Your content is your bread and butter. Marketers in general know that creating good content is the single greatest way you can engage with your audience in a meaningful way. But let’s face it, coming up with fresh ideas or knowing how to keep things relevant can be hard for all of us. Worst of all, many will continue on a certain thread of topics not realizing that their audience has long since moved on.
If you have been noticing a dip in your content’s reach, that could be the culprit. Doing constant content research is your best bet on creating good content every time. Here are ten content research tools you probably haven’t tried (but totally should today).
1. Keyword.Guru: Research Keywords
What do Google, Bing, eBay, Amazon, Youtube and Google Play have in common? Other than being well known websites, they are the pools that Keyword.Guru draws from when giving you the most popular related searches associated with any keywords you put in.
So if you put in “chicken” it will give you the top ten results from each source right there on the same screen. This allows you to compare them across sources and start coming up with a content plan that meets the needs of people who are looking those things up.
2. Kparser: Organize Your Keywords
I am pretty new to Kparser but it just blows my mind. The tool gives you keyword and content research, along with insight into important metrics. That includes search volume and cost per click, so if your goal it to up those numbers you can do it here.
What I like most about it is how you are able to filter through those keyword lists by clicking words in the left-hand column. Want to limit your [chicken] keyword lists to all phrases containing “recipes” in them? Just click the word in the left column and scan though!
3. Medium: Learn What’s Hot
You have probably found yourself on Medium before. It is a popular content aggregation network that lets you host stories on relevant topics to your interests and get some cash for them.
But I am not suggesting you write for them (though you could). It is a good place to see what topics are trending, what people are commenting and what is being shared on social media.
DirJournal lists a few niche news and media aggregators you may also check out of you are into a more specific industry.
4. Salesmate: Monitor Your Customers’ Questions
If you are into B2B, you are likely to be already using a customer relationships management solution to record and organize your leads.
But lead management is not the only thing those platforms are good for. They can come useful for recording your content ideas to address your customers’ questions in your site content.
I use Salesmate for that and it’s a perfect way to create an archive of customer-generated questions to delegate those to the content team.
5. Cyfe: Organize!
Content marketing is overwhelming: You need to brainstorm, write, edit, market, track too many things for too many content assets.
The solution is to go clutter-free and to get organized. Cyfe is the best solution for that because it’s incredibly flexible. You can create a separate dashboard to organize your writing process and another one to monitor your results and mentions. It will save you lots of time!
6. IMPACT: Find a Great Headline
Have an idea of what you want to write about but nothing specific enough that you can get started? Sick of generic topics that are barely pushing the needle on your customer’s interest barometers?
IMPACT has a blogging tool that works by letting you put in something you want to blog about, then it spits out some interesting headlines to work from. But it isn’t just a simple generator. It has you fill in the blanks to create a sort of adlib title. Don’t know what to write about at all? It will suggest that, too.
There are many more blog and domain generators you may want to give a try!
7. MyBlogU: Brainstorm!
MyBlogU is a great tool that connects you to fellow bloggers for you to brainstorm together.
It’s a free platform and you are likely to find great friends there. The site’s tagline is actually “You are not alone!”
8. Epic Beat: Watch Trends
Looking for a free way to get those insights? Epic Beat isn’t as thorough but it is still extremely useful. You put in a keyword like “dogs” or a domain like “dogs.com”.
It gives you the average shares per post, comments per post and applause per post. It then gives you a list of related popular articles that it is drawing that data from. Many come from the biggest sites in your chosen industry. You can filter results through multiple channels and select the time frame.
9. Answer The Public: Research Questions
Don’t be put off by the recording of the agitated man waiting for your question. This is the Seeker and he is here to help you.
Put in your keywords and Answer The Public will give you a list of content ideas that you should write about. The answer will be provided in an visually stimulating graphic that points you to dozens of headlines. It isn’t the most thorough generator out there but it is really cool. Plus, it has a lot of style.
10. Spezify: Get Inspired
Are you inspired by visual content more than written? Does seeing a visual representation help you to better process or understand information? Then you might like Spezify.
It takes search terms and creates visual representations. It can really help to get your muse going in a way that just seeing things written down can’t. It is pretty functional, so the images aren’t confusing or all over the place. It helps you to better work your way through the different images and get more from them. The only downside is you can’t save the visuals, so you may need a secondary way to keep track of your ideas.
Do you have a tool that you think belongs on this list? Let us know in the comments.