The demand for high-quality content is increasing among readers and that’s why content marketers are looking at the best ways to deliver what their readers want. With demand increasing, the range of the top content marketing tools in 2020 also has expanded significantly.
You will find scores of content marketing tools in every conceivable type – free, cheap, costly, premium and more. The tech landscape in this domain is proliferating rapidly. The tools serve a variety of marketing tasks such as ideation, promotion, optimization and more. So, if you have a problem, you can be sure that there is a solution around.
However, with hundreds of content marketing tools vying for your attention, finding the one that works specifically for your precise needs could be tough.
This post aims at helping to arrive at the right choice without getting confused or overwhelmed. We have identified these 25 top content marketing tools that are going to be in the limelight in 2020. Take a look.
How many times has it happened that you sit down to write a blog and 30 minutes down the line you are still racking your brains for a good topic to write on? Yes, coming up with a blog post topic is not easy. Every writer identifies with this untold reality. Question DB is a simple tool that aims at helping you find blog post ideas – dozens of it, in fact. Simply enter a topic that has been on your mind and Question DB will run through the web to look for questions that people have raised on this specific topic.
USP:
The best thing about this tool is the Sort By feature. It sorts questions on the basis of popularity or how frequently a question is asked. You can also sort by topic which can help organize the search results into various categories for a better understanding of readers' minds.
Conclusion:
Question DB has gained popularity rapidly and has become a favorite tech tool for finding ideas for blog posts and YouTube videos.
Pricing:
Free or $10/month for question-based keywords
Looking to pepper your content with HD quality videos? Find hundreds of them and that too for free on Mixkit. This is the best place for high-quality stock HD videos on a variety of themes and topics. It is a great way to feature some awesome videos in your content without having to own or hire a camera or an expert photographer.
The website has also posted an update that they will be adding about 10 new videos to the site every week or about 40-50 videos monthly.
USP:
The categories feature is one of the biggest benefits of using Mixkit. You can access a wonderful collection of videos neatly organized into different categories. Finding the kind of video you are looking for is remarkably easy when you use Mixkit.
Conclusion:
Mixkit is the best online video resource for creating blogs and content powered by superb quality videos. A quick, random check of the various videos available on this content marketing tool affirms its amazing quality and they are all legit as well.
Pricing:
Free
When you are there out in the market, one of the key requirements is to get information about competitors' activity to plan your next moves accurately. SimilarWeb is the best resource for getting analytics on your competitors’ websites.
You can get reliable and accurate information about various aspects such as the traffic the competitor website is attracting every month or the keywords that are helping them rank better on top search engines.
USP:
SimilarWeb provides you insider data on the top pages, keywords and traffic sources of competitors but one of the biggest features is referrals. It allows you to see the exact sites that send your competitors droves of traffic.
Conclusion:
SimilarWeb offers detailed information about competitors’ activities such as visits, keywords, referrals and traffic analysis. You can also get website traffic comparison side by side and keyword performance for organic and PPC platforms. They provide a free trial, custom and premium packages. The free trial includes five results per website metric, traffic data for three months, and mobile app analysis data for three months.
Pricing:
Free and Enterprise Package
Buffer is a content marketing tool designed to help you schedule all social media posts on channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram conveniently.
The tool is a great way to ensure that your post goes out on the social channels you want them to go when your audience is most likely to be online to read them.
Buffer is simple and easy to use. You just have to write your posts like you normally do and then fix a posting schedule.
USP:
Analytics is the best feature of Buffer. It helps understand which tweet or post got the most attention in terms of user action such as clicks or retweets or other types of engagement.
Conclusion:
Buffer allows you to efficiently manage multiple social networks including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts by setting up an updating schedule. The content marketing tool also offers the option of adding, changing and deleting posts and schedules. Buffer can be used with different browsers. The tool is easy to use and extremely reliable.
Pricing:
$15-$199 per month
If you are looking for some non-jarring, high-quality social sharing buttons, you are going to like this. ShareThis offers an easy way of getting more engagement in the form of likes and shares on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media websites.
ShareThis stands apart from other social sharing buttons as it can be easily customized to match the look and feel of your website.
USP:
WordPress plugin from ShareThis is one of the most attractive features of this content marketing tool. You can get social buttons on your WordPress easily and quickly.
Conclusion:
ShareThis, as the name suggests, is the easiest way of getting customizable sharing buttons on your blogs. It is designed for use on any screen size, offers good language support and is a great way to drive engagement and collaboration.
Pricing:
Free
If email marketing forms the core of your digital marketing efforts, go for the superbly designed and amazingly simple Aweber. It is just the kind of email marketing tool you need as it is fully automated and best for content promotion campaigns. Launched some 20 years ago, Aweber still holds fort because it is the best in its niche.
