[et_pb_section admin_label=”Top skinny IC Logo Section” global_module=”26126″ fullwidth=”off” specialty=”off” transparent_background=”off” background_color=”#cc4315″ allow_player_pause=”off” inner_shadow=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” padding_mobile=”on” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” make_equal=”off” use_custom_gutter=”off” custom_css_main_element=”@media only screen and (min-width: 1350px)||.page-id-25059 .et_pb_section_0, .page-id-25059 .et_pb_section_0 .et_pb_row_0 {||padding: 0 !important;||}” custom_padding=”0px||0px|”][et_pb_row global_parent=”26126″ admin_label=”Row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”on” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” padding_top_1=”0px” padding_right_1=”0px” padding_bottom_1=”0px” padding_left_1=”0px” column_padding_mobile=”on” custom_padding=”0px|0px|0px|0px” custom_margin=”0px||0px|” custom_css_main_element=”@media only screen and (min-width: 1350px)||.page-id-25059 .et_pb_section_0, .page-id-25059 .et_pb_section_0 .et_pb_row_0 {||padding: 0 !important;||}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_image global_parent=”26126″ admin_label=”IC logo Image” src=”https://iriscontent.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/IC-logo-horizontal-framed-e1468862028685.jpg” alt=”Iris Content logo” show_in_lightbox=”off” url_new_window=”off” use_overlay=”off” animation=”off” sticky=”off” align=”center” force_fullwidth=”off” always_center_on_mobile=”on” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid” custom_margin=”0px|0px|0px|0px” custom_css_main_element=”@media only screen and (min-width: 1350px)||.page-id-25059 .et_pb_section_0, .page-id-25059 .et_pb_section_0 .et_pb_row_0 {||padding: 0 !important;||}” url=”https://iriscontent.com”] [/et_pb_image][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section admin_label=”section” background_image=”https://iriscontent.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Background-Image-11.jpg” transparent_background=”off” background_color=”#ffffff” allow_player_pause=”off” inner_shadow=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” padding_mobile=”off” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” make_equal=”off” use_custom_gutter=”off”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][et_pb_divider admin_label=”Divider” color=”#ffffff” show_divider=”off” height=”200″ divider_style=”solid” divider_position=”top” hide_on_mobile=”on”] [/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text admin_label=”Blog Post Title Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left” max_width=”620px” text_font=”Cantata One||||” text_font_size=”72″ text_text_color=”#ffffff” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid” custom_margin=”0px||0px|” text_line_height=”1.1em” text_font_size_last_edited=”on|tablet” text_font_size_tablet=”52″]
Awesome Tools to Get Ahead in Your Content Marketing in 2017
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section admin_label=”Blog post main Section” fullwidth=”off” specialty=”off” transparent_background=”off” background_color=”FDF3E7″ allow_player_pause=”off” inner_shadow=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” padding_mobile=”off” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” make_equal=”off” use_custom_gutter=”off”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” custom_padding=”0px|||” padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Blog post Date Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left” text_font=”Montserrat||||” text_font_size=”10em” text_text_color=”#cc4315″ use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid” text_line_height=”1.1em” custom_margin=”0px||0px|”]
13
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider admin_label=”Divider” color=”#cc4315″ show_divider=”on” divider_style=”solid” divider_position=”top” hide_on_mobile=”off” custom_css_main_element=”width:20px;”] [/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text admin_label=”Month Year Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left” text_font=”Montserrat|on|||” text_font_size=”18″ text_text_color=”#cc4315″ use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid” custom_margin=”-10px||0px|”]
JANUARY 2017
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left” max_width=”620px” text_font=”Montserrat||||” text_font_size=”24″ text_text_color=”#363636″ use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid” custom_margin=”10px||0px|” text_line_height=”1.4em” text_font_size_last_edited=”on|tablet”]
We are now well into January 2017. So how is your content marketing strategy going to be different this year as compared to last year? By now, 2017 content marketers will have decided on which of last year’s strategies worked and which ones do not need to be repeated. It’s a process of elimination, actually. With only the best being even considered and new ones being tapped.
