A successful content marketing or public relations strategy requires custom content creation, attention to detail and making the most of the tools at your fingertips. Are you curious which tools are worth your company’s time and resources?
In this blog post we include 11 tools and resources we love at Three Girls Media.
Content Marketing Tools & Resources
- Adobe Express
This convenient content creation tool allows you to easily create images and graphics, videos or web stories. You can use the free version as long as you don’t mind Adobe Express adding their branding at the end of your video, or you can upgrade to remove it and unlock a few more customization options.
Adobe Express has a wide range of templates you can use as a starting point to develop visuals that will complement your content marketing efforts, whether you plan to post them on your business’s social media channels, include them in a blog post or add them to your website.
- Canva
This is one of my favorite tools for creating custom images! I use it nearly every day for Three Girls and our clients. With Canva, you can pick out one of their design templates and customize it to fit your business’s branding. You can also upload your company’s images to add to the design.
- CoSchedule Headline Analyzer
Do you ever wonder how strong your email subject lines or blog post titles are? There’s a tool that can help! CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer uses your word choice, word count, amount of sentimentality and other factors to provide a score for your title.
For content marketing, this is a great way to make sure your e-newsletter subject lines and blog post titles appeal to your target audience. As you develop your content, plan to spend some time putting in different titles and testing which ones score well. In addition to the score, pay attention to why they receive each score. This will help you bolster your title-writing skills. Additionally, a lot of the same principles carry over to the social media updates you write.
This tool is also useful for public relations! When you write your media pitches, try a few different possible subject lines to see which ones score well and are likely to entice journalists to open your pitch.
- Google Alerts
These email updates provide the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on the keywords you set. Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:
- Following specific industry keywords for possible articles and stories to share with your followers
- Monitoring a developing news story
- Keeping current on a competitor or industry
- Discovering potential articles about you or your business
As you set your Google Alerts, think about what terms you would type into Google to find what you’re looking for and set them as your alerts instead. This will prompt Google to send you an email when it comes across those words or phrases. You can also tell Google how often to email you your alerts – as they happen, daily or weekly.
- Google Trends
If you like looking at data with charts and graphs, this is the tool for you! With Google Trends, you can input a few different terms and compare them by popularity, region and more – including trend history and projections. This resource’s data can help you narrow down your target audience to understand them better, which you can then use to fine-tune your content marketing or public relations strategy.
- Hootsuite
One important component of social media marketing success is consistency. How can you make sure you post updates regularly? Save time in your content creation efforts by writing them in advance and scheduling them to go live at a later day and time! Hootsuite is a fantastic tool for this. They have various versions of free and paid accounts based on the way you want to use their services.
Although some companies simply take a “one and done” approach to their social media, where they push the same update through to all their platforms at once, at Three Girls we stress the importance of different updates for each social channel. Each network is different; an update that’s written for Twitter is not appropriate for LinkedIn.
Hootsuite allows you to connect your company’s various social media accounts and schedule updates to each one at various days and times. This means you can take an image or article you want to share on all your platforms, write a unique update for each one and schedule it out to go live different days and times. Then you don’t need to worry about remembering to push the update through. Just turn on your notifications and keep an eye on engagement so you can respond to followers’ questions or comments.
- Keywords Everywhere
Effective content marketing begins with strong keywords. How do you know which ones to use? Keywords Everywhere is a helpful tool for researching the best search terms for your brand. This browser extension seamlessly integrates with Google, so when you perform a search it tells you the keyword’s volume (number of searches per month), CPC (cost per click if you were to advertise) and competition (based on other content/keywords out there on the internet).
In addition to providing these details about the term you search for, it also provides even more suggestions on the side of the screen along with volume, CPC and competition.
- MailChimp
Research shows e-newsletters continue to be an effective component of content marketing. How can you manage your database of contacts while sending sleek, user-friendly emails? MailChimp is a cost-effective resource that provides a lot of helpful tools and can even integrate your email campaign with social media advertising and more. When it comes to your email marketing strategy, MailChimp provides a lot of options to help you develop the best plan for your business.
Public Relations Tools & Resources
- Help a Reporter Out (HARO)
HARO is an incredibly valuable tool when it comes to securing media coverage! Everyone’s an expert at something. Sharing your expertise may land you that big media opportunity you’ve been looking for! With HARO, journalists post specific queries, and you respond directly to them if you are a good source for their needs. From The New York Times and ABC News to Refinery29 and everyone in between, more than 55,000 members of the media have quoted HARO sources in their stories.
Every day, our team of marketing and public relations specialists carefully looks through their daily digests of media queries from HARO, searching for appropriate stories to respond to on behalf of clients.
General Organization Tools & Resources
- Slack
This tool’s usefulness goes beyond content marketing and public relations-specific activities and work teams. Slack is a resource for team members to stay connected on a more personable, human level – even if they aren’t physically in the same space. It’s designed to allow users to have numerous chats going at once, clearly organized with different channels. Whether you’re collaborating across the room or around the world, it’s incredibly useful for team unity!
- Teamwork
Another helpful business tool that is incredibly useful for content marketing and public relations (as well as other teams!) is Teamwork. This resource can take some time to wrap your head around, but it’s worth it!
Teamwork is a project management tool that allows you to virtually share updates and progress with team members. You create different teams for each client or project, and within those teams you can create tasks, prioritize work, set time targets and assign projects. You can even use Teamwork for time tracking. This tool is a fantastic way to share resources and manage projects with team members who aren’t necessarily in the same location.
Do You Need Help With Your Content Marketing Or Public Relations Efforts?
If you need help with your business’s marketing or PR efforts, contact us today for a complimentary consultation! We will utilize the many resources and tools at our disposal to create the best strategy and content for your brand.
Special Offer:
Sign up for a complimentary consultation during December and receive an Annual Marketing Planning Guide valued at $475! We offer a 30-minute phone consultation with our CEO, and can answer your questions and discuss your specific marketing needs - no strings attached. Call 408-218-2391 or contact us today to arrange your consultation!