How do we create relevant content that we can share daily? How do we come up with the ideas (or gems of ideas) that will produce the quality content our clients need? Are you launching a new product, service or an entire business and need to create content for your startup?
These are the burning questions for every Inbound or content marketer working today. With so many intelligent, talented marketing professionals working in this space, the goal of creating relevant, shareable, and insightful content that cuts through the noise is not only more important than ever but also more challenging than ever.
But as with most elements of the content marketing sphere, a variety of tools and resources exist to help content marketers and editors conceptualize, outline, execute, publish, and evaluate the brand of content that will matter most for their clients and gain notice among industry professionals. Paid or unpaid, annual subscription or month-to-month contracts, content marketers have so many options for content idea tools that it can be daunting sifting through the buckets of solutions.
With this in mind, let's look at five tools for creating relevant content and the advantages each tool can lend to your strategic content frameworks.
1. Buzzsumo
Perhaps the most robust content generation tool on the market, Buzzsumo essentially functions as an all-in-one source for relevant content, from ideas to analytics. A powerful search return interface allows users to source articles based on trending topics and predictive analytics regarding what Buzzsumo's algorithm believes will be the next viral topic. The tool indexes more than five billion articles and social media posts and houses detailed performance reporting for these posts to help content marketers make the most data-driven decisions regarding curating their content.
But Buzzsumo isn't done yet. In addition, users can identify influencers and top-performing content authors across a massive spectrum of topics for the best attribution and backlinking. Real-time reporting allows users also to monitor trending topics, mentions, and updates to existing content.
This end-to-end level of functionality does come at a price, though, and one that makes Buzzsumo one of the more costly tools on the market. The recommended pricing level is $179 per month and includes all of the above features, plus:
- Ten alerts per content piece
- 10,000 mentions
- One year of access to historical data/reporting
- Ten individual users
To paraphrase the legendary Ferris Bueller, if you have the means, I highly recommend picking it up…
2. UberSuggest
While Buzzsumo essentially hands you the most relevant, trending, or impactful topics, UberSuggest is more entrepreneurial because the solution gives you the reporting and analytics regarding the hottest topics. Still, it then allows the user to determine how best to attack. Relying heavily on SEO and web traffic reporting concepts, UberSuggest provides detailed top SEO page reports, organic phrase and keyword rundowns, social media metrics, and other key performance indicators on the day's top-performing content.
Whereas Buzzsumo provides users with a toy essentially fully assembled right out of the box, UberSuggest gives content marketers the pieces and instructions for assembly but requires them to fasten the components together. The tool provides insight into content idea creation via reporting on top-performing pieces, social media sharing, and backlink analysis, but search capability and article indexing is somewhat limited compared to Buzzsumo.
UberSuggest's all-in-one dashboard and ease of report generation make it user-friendly and reduce any significant learning curve. At only $29 per month, the price point does make it a much more viable option for content marketers with leaner budget lines.
3. Zoho Social
What's more real-time about how the world trends than social media? As a result, social media trends, topics, and mentions are perhaps a content marketer's most significant litmus test regarding what makes for the most relevant, dynamic, and impactful content. Zoho Social is more or less the Buzzsumo of the social media world, with powerful mention and trend monitoring with in-the-moment updates, content creation and publishing tools, CRM integrations, and end-to-end visibility for creating customizable client reports.
While strictly a social media content management, publishing, and reporting tool, Zoho Social's uber-affordable monthly fee of just $15 makes it more than worthy of consideration in terms of an added weapon in your content creation arsenal. Sure, content marketers would be advised not to rely solely on Zoho Social for their content creation. Still, for leveling up their social media presence, becoming more competitive and agile in the social sphere, and keeping a well-tuned ear to the ground for the hottest and most relevant social chatter, Zoho Social is your go-to destination.
4. AllTop
Imagine you're a content creation guru on a tight budget. You're creating good content, and clients are happy. Still, you're looking to make your content perform even better by tying your industry topics into current events, real-world implications, or the discussions resulting from published pieces or social media chatter.
If this is you, then AllTop is the tool you need. A free service that essentially curates new and top-performing pieces published across a vast expanse of publications, AllTop allows users to search via industry, niche, or keyword to source the best and most discussed content of the day to help inform the content and discussions in which you engage.
Whereas the other tools we discussed offer layers of customization, curation tools, and publishing or reporting capabilities, AllTop is essentially a warehouse of the day's trending content and topics where the content marketer has to pick and choose the articles, publications, and topics that matter for their concerns. But given that this is a free service and the comprehensive site aggregates articles from a broad spectrum of interest areas and sources, it's a value-added for the cost-conscious content marketer.
5. Google Trends
Let's not outthink the room on this one. We all know the power and disruption Google Analytics has wielded in the SEO, reporting, and web page development space, so it would stand to reason that Google Trends—the search engine's topic, trending, and mention arm—would also excel at providing content marketers the ability to instantly and in real-time take the pulse of the day's most pressing and viral conversations.
But Google Trends also provides a handful of unique features to equip content masters with the best perspective and point-of-view necessary to create the next piece of viral content. For example, users can search two or more keywords or terms and compare the performance of these terms via detailed reporting and metrics to select which term or topic to leverage content for maximum performance,
While the service is free of charge, users must have a Google account to access this tool, and Google does place a daily restriction on the number of search terms based on user or IP account. But for the size, breadth, and depth of a free topic or trending monitoring tool, Google Trends is a no-brainer in today's content creation game.
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