Setting up your content strategy with Google search and a blank spreadsheet is very 1999. There are lots of free content marketing tools that can transform your content strategy creation process from time-consuming and tedious to automated, fast, and effective.
In this article, I share more than 10 FREE content marketing tools and resources that I’ve used over the years to create and execute content strategies for brands across different industries.
To give you a better view of each tool, so you see how it works, I also add screenshots and links to where you can get them.
Let’s go!
10+ FREE content marketing tools
I break the tools into the seven steps I — and most successful marketers — follow in setting up and executing a content strategy.
It starts from the goal setting and customer research stage to the measurement stage.
Let’s go.
Goal setting tools
The first step in building a content strategy is not deciding your topics or keywords. The first step is in setting content goals that align with your overall marketing and business objectives.
You can simply write your goal on a word document, or use HubSpot’s content goals setting template to set goals like a pro.
Customer research and buyer persona creation tools
The next step is to understand your target customers, their problems, needs, and challenges in relation to what you offer.
I usually follow three steps in my research. You can do the same.
- If you’re not the CMO or a CXO in the company, send the CMO a customer persona questionnaire to provide you with the basic information you need on their customers.
- Interview at least 10 individuals that fall into the customer categories from step one. This can be through either a voice or video call. In the call, you ask questions that help you understand their fears, roadblocks, expectations, and desires.
- Study social media groups, forums, and the social media profile of your target customers. Target at least 10 LinkedIn profiles and as many online communities of your target customers as you can study with the time you have. Study their conversations for at least one month to the past. You can gather your findings using this online research report doc.
- Speak to your Sales and Customer Support team and get a list of content they need for their sales outreach and questions customers ask consistently.
All of these provide you with valuable information you can use to create a customer persona document. You can use this simple customer persona template to describe the demographics and psychographics of your target customers. You can also use HubSpot’s free persona creator to build a persona from your research findings.
Brand messaging and positioning tools
If you’re working on a new product without a brand message, taking time to draft a message and position will help fine-tune what you say to your target customers and how you differentiate yourself from your competitors
You can follow this guide to learn how to craft your brand position and message. You can also take a deep dive into Stephen Houraghan’s podcasts and YouTube channel to learn more about brand messaging and positioning. He’s the best I’ve seen on the topic.
In addition, you can use this simple template to craft your brand position and messaging fast.
Keyword research tools
There are lots of tools you can use for your keyword research, but below are the best free tools:
- Ahrefs: You can enjoy all Ahrefs’ amazing features for a $7 trial fee for 7 days. Sound pretty free to me for all the values you’d get. Group all your keyword research tasks into one week and batch them out with your free $7 trial.
- Ubersuggest Free trial account
- Answer The Public Freemium account
- SEMRUSH Free trial account
Content calendar tools
After analyzing your keywords, and generating your content topics, use this content calendar template to organize your content topics.
Spoiler: This template helps you decide the content topics to start with.
Content operation and team management tools
Whether you’re a one-person content squad or you have a content team you’d need to organize how you create content. This enables you to streamline your operation so that you know where you are at every point in time.
Trello, Asana, ClickUp, and Infolio are good examples of free tools you can use to organize your content operations and manage workflow.
I take it a step further and use lots of checklists to streamline every aspect of my content creation process, including:
- Content creation
- Search engine optimization
- Editing
- Publishing
- Distribution
Checklists help to ensure you dot every I’s and cross every T’s, even if you work alone. And when/if you get a team, checklists will enable you to build a smooth and scalable content creation engine that doesn’t compromise on quality.
Most of these tools are free for life.
Content performance measurement tools
Google Analytics and Google search console are the ‘Free-est’ robust content performance tools in the market. They contain all you’d need at the most fundamental level.
Pay Avinash Kaushik’s blog a visit to explore tons of resources on how to effectively use Google Analytics. You’d love his writing style and the quality of content he puts out.
There you have it! Go Get started
These tools and resources would get you started and running with your content strategy creation, execution, and performance review.
Did I miss any free tools that you use? Please share them with us in the comments.
Check out my blog to access more content created to help you win with content and grow your business.
If you’re putting a content team together, then my article, How to build a remote content team that rocks, was written to help you make the best hiring and team management decision.
