Content creation is hard work. It’s time-consuming, and it’s easy to get distracted by the million things you could be doing instead of writing.
But here’s the thing: creating content is not just something you have to do—it’s something you should be doing.
Content creation is a crucial part of any marketing strategy because it helps you connect with your audience, build trust, and grow your business. So how do you create enough content so that people will want to read it?
Simple Content Creation Tools
If you’re a content creator, you know that there is a lot of content out there. What makes the most effective and engaging content? Here we listed the top 10 content creation tools you’ll want to start using today. This list doesn’t apply to just marketers. Professionals working in sales, training, and proposal teams also create unique and large amounts of content.
In the end, all content creators share one goal: creating relevant and helpful content for the right audience.
These content creation tools will help you to determine what is relevant to your attentive audience, how to best package it, and the easiest way to provide editorial reviews.
Content Creation Tools for Creating Relevant Content
1. Google Trends
Google Trends helps to keep you in the loop. Google Trends reveals insight into today’s relevant content. Not yesterday’s. Google Trends is ideal for those who frequently create content. This includes those who blog, have a heavy social presence, develop content for specific groups of people, or work in marketing.
The Content Marketing Institute recommends using Google Trends to research keywords, discover content ideas, and monitor your brand.
Simply enter in a topic or explore trending stories and featured insights. Google Trends displays the frequency of search terms in consideration of its total volume across geographic regions. Additionally, Google Trends shows search interest over time. Depending on the flux of query volumes, you may choose one topic over another to discuss in whatever content you create.
2. Moz Keyword Explorer
You wouldn’t want to create awesome content and not get noticed. Easily check what keyword to use for blog posts and site pages with Moz’s Keyword Explorer. You can enter terms or phrases into Moz Keyword Explorer. Moz will provide you with keyword suggestions and a SERP analysis reflective of the keyword’s search volume, difficulty, opportunity, and potential.
Once you start exploring, you can export CSV files and save them for later. This includes the top ranking sites containing your keyword or phrase. Moz Keyword Explorer allows for two free searches a day. If you require more searching, you can upgrade to a paid subscription starting at $50 a month.
3. Sigstr
Sigstr is an email signature banner. Email banners are added and changed from one admin console with changes immediately reflected in employees’ email signatures. Sigstr banners are a great way to intertwine visual content and compelling copy.
You can create unique signatures for departments, teams, executives, and customer service. Swap out Sigstr signatures to engage email recipients with company news, upcoming events, and relevant content.
Content Creation Tools for Designing Visual Content
4. Giphy
If you blog or even just read a lot of blogs, you know how easy it is to get lost in a sea of words. GIFs are a really easy way to grab the audience’s attention. Sometimes animation shows more than just still images. But where is everyone finding GIFs? Giphy is a free visual content creation tool. You can contextually search for GIFs, or you can create your own.
Have one team member who can answer your chats and emails at lightning speed with an animated GIF suited for the context? In addition to sparring in chat messages, use Giphy in blog posts.
5. Canva
Need to develop striking visual content? Don’t have a lot of time? Check out Canva. Canva is an easy-to-use tool to create graphics and documents ready to print or to publish online. Features include photos, photo filters, icons, shapes, and hundreds of fonts. Outbrain listed Canva as an awesome digital content creation tool because of its drag and drop design feature.
New users can sign up for a free Canva account and start designing with ready to use design layouts. Canva comes ready with pre-sized social media templates in addition to templates for flyers, posters, and email headers.
Mimeo uses Canva for our Instagram account (@_mimeo). Canva’s capability to share designs and templates makes it easy for our content creators to collaborate together.
6. Pixlr
Pixlr delivers the capabilities of PhotoShop for free. There’s tons of value in the free version. For those requiring more editing capabilities, Pixlr Pro comes with more design tools and features at a price of $14.99 a year.
Pixlr comes in handy when creating graphics for presentations and social media. Use Pixlr to resize images, apply quick fixes, and remove the image background.
Content Creation Tools for Editorial Use
7. Grammarly
Write, write, write… Sound like an average workday? But as any content creator knows, editing is just as important as the writing process. This content creation tool also made HubSpot’s Ultimate List of Free Content Creation Tools & Resources. Grammarly is an automated proofreading platform. It corrects over 250 types of spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors.
Copy and paste content directly into a Grammarly document to check for grammar and spelling mistakes. It helps to check sections of content as you write. For example, upload answers to an RFP before handing it over to the review team. Or check sections of training courses before handing them over to be designed.
8. Hemingway Editor
Affect the editorial skills of Ernest Hemingway with this content creation tool. The Hemingway Editor is a proofreading tool for readers. It details the revisions you can’t see in Grammarly without upgrading to Grammarly Pro. Copy your content into Hemingway Editor and it will highlight style suggestions.
Sentences highlighted in yellow or red will flag where writing is too dense. One of its strongest features is its capability to highlight uses of passive voice. Avoid using passive voice in all content — including training materials, marketing collateral, and sales literature. Active voice is critical in creating compelling copy and in winning proposals.