USP:
Segments is one of the hot features of Aweber. You can view and track data about subscribers and manage your list better. The feature also allows you to send targeted emails to subscribers based on specific aspects like location, preferences, and actions.
Conclusion:
Marketers looking to build their brand image quickly and effortlessly by creating and sending powerful emails will find Aweber perfect for their marketing needs. You can create a list of contacts you want to promote your business. A lot of new features have been added and updated to deliver a great experience to users.
Pricing:
$19-$149/month (up to 25k subscribers)
Looking for an advanced way of content optimization? Clearscope is the clear choice recommended by many marketing experts. You can actually get a list of unique keywords that can be used in your blog post for greater visibility and engagement. And it works much better than any SEO grader.
USP:
Content Grade from Clearscope is a favorite feature of many marketers as it offers a simple way of copying and pasting the content draft into the system. Once this is done, you will be able to see the words and phrases missing from your content. Simply add them and give your SEO efforts a real boost.
Conclusion:
Clearscope is the tool best suited for you if SEO is what you are focused on in your content marketing efforts. It is designed to fit seamlessly into any content process making it easy for professionals to deliver content that’s informative and high-value.
Pricing:
$300 per month
Content marketing professionals can deliver great results by using BuzzSumo, an advanced content marketing tool that’s packed with a string of powerful features. It can do a host of things from researching the right topic to monitoring your brand and more. Designed for SEO professionals and experienced content marketers, BuzzSumo can micro-analyze loads of content pages and provide comprehensive data to businesses. Marketers will be able to know about the content impact and what to do to boost their value.
USP:
If content creation is your weak spot, you are going to love the content research feature offered by BuzzSumo. Social measurement, influencer identification, and sentiment scoring are also some of the features that marketers are using more to know how their brand ranks among readers.
Conclusion:
BuzzSumo is the perfect content marketing tool if you are more into the SEO and marketing aspects of your content. It offers various ways of analyzing. Your search can be refined the way you want for better results based on your unique requirements.
Pricing:
$79-$499 per month
If you are not happy with the quality of your Twitter followers want to find some truly influential Twitter users, then Followerwonk is for you. The software is designed to help you find top influencers for your niche effortlessly. You can find specific influencers (SEO for instance) you want to connect with on Twitter by simply searching on this tool.
USP:
Social Authority is one of the top features of Followerwonk. While the commonly used Twitter tools allow users to find influencers based on their fan following, Followerwonk does it differently. It goes a bit deeper with its analysis and shows users that are followed by other high profile influencers.
Conclusion:
Marketing pros can use Followerwonk to boost social media strategy efficiency. They can target their posts better by identifying the time their followers are most active on social media and optimize the value of each tweet. Followerwonk provides a graphical representation of data, making it easy to take the right and educated business decisions.
Pricing:
$29-$79 per month
Your search for an efficient and powerful email marketing tool ends at OptinMonster. It can not only help you generate leads but also drive more subscribers to your page. It comes with attractively designed email forms with proven ways to trigger an action such as advanced exit-intent technology which can catch the attention of visitors before they exit your site/page.
USP:
OptinMonster offers the 2-Step Optins that allow users to convert any link or image into an Optin form. It is a great way of improving conversions dramatically. You can capture more non-buyers and achieve more during the sales process.
Conclusion:
With OptinMonster, you can show the best offer to the right people and enlarge your email list significantly. You can create a superior visual offer, personalize and target them, and test and make the necessary adjustments if needed in real-time.
Pricing:
Ranging from $9 to $49 per month, billed annually
If you are using Pinterest and Instagram on a regular basis for your content management needs, you can do your tasks more smoothly and with greater efficiency with Tailwind. It is a simple, user-friendly content scheduling app, designed specifically for Pinterest and Instagram. The powerful app is a major time-saver as it comes with features such as bulk image upload, drag, and drop calendar, multi-board pinning and pin looping, hashtag lists, and more.
USP:
With Tailwind, you can optimize your Pinterest and Instagram schedules automatically by timing postings when your targeted audience is most active and engaged. The analytics feature allows you to understand what’s working for your campaign and what needs a tweak.
Pricing:
From $9.99 to $799.99 per month. Free trial available
If you are looking to upgrade your content with some powerful audio additions, you can do it best with Audacity. For marketers who use audio mediums to send their message across, this can be a wonderful content management tool. Audacity also helps clean up the audio in any video and audio recordings and makes the process easy for editors.
USP:
Superior controls and better editing capabilities make Audacity a must-have tool for content managers and marketers looking for audio-editing options. It is user-friendly and has a small learning curve that can be easily handled.
Conclusion:
Audacity is a great tool for all audio editing needs and the best for making any changes to the audio aspects of your content. Novice users can use the numerous tips offered to master the software within a short time.
