FREE APPS THAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT, TO CREATE CONTENT

Ever since the pandemic, the digitalisation of businesses has picked up pace, and content marketing is no exception. 2022 is proving to be a year of moving towards new and innovative strategies. Different types of content require their own unique marketing strategy depending upon its target and purpose. Content creators and business owners working to market content can now leverage tons of useful tools. There are tools for content creation that help you fetch trends, monitor published content, streamline content for business, and a lot more.?With 55% of companies working towards improving the quality of their content, such tools come as a blessing in disguise.?

Why push for high-quality content??

According to reports,?42% of business owners are on the first step s of their content marketing strategy. With such a significant number still in their teething stage, it is essential for everyone to understand the need for high-quality content. Speaking of “high-quality” content, how can one determine the quality of one’s content? It is rather simple, content that is well-researched, relatable, appealing, educational/informative and pleasing to the eye, while also addressing all doubts and queries of the target audience is said to be of “high quality”.?

Now, why is everyone racing towards “high-quality content”? It aids in attracting a niche-specific audience. Such content also increases the chance of a potential lead conversion. Quality content engages the audience and induces them to turn to the action button.?

While quality content has the potential to generate promising revenue, it will only be possible with a suitable marketing strategy. Through a well-versed and planned strategy, your content has the scope of reaching large masses. As important as quality content is, so is a marketing strategy to promote business. A proper content marketing strategy will enable the increase of organic traffic and conversion rates, and close the gaps in the conversion funnel.?

Challenges faced while creating content

Creating high-quality content is tricky enough. On top of that, studying the target audience, researching relevant trends, and predicting their behavioural patterns makes content creation even more crucial; and very tedious. There are many challenges content creators are facing today and mentioned below is a list of the most important ones.?

Identifying trending topics

The first and most significant challenge of them all is to identify and ideate trending topics. 69% of business owners use social media’s organic methods, thus making “trending topics” extremely important. Not only on social media, but trending topics are of importance for generating hits on organic searches of search engines, paid ads and email marketing campaigns as well. Another challenge in this regard is to pick the topics that are most relevant to your business.?

This is where tools like ‘Semrush’ and ‘Answer The Public’ come into frame. These tools are made to provide insights on trending and relatable trends. That too, their results are based on actual human searches and not on just collective words. When you have your hands on these reports, ideas will come pouring in.?

Proofreading?

The next biggest challenge for creators is proofreading. Once the knowledge of trending topics is acquired, content can be easily written, but issues of grammar and readability remain. With several business owners still in their first stages of content marketing, not everyone can afford extensive team sizes where content can be proofread by many before it is finally published. Even then, it is probable that the human eye will make mistakes.?

Posting content with structural and grammatical errors will only lead to a loss of credibility for your business. Thus, tools like Grammarly, Hemingway and others, play an important part in content creation. Such tools will proofread the content for you without leaving any gaps for mistakes.?

Experimentation with drafts

Once your content is ready and proofread, won’t it be better to view it as the audience does? Another big challenge while creating content, is to see how your content appears to the audience. Just writing a good article or creating visually appealing graphics and infographics is not enough. If the write-up is not properly columned, isn’t of the right font, size or colour, and the graphics are randomly placed; or if your social profile is not aesthetically pleasing, it can turn off your audience pretty quickly.?

Tools like Placeit can help eliminate this challenge with a few drags and drops. From websites to apparel, it is very easy to create mockups with this tool. With such mockups, you will get the chance to experiment with your drafts, and see which version of your content looks its aesthetical best.?

Managing posting schedules

Creating refined content is still not enough for a successful outcome. Your content needs to be posted on time as well. But how can mere posting be a problem? Well, every social media platform and website has different algorithms and different timelines during which the maximum traffic is generated. You might also not be free to post at the times that are most appropriate. With busy schedules and hectic work days, it is possible that posting your content at the right time may slip through the cracks. A majority of platforms lack a scheduling option, and this poses a challenge to successful content creation and dissemination.?

Apps like Hootsuite are ideal for such challenges. They provide features that enable you to schedule posts and link different accounts. Also, it offers options for free and paid versions.???

Project management and collaboration?

Managing the pipeline of the videos, graphics, and infographics is essential to marketing the right message and maintaining an appealing profile. However, collaborations can give your content a head start. Most of the time, it is through collaborations that content sets trends.??

Managing projects and collaborations require special applications like Trello. This App allows streamlining of the pipelines for content, team management, and strategic objectives for your content.

Tracking and monitoring

Lastly, once everything is set, all your strategies have been laid out, and your content is posted, you’ll have to be on the ball with your monitoring and tracking. Obviously, this is not an easy task. In fact, several content marketers consider it their biggest challenge. Tracking the statistics of organic and paid strategies, as well as the effect of your content on your landing page is quite critical to your success.?These insights help you plan your next content strategy, while also informing you about what tactics and styles to pick, and which ones to drop.?

Of course, it will be a challenge to gather these insights without a proper skill set and appropriate tools. In such cases, apps like Hootsuite and Keyhole are very beneficial. These tools can provide expert insights such as the traffic drawn by the content, how many people engaged with your content, and the number of new visitors and returning ones. These insights can further help you craft strategies to generate more engaging content, and, in turn, enhance your business.????

Free apps that aid the creation of stellar content?

There are many challenges en route to content creation. Beginning from the initial stages of fetching trending topics, to tracking the insights of published content; the impediments to quality content creation can significantly lower your ROI and brand’s credibility. To avoid such a situation you must employ the use of the many free apps that business owners who have just entered the content marketing arena rely on.?

Mentioned below is the list of some of the most applaudable and widely used apps.???

• Semrush –?A powerful tool that helps in strategising every stage of content creation, from ideating to optimization and measurement.?
• Grammarly?–?This app is available in both free and paid versions. It is used to eliminate any grammatical or structural errors in your content.?
• Canva –?An app for streamlining your graphics. One can easily create visually appealing and equally professional (as to one greeted by designers) graphics, PDFs, infographics, stories from social media and a lot more, with its assistance.?
• Hootsuite –?This app is ideal for managing and scheduling posts. With the free version, one can link up to 3 accounts and schedule 30 posts in a go. That means, three different accounts’ posts can be scheduled for 10 days.?

Placeit –?If you’re into experimenting with the appearance of your landing page or any other online profile, it is quite easy to create mockups with this app. Just drag and drop the graphics and content, then choose the best positioning and appearance.