9. Microsoft’s Snipping Tool
This content creation tool is one of the most simple but is also maximizes the amount of time spent editing. Microsoft’s Snipping Tool is simple and straightforward: capture screenshots. But, it’s more than that. You can cross out content, highlight sections, insert arrows, and add your own suggestions in type.
Once you’ve created a snip, you can save or copy and paste into emails and chat windows. The Snipping Tool comes in handy when providing feedback for web pages and layout design in addition to longer content like business proposals or training materials.
10. Trello
Content creators have a lot of content. Trello makes it easy to share, collaborate, set reviews and approvals, and create an editorial calendar for whole teams. Devote one project or one team to a virtual Trello board. Use Trello to organize entire projects and filter for specific team members to check the status of project updates.
Trello saves a lot of time and a lot of emails. Instead of sending status updates, simply move a project’s Trello card to the appropriate user or status.
Free Account
Mimeo was created to give people back time. Users can upload content to their digital library and organize files by folders. Want a hardcopy printed? Build, proof, and ship in a few minutes. Content can even be shared with varying levels of permissions to other Mimeo users. No order minimums, no commitments, 24/7 support!
Users can place a print order for delivery to hundreds of locations with a single click. Instead of hundreds of emails, easily view and map the status of each shipment. What would have once been a massive undertaking is now organized in one screen.
Click around a free account and start organizing your content, regardless if it’s a single poster or 1,000 different corporate brochures varying by geographic region or brand.
5 types of online creation tools
Writing Tools
Online writing tools can assist with a wide range of tasks, such as:
- evaluating the readability and “grade level” of text;
- avoiding plagiarism and clichés;
- finding and correcting grammatical and stylistic writing errors;
- staying on task;
- analyzing alternative headlines;
- adding special characters;
- stripping out word-processing tags; and
- monitoring keyword density.
So, for example, if you decide to create long-form content (e.g., an eBook or a 10,000+ word blog post), you might decide to use a tool like Scrivener to manage your project from research through layout.
(Brief digression: you may want to produce your guide to treehouse building as evergreen content—a comprehensive tutorial that doesn’t become dated. However, you typically wouldn’t want to build your tree house in an evergreen tree. :-))
Use tools such as the Hemingway App and Grammarly anytime to keep your writing crisp and free of grammatical errors, repeated words, subject-verb disagreement, and passive voice.
Finish up by testing different headline variations with the Coschedule Headline Analyzer to optimize your title for social sharing.
Visual Content Creation Tools
Of course, information isn’t conveyed or consumed through words alone. Adding images can make your content both more interesting and more effective.
The multitude of online visual content creation tools encompasses apps for designing, creating, and editing different types of images including:
- social media graphics
- presentations
- diagrams
- flowcharts
- data charts and graphs
- interactive images
- banner ads
- maps
- animated GIFs
- memes
- quote pictures
- e-cards
For the treehouse guide, you could create social media images (like the one above) using Canva, Pablo, or Snappa.
You could add a flowchart of the building process or a diagram of a treehouse design with Creately.
You might create a map of the best treehouses in your area using ScribbleMaps.
Meme Generator or quickmeme could be used to add a treehouse meme (like the one to the right).
You may decide to get even more elaborate and create an interactive treehouse image, like this, using ThingLink.
Screen Capture Tools
Another specific type of visual content creation apps is screen capture tools. These enable you to grab an image of your computer screen then add comments and annotations. These are most commonly used to highlight software features or to illustrate how to perform a task on a web page or within an application.
For your treehouse project, you could potentially use a tool like Awesome Screenshot to capture, mark up, and share a CAD diagram or drawing of a treehouse design. You could use LICEcap or Droplr to record screen actions or stitch images together as an animated GIF.
Stock Photos
Relevant photos can liven up any content. But it’s critical to understand usage rights. Using a commercial image without payment can lead to legal headaches.
Fortunately, sourcing high-quality images doesn’t have to break the bank. A number of stock photo and video sites offer free and low-cost images with easy-to-understand license terms. Registration and attribution requirements do vary by site, so always check usage terms carefully.
Photos of elaborate or unusual treehouses may provide inspiration in your treehouse guide. Here’s a small sample of treehouse images available on Pixabay:
You can also find images on Shutterstock, 123RF, FreeImages.com, and Morguefile.
Photo Editing Tools
Whether using your own photos or stock photographs, you may find you have some images that are good…but not quite right. They need a bit of correction or enhancement.
With free and low-cost online photo editing tools, you can perform tasks like:
- editing photos in layers;
- retouching images;
- applying a wide range of effects (blur, cartoonize, old movie, oil painting, etc.);
- adjusting colors and brightness;
- adding text, icons, and stickers;
- creating photo collages; and
- rotating and resizing images.
Here’s an image from Pixabay edited with LunaPic: the original image, charcoal drawing effect, colored pencil effect, and sepia with text. Other image editing tools include PicMonkey, FotoFlexer, and Fotor.
Conclusion
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