Pricing:
Free and open source
A content marketing tool that’s gaining popularity rapidly is CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer. You simply have to type your chosen headline and let the software do a detailed analysis of several key parameters. The headline is evaluated for word use, structure, readability, and other aspects. Color-coded scores are then assigned to give your headline a value.
USP:
With CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer, you can be sure of creating a headline that can assure more conversions. The software answers many questions on how to get your headline spot on. You can grab the attention of your audience with minimal effort with this powerful software.
Conclusion:
CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer is the perfect way to generate killer headlines that can resonate with your audience, grab their attention and drive conversions. The fact that it is simple and user-friendly adds to its value. It keeps a rolling headline history which keeps you updated on your tweaks and improvements.
Pricing:
Free
If you are having some trouble with your writing and wish for a magical tool that can make your writing better, your wish is about to be fulfilled. Hemingway Editor is popular and oft-used software that can make writing better.
USP:
Hemingway Editor can review your content and provide suggestions on how to improve it. It is like having your own personal writing coach who can guide you in crucial elements of writing and help deliver powerful content.
Conclusion:
The content management app provides a simple solution for managing sentences that are complex and lengthy. It also points out errors. The guiding colors can be used to create meaningful and crisp content that readers will be able to understand and identify with easily. It is a tool that is a must-have for all content writers.
Pricing:
Free or $19.99 one-time payment for the desktop version
Rattled by the popularity of the YouTube Studio account of a competitor? You can now have a closer look at what they are up to. SocialBlade allows you to literally spy on your competitor’s YouTube channels. SocialBlade lets you into vital analytics like real-time subscriber count. It even collects stats over a period of time.
USP:
SocialBlade allows you to find out the precise number of subscribers and hits that YouTube videos of your competitors get. The figures can be compared to those of previous months to know the progress of your competitors.
Conclusion:
SocialBlade provides users a great way of checking their social media stats on channels like YouTube, Instagram, Twitch and others. They can compare the stats of their competitors and make changes to their marketing moves and strategies to steer ahead of others. Features such as YouTube Progress Graphs provide details at a glance for user convenience.
Pricing:
Free
Your content can become popular and reach places if you make sharing easy for others. In other words, you should have a simple, friendly social sharing button on your page. Social Warfare is becoming that one important tool for content marketers and managers. Its popularity comes from the fact that it is easy to set up, can be customized to your needs, and adapted for individual social channels.
USP:
You can add some truly beautiful and attractive social sharing buttons to your content using Social Warfare. The software keeps the aesthetic of your site in mind, allowing you to customize the color of the button accordingly. The software is super fast and helps your SEO efforts too along the way.
Conclusion:
Social Warfare is one of the top-rated social sharing tools that can make content sharing easy and quick. The Share Recovery feature is a unique one as it keeps track of the share counts even when you change domain names or move to SSL.
Pricing:
$29 for a single site and $349 for unlimited use
Ahrefs is fast-emerging as the favorite SEO tool as it offers a range of tracking options. You can use this tool to track the rankings of your keywords and even analyze that of your competitors. You can also track traffic and other vital SEO metrics.
USP:
Ahrefs offers a host of SEO-specific research including content research, web monitoring, backlink research and more. New tools and features are added on a regular basis to enhance user experience. Features such as the “top pages” make it easy for users to analyze the most valuable pages on a website. The content gap is another crucial feature that allows you to see why competitors are ranked for a specific metric.
Conclusion:
Ahrefs is recommended by some of the top marketing and SEO experts for its valuable features and ability to make a difference to your understanding of SEO processes. It is a tool that can do your content a world of good if you are serious about marketing and SEO.
Pricing:
$7 for seven days trial and then go for $99 or $179 packages
Want to cite sources of your research and information in your blogs, articles or website content? Airstory can help you do it with ease. This tool is perfect for anyone who is into content management and marketing including writing professionals, students, copywriters, and others. All you have to do is make notes from your research and add them by dragging into your online page.
USP:
You can work faster and more efficiently with Airstory as it obliterates the need to revisit the documents or files where the research materials are stored. It is a great way of writing well-researched posts and adding powerful points to online discussions.
Conclusion:
Airstory is ideal for those who have to write content that is highly researched and data-driven. The tool comes with tags features that allow users to categorize notes into various categories. Airstory is one of the most favored content marketing tools and growing in popularity speedily.
Pricing:
Free
Who doesn’t wish that their content is viewed by tens of thousands of readers? It may not have been easy in the past to achieve this objective but today, getting your content to millions of readers is a real possibility. Outbrain is a content marketing tool worth checking out for many reasons.
