12 Free Content Marketing Tools for SMBs and Startups

It is only possible to achieve a certain level of success with good marketing skills. Today, if you wish to succeed in digital marketing, you will need to use content creation tools. The good news is that there are numerous tools for content curation and content marketing available today.

Even though many tools claim to have multiple features and integrations, you still need to consider your choices carefully. Using various content marketing tools to get you where you need to go is the most effective way to achieve the most effective results. Whether it’s to create video content for your professionally designed business website or blog posts, there are quite a few options to think about.

Below are some excellent free tools you can use weekly to improve organic traffic and reach. Even though these may lack some of the functionality of the paid versions, they are still completely free. Let’s learn about them in a little more detail.

What Exactly is a Content Marketing Tool?

The term “content marketing tool” refers to any tool that assists the work of content teams in improving, simplifying, or better managing their marketing efforts. There is a wide array of tool categories available to assist with the creation of engaging articles for your blog or other media.

Content marketing tools can assist content marketers at every step of their day, from generating ideas to implementing designs to automating social media posts. You can also use other tools to add visual brand elements like your logo and brand colors to your marketing materials. To make this easier for you, we are listing some of the best tools you can consider to refine your content.

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12 Best Content Marketing Tools for Free

Here are the 12 best free content marketing tools we can recommend for your daily usage to manage content, increase traffic, and get maximum reach to your audience.

1. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is more than just a single content marketing tool; it is a suite of tools designed specifically for social media marketing professionals. When it comes to content, you can benefit from its use at each stage of generating and managing content.

Let’s begin at the beginning – with an idea in the making. Perhaps you do not have one? Whatever the case may be, OwlyWriter AI can assist. A simple prompt will trigger this AI tool built into the Hootsuite dashboard to come up with appropriate captions and posts.

Hootsuite’s composer makes it easy to create social media posts, regardless of whether your content was curated by AI or authored by your team. This is one of the top social media marketing AI tools to increase reach and business growth.

Features

• Extensive library. Choose from a built-in library of royalty-free images or add existing images and videos.
• Simple Processes. Create a workflow and set up an approval process seamlessly with the built-in software. As a result, your team will work collaboratively throughout the process.
• Tool integration. As part of the integration with Canva, you can create content within Hootsuite. Or, you may fine-tune your text using Grammarly’s integration with the composer.
• Scheduler. Use the Hootsuite calendar to plan and schedule it across multiple social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. There are even recommendations for the best times to post for higher engagement.
• Analytics. Using Hootsuite Analytics, you can determine the best time to post to each platform based on when your audience is online. Analyzing your analytics as part of your content marketing efforts will allow you to make improvements over time by knowing what is working (and what is not).
• Link addition. Hootbio provides an easy-to-manage link that you can use to drive traffic from platforms such as Instagram that disallow links.

hootsuite.com

2. Buffer

With Buffer, you can schedule and optimize your social media content to meet the needs of your target audience. A great tool for marketers who are interested in saving time when it comes to handling social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Features

• Extension for the browser. Your default Buffer account will be selected automatically when the page title and shortened URL are retrieved.
• You can clip images and text. As soon as you find your favorite clips, you can easily clip and share them.
• Dashboard for analytics. Track, view, and recycle your most successful social posts

buffer.com

3. KeywordsFX

By using KeywordsFX, you can discover keyword ideas that your ideal customers are using to locate products or services that are similar to your own. To maximize the performance of your pay-per-click (PPC) and organic ad campaigns, you can utilize this content marketing tool for generating and refining high-value keywords.

Features

• Ability to filter. Choose relevant keyword suggestions that contain a specific word or phrase from your list of ideas
• The category feature. Search results can be organized based on questions, keywords, and modifiers
• Function for exporting. You can download your search results in a .csv file
• Copy feature. Alternatively, you may use a web-based program such as Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel to copy and paste your results
• Sorting function. Organize your data by category

webfx.com

4. Wistia For Video Marketing

When it comes to video marketing, most content marketers recommend YouTube. The majority of them view it as a highly effective method of reaching your target audience. There are times, however, when this does not apply.

