Stockvault, Picjumbo, Pikwizard, Rawpixel, Reshot, I do prefer Pixabay. It has quite a broad collection of images and I nearly always find what I need. It has an especially good stock for corporate / business images. Nearly all the images on my website are from Pixabay.

Putting it all together

So these above are the five tools that will make  you an independent and self-sufficient marketer. No need of using complex dreary tools, no asking favours from friends - keep using these tools and spread the word.

In case there are any more tools that you use and love, let me know in the comments section below.

Also read

How to create content for your blog

How to write more blog posts in less time

How to choose your blog’s target audience