USP:
This tool is ideal for those who want to grab eyeballs and are not too concerned about targeting a niche audience for their content. The multimedia format is designed to drive consumer attention and boost engagement. The tool comes with smartcards that allow personalization based on new user trends. The Reach Estimator is a unique feature that provides an estimate of how many people will see your promotion.
Conclusion:
Outbrain is a great way of reaching your potential customers. The content management tool offers a personalized feed experience that results in longer sessions and better engagement.
Pricing:
Approximately $1 per click
Loom is a simple tool that allows you to create, edit, and share screen share videos. This can be a great tool for those into content management and marketing as videos can be easily created and embedded for effortless sharing. If communicating through images is what you specialize in, Loom can help you sharpen your skills.
USP:
Loom is the perfect way to bring the convenience of videos to the communication process, especially at the workplace. The newly added features such as My Videos Library, Animated GIF preview, Theater Mode and Duplicate Videos are all aimed at personalizing user experience even further.
Conclusion:
Loom simplifies video recording and helps send your message across quickly through a sharable video. You can share with a simple link without having to switch any app or going through the laborious upload process.
Pricing:
Free basic package and $8 for the pro plan. Teams and Enterprises billed on basis of scale of use. 14-day free trial is available.
If you want a simple way of presenting your visual content, Canva is the answer. Creating high-quality visual content consistently is a tough job. Hiring a professional designer may not work in your limited budget and using advanced image editing tools is not easy as there are long learning curves involved. Canva has been developed precisely to help content managers deal with such problems.
USP:
Canva has been extensively tested and has emerged as one of the top class image editing tools. It is unrivaled in performance when you have to edit images for social media. You can create anything from Instagram posts to presentations and it will not take you much time either. You can create the look you want for the content with the intuitive drag and drop interface.
Pricing:
$12.95 per month
Alltop is a powerful content marketing tool but not like the conventional ones available on the market. It is something akin to an interactive list of the most popular blogs on various topics. For instance, if you want to find blogs to write a guest post on, Alltop can be used to make the perfect search. It covers around 50 niches. You can also use Alltop to know about the topics that are a hot favorite among leading bloggers across various industries.
USP:
Alltop offers an easy way to know about content that’s being shared extensively across various niches. The Viral feature lets you into the content that’s going viral like crazy across the globe.
Pricing:
Free
Zapier is an advanced marketing automation that no content marketing professional can do without. It allows you to connect diverse services together for seamless integration. Want to post Instagram content on Facebook, or share it to your email marketing software? Zapier can do it for you in a jiffy.
USP:
When you want to perform some routine activities, you can set Zapier in motion while you solve other pressing problems. Zapier connects more web apps than any other integration tool available on the market. Plus, new options are added every week to deliver great value for money.
Conclusion:
Zapier allows you to build workflows effortlessly with a few clicks without using additional services. You can automate basic as well as advanced tasks based on the requirements of your process or company. There is a wonderful support team also available when you need assistance.
Pricing:
Basic Plan is free. Premium tools are available at $20 per month. 14-day free trial available.
HotJar is one of the favorite analytics tools of content managers and marketers. It offers got some truly valuable and high-quality tools that can make content management easy and smooth.
USP:
You are sure to find HotJar as it has the ability to understand precisely what users want because it can visualize behavior. You can enhance user experience on your site by identifying the key areas that require improvement and making the necessary changes.
Conclusion:
HotJar comes with features like an on-site poll, surveys, and session replays. These tools can help marketers understand the reasons for specific user behavior. They can introduce changes that can enhance their experience and boost the performance of your marketing efforts. Tools such as heat maps allow you to get an idea of where all the clicking and scrolling is coming from.
Pricing:
The basic plan for individuals is free while premium plan starts at $29/month. For businesses, $89 to $589 depending on page views/day.
You must have tried numerous image optimizers to make images on your page more attractive and effective. Now try Kraken. It is undoubtedly the best way of crunching your images and yes, it does improve website loading speed. You can use Kraken to reduce the file size of images on your pages and it does so beautifully, without compromising on the quality.
USP:
Kraken can be used to automatically crunch images that are uploaded to your WordPress media files by using the Kraken WordPress plugin which is one of its popular features. It does make a visible difference to the loading speed of pages while ensuring that your images look great and presentable.
Conclusion:
Kraken is the must-have ultra-fast image optimizer and compressor for marketers looking to improve user experience on their website. The tool comes with best-in-class algorithms and it can save you precious bandwidth and storage space. The improvement in website load times can be quite dramatic in most cases.
Pricing:
$5-$79 per month
Based on my research, these are the 25 top content marketing tools available for your use. Your favorite one not listed here? Please share your views and experiences about these and other content marketing tools that you have been using recently. We will certainly update this list as and when new developments happen in this domain.