2016 saw a deluge of content and content marketers scrambled to develop strategies to better engage their target audience. But the creation of this golden piece of published post takes a lot of hard work. Fortunately, 2016 also saw many time-saving and useful content marketing tools to help the lowly 2017 content marketers get the job done. They now have less than 12 months to do this before the whole elimination process begins again.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” custom_padding=”50px|||” padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on” custom_padding_tablet=”17px|||” custom_padding_last_edited=”on|tablet”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_image admin_label=”Image” src=”https://iriscontent.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/woman-1169316_960_720.jpg” show_in_lightbox=”off” url_new_window=”off” use_overlay=”off” animation=”fade_in” sticky=”on” align=”left” force_fullwidth=”off” always_center_on_mobile=”on” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid” custom_css_main_element=”max-height=600px”] [/et_pb_image][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” custom_padding=”0px|||” padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” custom_padding=”50px|||” padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_divider admin_label=”Divider” color=”#7e8f7c” show_divider=”on” divider_style=”solid” divider_position=”top” hide_on_mobile=”off”] [/et_pb_divider][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” custom_padding=”17px|||” padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left” max_width=”620px” text_font=”Montserrat||||” text_font_size=”20″ text_text_color=”#363636″ use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid” custom_margin=”30px||0px|” text_line_height=”1.5em” text_font_size_last_edited=”on|tablet”]
So let’s try to list some of these invaluable content marketing tools to help create and share valuable topics that that are easily found by the target audience:
Content Sharing and Content Management Tools
Buffer – This is a social media tool for scheduling your shares. This tool will give you the most optimal times to share your content and get the most out of it. This is convenient because it will do all you social media posting for you. With just a few clicks, all your scheduled content goes out whenever you decide. Think of it like Grand Central Station, where you control when the different buses leave at what times sending out their passengers to their different destinations.
Hootsuite – This is another widely used tool for all your social media content sharing. With Hootsuite, marketers save time by centrally managing your marketing strategies from one dashboard. Imagine an air traffic controller’s dashboard with all the switches, lights and buttons. That’s how much in control you will be with all your social media accounts.
Content Discovery Tools
Google Trends – This is free from Google wherein you can see a record of all searches being done on Google. Useful because it can give you data for what is trending at the moment. Need to know what news is trending? Or which YouTube video is the most watched? Which Hollywood celebrity is being searched the most? With this data, you can now streamline which topics to write about and which ones your target audience is already searching for. See this need now?
Press – This is also a curation tool. It offers a whole lot of features. You can search for trending terms and sort results by any category you choose. It also allows you to schedule content and monitor the engagement of your content such as the number of likes, shares, tweets or retweets.
List Building and Lead Generation Tools
SumoMe – This is compendium of free tools to help your email list grow thereby increasing your website traffic and sales. Some of its most useful tools are:
A scroll box to politely ask for email addresses of visitors
Google analytics to show you what your readers viewed
List Builder to convert first time visitors into regulars
Highlighters that can be used by readers to capture portions of content to be shared
LeadPages – This is another tool for helping you grow your email list. It isn’t free but it serves many useful purposes. It allows users to create landing pages very quickly. It has a feature called LeadBoxes where you can turn any link into one that shows a popover when it is clicked. And finally, it gives your subscribers an option to be on your list, or a sub-list or give them a chance to join webinar subscriptions. All these can be done with one click.
Influencer Marketing Tools
NinjaOutreach – This is used as an outreach and prospecting tool. You will have a list of authoritative influencers and bloggers in any niche you want. You then have a plethora of people (from more than 25 million websites including social media) to help promote your blog, gain brand recall and recognition and gain links.
BuzzSumo – Need to know which website or social media personality is deemed as the most influential? You can find content that became authoritative and influential on a particular topic, niche or domain plus those influential people who shared this content or linked to it. You can even look at the number of shares of your content on all social media.
Email Marketing Tools
SendGrid – This tool is one of the biggest transactional and marketing email services (averaging 14 billion emails a month) there is. They promise (and deliver) a marketing campaign that can be easily learned and efficiently used by marketers to see results quickly. Their drag and drop email editor and list management are just some of the easy to handle features.
MailChimp – This is one of the most popular in the web right now because it can do everything that the other tools do. This tool can give you customer profiles to help you list subscribers based on their data. As you get organized, this tool will help you send out emails that fit into their profiles. Another cool feature allows you to see how well a keyword, topic or phrase performed so you can then be more discriminate in your subject line. It has a subscriber base of over 7 million.
Push Notification Tools
Pushwoosh – This tool is useful in sending out notifications to mobile platforms (including iOS and Android), desktop computers, and applications. It provides easy segmentation of audiences based on your marketing strategy. There is also multiple language support for service offerings to a certain regions.
