The Ultimate Content Marketing Tools In 2014

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content-tools

Promoting all the content that we have created can be a daunting task.

However, as the content marketing tool landscape continues to grow, there are various tools (both free and premium) that can make your task easier. In order to figure out which tools will fit for your needs best, here is a list of content promotion tools that you might find useful. The list contains social networking channel, social media management tools, paid promotion tools, distribution tools and advocacy tools.

1. Social Networking

Use these networks to build followings, reach out to influencers and even pay for sponsored posts and customized reach.

  • Twitter. With over half a billion registered users, Twitter lets users post messages of up to 140 characters, share photos and videos, create custom lists, send direct messages, and more. Promote content on Twitter organically, with Twitter cards or paid promotions.
  • Facebook. This social media platform has over a billion users and lets users connect with friends, share links, photos, videos, and events, join groups, and more. As a marketer, there are options for promoting content organically and through paid promotions.
  • Pinterest. Marketers can share content through images and videos on customizable boards, “repin” images. Pinterest has nearly 50 million users.
  • LinkedIn. A business-focused online network that includes features such as sharing links, adding connections, joining groups, writing recommendations, searching for connections by company, industry, skills, and more. Marketers can share content through company updates, sponsored updates and LinkedIn Pulse posts.
  • Google+. Google’s social network allows users to set up hangouts using video chat, and create “circles” of people for organizing contacts and targeting messaging.
  • Offerpop. Offerpop is a social media platform for businesses to recruit, engage and convert customers.
  • SlideShare. Upload and share slide presentations, gain insight into who’s viewing your presentations, collect business leads, and more.

2.  Social Media Management Tools

These tools are great for organizing your online presence. Many allow you to post to several social networks through one dashboard and analyze the performance of your posts. This is a great way to see what types of content perform well on different social networks.

  • Sprinklr. Large global companies use this social media management system to engage with customers, connect with CRM systems, build custom widgets, publish and manage content, and more.
  • Tweetdeck. Track brand mentions and hashtags, manage multiple Twitter accounts, and schedule Tweets, all in a single Twitter platform.
  • Hootsuite. Administer multiple social media accounts, analyze social media traffic, track brand mentions, collaborate with other team members, and schedule messages and tweets through this tool.
  • Buffer. Add articles, photos, and video, and this social media tool will automatically post the content on your social media accounts throughout the day.
  • Topsy Pro. This tool allows users to track tweets over the last several years, discovering popular topics, trends and experts in the area.
  • Traackr. Manage influencer relationships with this tool, which lets users discover influencers, nurture relationships and then demonstrate the impact of these relationships.
  • Sprout Social. This management tool lets multiple users schedule, publish and analyze social media posts across several platforms.
  • Social Bro. Follow trends on Twitter and capitalize upon them with this fully functioning twitter listening and publishing tool.
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Find and analyze what’s being said about your brand, along with your competitors, to find out what customers want, what content is working and how to keep up with the conversation.
  • Social Mention. A social search engine that searches for and analyzes real-time aggregated content across 100+ social media platforms.
  • Bottlenose. Users are able to track what’s trending in their industry and get warnings about breaking news stories using advanced topic discovery and NLP (Natural Language Processing).
  • Spredfast. This tool creates company-wide social media collaboration & monitoring and additionally configures social analysis reports.
  • Meltwater Buzz. This social media marketing SaaS combines monitoring & analytics with engagement to give users a complete lifecycle approach to social media community management.
  • Marketwired Resonate. With this platform, users are connected to their industry marketplace in real time through social media and traditional distribution.
  • CisionPoint. PR software that helps users reach their audiences and manage campaigns across traditional, digital and social media.
  • GetStacker. Receive all social media mentions in a single inbox, schedule messages across platforms and run reports on social media content.
  • ViralHeat. Publish, analyze and run reports about social media posts via multiple networks.

3.  Premium Tools

Use these tools to advertise your content on websites across the Internet.

  • ContentGain. This widget places links to third-party content on other websites to boost distribution. The original content publisher shares ad revenue with the website sharing the content.
  • OneSpot. For many marketers, there is not enough time in the day to sufficiently promote This tool automatically turns owned or earned content into optimized ads, distributes the content across OneSpot’s ad inventory, retargets users, and monitors results.
  • Gravity. Using algorithms based on users’ reading and sharing history, Gravity enables websites to deliver personalized recommendations.
  • Outbrain. This content discovery tool recommends your content to readers of other premium publishers, offering a personalized reader experience while exposing your content to engaged readers.
  • Vocus. This tool scans for prospects who are looking for companies like yours, suggests relevant social conversations and distributes your press for traffic and search.
  • Taboola. This promotional tool takes your content and places it on publishing websites, targeting it towards your selected audience.
  • nRelate. This platform helps content developers and publishers find an easier path to their target audience and grows their reader-base from their sites or elsewhere on the web.
  • Content Blvd. Connect with brands and publishers to create relevant and rewarding product placements.
  • Vibrant Media. This native advertising tool places content ads within other forms of editorial content. All triggers are user-initiated.
  • Disqus. This discussion platform helps bloggers and website publisher engage readers through the comment section.
  • ContentClick. A native ad delivery system that integrates content into thousands of blogs & websites.
  • Zemanta. Zemanta partners with many native ad neworks such as Outbrain and nRelate.
  • Adblade. Target content with advertisement opportunities on over 1,00 branded content sites.
  • Mylikes. This tool places content on various websites and allows you to control your daily budget and bidding strategy.
  • PubExchange. PubExchange helps create partnerships between content creators. These partners then share each other’s ads for each other’s content on their blogs and other websites.

4. Distribution Tools

Expand the reach of your content to these networks.

  • Brightcove. This provider of cloud content services offers an online video platform for adding custom video players to websites, social media profiles, and mobile destinations.
  • PR Newswire. Distribute news releases to a global media database of more than 700,000 journalists and blogger contacts, monitor traditional and social media, and engage in real time conversations with journalists, bloggers, and other influencers.
  • Cadence9. This unified solution for managing content marketing lets marketers plan content using an editorial calendar, assign tasks to team members, administer content creation and publishing workflow, and more.
  • Papershare. Cloud-based promotional tool for content marketers that distributes to multiple channels and alerts marketing and sales teams when content is published. Leads are also integrated into Salesforce and marketing automation platforms.
  • PixxFly. Automate the distribution and syndication of all your content with this outbound marketing automation solution.

5. Advocacy Tools

One of the most powerful forms of content promotion could be inside your own company. Use these tools to enable your employees (and, in some cases your customers) to share content across their own social media profiles.

  • GaggleAMP. Amplify social media efforts with this tool that allows you to create “gaggles” of people who can share company social media updates to their followers.
  • SocialChorus. Create brand ambassadors out of employees, customers and partners with this tool that allows for the amplification of social media posts.
  • Amplifinity. This tool creates advocacy programs across several mediums such as email, direct mail and social media.
  • EveryoneSocial. Allow employees and customers to build their own social profiles while simultaneously sharing your company’s created and curated content.
  • SoAmpli. Encourage employees to become brand advocates with this tool that helps you feed content to employees and reward them accordingly.
  • Influitive. Create an army of advocates with this tool that fosters a community of customers to share your content across various platforms.
  • SocialLook. Increase content traffic and conversion rates by sending messages through employees’ social media presence.