According to eMarketer, 60% of marketers are producing at least one piece of content everyday. And with the way content marketing is picking up in the digital industry, this number is only going to increase.

Thankfully though, there are a number of tools in the industry now, that can help marketers manage their time more effectively – without compromising on the quality or the quantity of the content they’re churning out.

Here are our top 10 picks for this year:

1. Trello

We started this year with a lot of organizing and reorganizing. Churning out about 3 content pieces per day for quite some time, we realised how out-of-hand things can go in content marketing. And that’s when we decided to start using Trello.

This tool helps you create week-by-week to-do lists. And also enables you to drop comments, instructions for the team members in the cards so that everybody is on the same page.

Apart from the list functionality that keeps you organized, you can also track the progress of each task by setting different lists for it. For example, we add the blog topics that need to be covered in a week’s time under ‘to-do’, move it to ‘research’ when we’re reading up on it, to ‘writing’ when we are working on it, to ‘review’ if we want another team member to take a look at it and finally to ‘completed’ when it is published.

Here’s what our Trello boards look like (sample):

And here’s what each of the card looks like along with designated tags so that it is easier to track:

2. Evernote

Content marketers are forever rummaging through a gazillion websites for content inspiration. There are times when a thought strikes our head and we don’t really have a pen and paper around to note it. So instead of regretting later that we forgot an awesome idea, we make use of Evernote.

Now Evernote isn’t just a note taking tool, it also helps marketers organize and archive work to get their content in order. Here’s what you can use this tool for:

• collecting and organizing visual content
• creating a social media calendar
• creating notes and to-do lists
• collecting social media and content marketing ideas
• tracking social performance of the content produced

3. Buffer

This isn’t new, but the need for social media automation has increased this year – for every marketer. Buffer lets you connect multiple social channels to a common dashboard, where you can schedule content upto 10 posts in one go. (If you’re on a paid plan, you can schedule for days together!)

The tool also gives you analytics of how your content has been performing on various channels, and also the ability to re-buffer something that worked really well for you.

What really appeals to us is the usability of the tool. It also allows you to create quick graphics using Pablo and schedule them for social sharing. Apart from the time we spend thinking about what to share, this scheduling on Buffer barely takes us about 20 minutes a day – if we’re not re-buffering anything – in that case, it takes just 10!

For example, here’s a snippet from our Analytics – we clearly know which one worked the best and should be reshared a few more times on our social channels.

4. Visme

We’ve been a fan of Canva and Pablo by Buffer for sometime now, but we’re constantly on the look out for interesting tools. And while trying to keep up with our audience’s demand for visual content, we came across Visme.

Visme helps you create online presentations, animations, banners, infographics and other rich media for your content strategy. The best thing about this tool is that it offers multiple templates that you can make use of when in a hurry, or create your very own from scratch with a really simple, interactive dashboard.

Here’s what the dashboard looks like:

And here’s a Facebook cover we made in just 5 minutes!

You can view it on our page here. 

5. Grammarly

To be honest, writing so much content on a daily basis can sometimes result in mistakes that our inner grammar nazi wants to kill for. So were we not taught language well? No. It is human error, which isn’t accepted in the digital industry – especially when you’re marketing something.

Grammarly helps you check your content piece’s grammar right from your browser or Microsoft Office. It assists you in writing better emails, documents, social media posts, messages and more. And trust us, the tool points out 10 times more mistakes than you word processor ever would!

6. Feedly

As a content marketer, I have at least a hundred blogs in the industry that I have subscribed to. And thousand others that I seek out to when looking for content inspiration or simply like minded people to connect with. But the sad truth is, ask me 5 days down the line which blog I met someone or read something on, I wouldn’t know!

That’s exactly why I started using Feedly. The tool helps me organize all my favourite blogs, news sites, online magazines, etc under specific categories, making it EXTREMELY easy to follow what’s trending in my niche.

The best thing about this tool is that it easily integrates with most social media automation tools so you can instantly share anything you like from Feedly to your social accounts. Personally, we use it with Buffer and think it is an absolute bliss!

7. Trendspottr

Good content marketing runs on constantly being able to spot the latest trends and making the most out of them to promote your business. And no matter how many blogs or how long we stay online, this can really get difficult.

Trendspottr is a tool that helps you identify viral content, trending topics, key influencers and predicting emerging trends. The last one giving you the ability to chalk out a content strategy beforehand! The data provided by the tool is real time and hence, something we just can’t miss using this year.

8. BuzzSumo

Remember how you spent an hour trying to figure out which content piece your competitor used to get those 1,000 signups? Well, BuzzSumo makes it really easy.

The tool helps you analyze what content works the best for which topic and what content has worked brilliantly for your competitor. It assists in creating really effective content marketing strategies and SEO campaigns.

It also gives you the ability to filter results according to the language you prefer, the location you’re targeting and the content format you want to include in your strategy.

Here’s what my search for content marketing in the last 24 hours gives me:

9. Outbrain

Apart from consistently creating high quality content, distribution or syndication of content is another challenge that most marketers face. With a new digital platform or community getting introduced to the industry every other day, the challenge is only getting harder to overcome.

Outbrain is that tool that will make all your efforts in creating quality content worth it! As the world’s largest and most trusted content discovery platform, it ensures your content is promoted to the right set of people at the right time!

The tool amplifies your content’s reach more than any other promotional campaign can. The best feature of this tool being the ability to optimize the promotion according to your business goals with advanced testing and conversion tools.

10. Apester

Last year was all about dynamic content and this year is no different! But this content type might take you a number of softwares to create. Now, unless you have excessive resources, that’s not something really feasible!

Apester allows you to create quizzes, polls, personality tests, surveys and other types of interactive content in minutes. The tool also offers the ability to create videos quizzes to make your content more rich and interactive in nature.

Simply put, it is the one digital storytelling tool that you absolutely need this year!

What other tools do you plan on using to this year to enhance your content marketing strategy? Feel free to drop your suggestions in the comment section below, because we’re definitely overhauling our content marketing toolkit!