Urban Airship – This notification tool offers an editing tool so you can preview your pushes on all platforms. It also lets you build user profiles based on their preferences, in-app behavior and device information. If you’re using Google Wallet or Apple Passbook, this tool will be useful.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”on” gutter_width=”2″ padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on” custom_padding=”50px|||” custom_padding_tablet=”30px|||” custom_padding_last_edited=”on|tablet”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” custom_padding=”17px|||” padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left” max_width=”620px” text_font=”Montserrat||||” text_font_size=”20″ text_text_color=”#363636″ use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid” custom_margin=”30px||0px|” text_line_height=”1.5em” text_font_size_last_edited=”on|tablet”]
Use one or use them all for that extra boost in your content marketing strategies. Combining these tools won’t hurt especially when you have the budget. This is not even a complete list of tools. Of course, you can’t use all that are out there! But do go all out this year. In 2017 content marketers will have an abundance of tools to help their campaigns. I don’t envy their tasks because the whole content marketing caboodle is such an overwhelming one. It’s like putting together a band wagon whose destination is content marketing success. The question is, which tools will you be using when making this awesome vehicle!
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_divider admin_label=”Divider” color=”#cc4315″ show_divider=”on” divider_style=”groove” divider_position=”top” hide_on_mobile=”on”] [/et_pb_divider][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section admin_label=”Blog post main Section” fullwidth=”off” specialty=”off” transparent_background=”off” background_color=”FDF3E7″ allow_player_pause=”off” inner_shadow=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” padding_mobile=”off” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” make_equal=”off” use_custom_gutter=”off”][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” padding_mobile=”off” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][et_pb_image admin_label=”Image” src=”https://iriscontent.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/author-image-annie.jpg” show_in_lightbox=”off” url_new_window=”off” use_overlay=”off” animation=”left” sticky=”off” align=”right” force_fullwidth=”off” always_center_on_mobile=”on” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”] [/et_pb_image][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][et_pb_team_member admin_label=”Person” name=”Annie Ianko” position=”Content Happiness Advisor” animation=”off” background_layout=”light” facebook_url=”https://www.facebook.com/IrisWebContent/” twitter_url=”https://twitter.com/Iris_Content” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid” custom_css_main_element=”box-shadow: 0 0 20px rgba(0,0,0,.1);||”]
Annie has 19 years’ experience as an editor and content creator and manager. With work in television and written media, she has dedicated her past 10 years to learning the ropes of online content creation, from writing to editing, from SEO to content management.
[/et_pb_team_member][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section admin_label=”Section” global_module=”27319″ transparent_background=”off” background_color=”#c97824″ allow_player_pause=”off” inner_shadow=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” padding_mobile=”off” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” custom_width_px=”780px” custom_width_percent=”80%” make_equal=”off” use_custom_gutter=”off” gutter_width=”3″ fullwidth=”off” specialty=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_3=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_method_2=”on” parallax_method_3=”on” disabled=”off”][et_pb_row global_parent=”27319″ admin_label=”Row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”on” width_unit=”on” custom_width_px=”780px” custom_width_percent=”80%” use_custom_gutter=”off” gutter_width=”3″ padding_mobile=”off” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”on” parallax_3=”off” parallax_method_3=”on” parallax_4=”off” parallax_method_4=”on” disabled=”off”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text global_parent=”27319″ admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”dark” text_orientation=”center” text_font=”Cantata One||||” text_font_size=”36″ text_font_size_tablet=”26″ text_text_color=”#fdf3e7″ text_line_height=”1.4em” use_border_color=”off” border_style=”solid” custom_margin=”||70px|” disabled=”off”]
Want new articles before they get published?
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_signup global_parent=”27319″ admin_label=”Email Optin ‘graph text” provider=”mailchimp” mailchimp_list=”6d2efc3306″ aweber_list=”none” title=”Subscribe to our email list” button_text=”Sign Me Up!” use_background_color=”on” background_color=”#c97824″ background_layout=”dark” text_orientation=”left” use_focus_border_color=”off” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_width=”1px” border_style=”solid” custom_button=”on” button_text_size=”20″ button_text_color=”#cc4315″ button_bg_color=”#fdf3e7″ button_border_color=”#cc4315″ button_letter_spacing=”0″ button_use_icon=”default” button_icon=”%%%” button_icon_color=”#fdf3e7″ button_icon_placement=”right” button_on_hover=”on” button_text_color_hover=”#fdf3e7″ button_bg_color_hover=”#cc4315″ button_letter_spacing_hover=”0″ disabled=”off”]
Yes, I want to learn more about content marketing! I want to incorporate the latest marketing strategies to improve my brand, reach a wider audience and sell more stuff!
[/et_pb_signup][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]