With Wistia, you can update and promote existing videos without changing URLs or losing historical engagement metrics. Having your video hosted on your website allows all traffic and engagement to be directed to your website rather than YouTube.

By adopting a video-first marketing strategy, Wistia helps you increase web traffic, improve engagement, and increase conversions.

Features

• Personalization. The platform enables customers to create personalized galleries.
• Lead generation. Generate quality leads and analyze data in a way that justifies ROI with better data.
• Tutorials. The Wistia platform is equipped with free tutorials that make it easier for beginners to understand the processes.
• Prompt customer support. Users can reach out to customer service teams instantly to ensure their success from the moment they press play. There is a free version of Wistia available, which offers limited functionality but is more than enough to fulfill your needs.

wistia.com

5. MyBestSegments

The development of personas is an essential part of developing the content marketing strategy for businesses. MyBestSegment is a fun tool that Claritas has developed to assist in crafting the perfect persona or segment for your organization. It will help you refine your brand strategy and build a professional brand that appeals to your audience.

Features

• Demographic segmentation. If you enter a zip code, MyBestSegment will provide you with demographic information of potential customers in the area.
• Preference filters. The tool provides lifestyle and media details about the people living in specific areas that can be used to create realistic, accurate personas.
• Easy sorting. You can sort by a variety of demographic characteristics when browsing all segments.
• Accessible. The tool provides the bulk of the demographic information for free, but consumers who license Claritas’ segmentation products get more detailed demographic information.

claritas360.claritas.com

6. SEO PowerSuite

It’s a very useful SEO tool, and you can use it to optimize your writing for on-page SEO by analyzing your content. It is possible to spy on your competitors by using the SEO SpyGlass tool. To find keywords to include in your content strategy, you may also wish to utilize Rank Tracker’s keyword research tool by PowerSuite.

Features

• A precise ranking checker. You can monitor rankings across 450 search engines for a large number of websites and keywords.
• Track your competitors’ rankings. Find out how well (or poorly) your competitors’ websites rank for the keywords you are interested in.
• Competitor link analysis. Identify untapped niches for link building by analyzing the backlink profiles of competing websites.
• Optimizing the landing page. Use data-driven keyword usage best practices to assess and enhance the performance of landing pages for leads and business generation.
• Scheduling of tasks. Automate any SEO activity you wish to perform.

SEO PowerSuite

7. WebFX Readability Test

With the WebFX Readability Test tool, you can check the readability of your content in simple and quick Flesch Kincaid and Gunning Fog readability tests, evaluate your work, and assign a grade.

With this free content marketing tool, you can scan the readability of formulas in the most customized way. You may add the content for an entire webpage, or select specific elements from the page. All you need to do is add a link to your content page, and your results will be compiled.

Before launching a blog or designing landing pages, you can get insights on the readability of your post or copy.

Features

• Test a single section or an entire page by copying and pasting text, entering the page’s URL, or using embed code
• It gives you a quick overview of your text’s reading ease, its understanding by different age groups, as well as several.
• It provides you with five options regarding which readability standard is most appropriate for you

webfx.com

8. Google Analytics

In terms of monitoring the performance of individual pieces of content, Google Analytics is one of the most useful tools available for content marketing. As a result, it can provide information regarding on-site visits, user flows, and conversions. Your target audience can interact more effectively with your content if you use this content tool.

Features

• The creation of reports and visualizations. With just a few mouse clicks, you can produce various reports and distribute them throughout the organization on Google Docs.
• Funnel analysis. From ad click to purchase, analyze the entire customer experience to determine where additional investment is most appropriate and feasible.
• Google Tag Manager. Use the web-based user interface to configure what types of data you wish to send to Google Analytics
• Smart goals. Make a list of specific goals and monitor your progress toward achieving them
• Activating data: Analyze incoming data to enhance your marketing strategies

agencyanalytics.com

9. Grammarly

For error-free writing, Grammarly is one of the most popular content-writing tools. Self-editing with this tool allows you to identify errors in your blog post and correct them. Free content marketing tools such as this can be extremely useful for content creators so that their content is free of typos, grammatical errors, and spelling mistakes. Additionally, it provides information about the length of your article, the average reading time, the vocabulary used, and the grade of your article’s readability.

Features

• Function of correctness: Eliminate any confusion for the reader, such as misspelled words, incorrect punctuation, grammatical errors, or misuse of words.
• Suggestions regarding tone. Change the tone and perspective of your writing without altering its meaning.
• Rewrites of full sentences. Make the changes suggested so that your writing is easier to read and understand by the reader.
• A style guide tailored to your needs. Promote brand-specific vocabulary and style within the organization to tone uniformity.
• The ability to integrate multiple systems. A wide range of applications are compatible with the program

app.grammarly.com

10. Hemingway Editor

With Hemingway Editor, you can improve your blog post content’s readability and make it more appealing to the reader. By highlighting excessively long, complex, or difficult-to-understand sentences, you can improve their clarity. Several suggestions, such as removing excessive adverbs, are also included in this. You can also use the Text Summarizer, which is designed to enhance the efficiency of your writing process. A summarizing tool makes it easy to quickly summarize long texts into short ones that get to the point without leaving out important details.

Features

• Identifying writing errors by color. Makes it easier for you to see the areas that need improvement in your writing, such as lengthy, complex sentences and common errors
• Restructuring the sentence. Provides suggestions on how to simplify and concise sentences
• Characteristics of writing style. Do not overload your sentences with complex words or phrases – make sure your sentences are short and to the point and that they flow smoothly.
• Optimizing the tone. By using the Hemingway editor, make your sentence more concise by eliminating passive voice and adverbs

hemingwayapp.com

11. ChatGPT

ChatGPT appears at first glance to be an ordinary content marketing tool but it has the potential to provide you with several benefits in digital marketing work related to content. Let it proofread and improve your content for you. With the AI revolution, this tool is expected to play an integral role in refining marketing strategies.

You can prompt the tool to create kickass branding briefs or structure outlines for your blog posts. It will provide you with several suggestions for meta descriptions or titles for your content. You can even use it to generate content ideas as well. All in all, you can use this tool in an almost endless number of ways to enhance your content marketing strategy.

Features

• Caption generating. You can create engaging, shareable captions, descriptions, and even entire posts with ChatGPT. As a result, businesses may be able to expand their social media reach and increase engagement.
• Personalized messaging. ChatGPT is also being used to create personalized and targeted messages as part of social media marketing.
• Targeted campaigns. The tool can be used to run targeted marketing campaigns based on information about customer preferences and behavior.
• AI-powered Chatbots. A chatbot can also be created with ChatGPT for a variety of social media channels as well as messaging applications.
• Multiple languages. ChatGPT can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty by recognizing natural language and responding to inquiries and complaints promptly.

chatgpt.com

12. Trello

Among the most powerful marketing tools, Trello provides a comprehensive calendar that can be used to track content readiness and schedule its publication. It’s often rated among project management tools. With Trello’s boards, cards, and checklists, you can plan your workday, develop your editorial plan, and assemble your ideas.

Features

• Take a close look at the work your group has undertaken from every possible perspective
• With Butler automation, routine processes can be accelerated
• Install Trello plugins to increase your marketing team’s efficiency
• Get your team on the right track with customizable pre-made templates designed by industry experts and Trello Community members
• Discover innovative new methods of completing tasks based on the existing tools your group uses

trello.com

Conclusion

Free content marketing tools are an excellent addition to the toolbox of any marketing department. Once you have defined your content strategy, consider implementing some of these tools to facilitate your implementation.

Even though the free versions may lack some features in comparison to the paid versions, they are still useful for helping marketers organize and develop engaging content. Take a look at them and see if they work for you.

Looking for a digital marketing strategist to help with your marketing efforts? Contact us.