Hey everyone, Jason here, digital marketing consultant. And in this
content marketing guide, we're going to go through a bunch of different tools
you have available to you both free and paid to supercharge your content marketing. And of course,
figuring out what on earth to make content about in the first place. So timestamps below, along
with some links to some of our top recommended software. So let's go ahead and jump in.
When it comes to content creation, we of course need to figure out what we should make content
about. And there is nothing better than kicking things off with keyword tools because keywords
still make the internet go round. Now, when it comes to keyword tools, there are a lot out
there and sure there are tons more that we could talk about. Well, here, we're going to focus on
the ones we found most valuable and the ones that we've actually consistently gone back to and used.
They all have their pros and cons. The most important thing here is to test all of these for
yourself. And you're going to find one of these tools you gravitate more towards than the other.
Now this first one on our list is going to be the “Google Ads Keyword Planner” Now pump the
brakes. I know we're talking about content marketing. We're not talking about PPC,
but when it comes to free tools that are going to give you a ton of information nothing held back,
Google Ads Keyword Planner is still the best. Now when it comes to actually figuring out the average
monthly surf searches and diving into actual traffic numbers, Google is not going to actually
give you those exact amounts. They'll just give you a range. But when it comes to just figuring
out what are all the keywords under the sun in my niche or industry, the Google Ads Keyword
Planner is the best place to start because most of these other solutions, although the paid plans
will give you a lot of keywords, the free ones are limited. So that's why we're kicking things
off with a Google Ads Keyword Planner because it's going to give you a complete landscape of any and
every keyword under the sun you might ever want to target with your future ads or your content.
Now, number two on this list for keyword research is going to be Neil Patel's “Ubersuggest” I found
that this tool is really, really helpful and valuable when you plug in other people's websites
and then analyze their content and their keywords. Of course, there is a paid plan,
but you get a tremendous amount of information when you just sign up for a free account.
Out of all the keyword research tools, this is actually my second favorite and I'll get
to my first favorite, but when it comes to specifically just content marketing,
and if you're going to pay for a keyword research tool, Ubersuggest really is the most valuable bang
for your buck that we found on this list. Now this next one is going to be “BuzzSumo”
And this is great if you're sitting around and you're wondering, “Okay, I have my key word,
but what's going to be the most popular type of content to make for this keyword?” So that's where
BuzzSumo comes in. We actually wound up not going and upgrading for the paid plan. And Ubersuggest
has a lot of overlap with the features here, but we still really like using BuzzSumo to just type
in some keywords, even if we're doing e-commerce. And as you can see with this example, we can just
type in men's watches and we'll start to see the top shared content across social channels
for that particular search. Now, of course, you do have to be careful with your keywords. As you
can see here, BuzzSumo has latched onto the word watch, and we're not actually getting any much
information about men's watches. So that is a bit of a downside. And that's why we use this example.
I wouldn't recommend upgrading your plan, but it is a really good tool to have in your tool
belt when it comes to, “I already know my key word, but I don't really know what the video
or what the blog post or what the podcast should be about.” What is the actual content that people
really like BuzzSumo really shines here. Now, when it comes to how to content,
I really like using the tool, “Answer The Public” because you can type in a key word and actually
turn that keyword. Here we're going to keep using men's watches as an example. And Answer
The Public will turn that keyword into a series of questions. And so this is especially helpful
with e-commerce, where it's really hard to figure out what should my content be about? What are my
potential customers actually asking? And again, this is just another way to take a keyword and
turn it into a question because it's a lot easier to create content when you're answering a specific
question, as opposed to creating content around a keyword and then trying to figure out what on
earth the content should be. So the paid plan will actually give you a lot more data and insights,
but I really like using this tool just for some idea generation and
making sure that you come up with questions for the keyword. This is also a really good tool.
If you have a big keyword, you're going to make a really long post or podcast or video, then you can
actually use these keywords as section headers in your content. So this is another great way
to make sure that you cover all of your bases when it comes to creating a really great post.
Now, this last one on the list is actually my personal favorite, but that's only because I run
a lot of paid ad campaigns and that's going to be “SpyFu” And as the name suggests, it's all about
spying on your competitors. So what's really nice about this tool is you can type in other domains
and you can get a lot of information on how they're ranking organic. And then of course,
how they're doing paid traffic wise. So if you're doing anything with paid traffic,
this is last on the list for a reason, go ahead and go with this tool if you decide to upgrade.
Now, when it comes to just strictly content marketing, I really like Ubersuggest, and that
would be the one to pay for. So those are numbers one and two, and SpyFu is only number one for me,
just because we do a lot of pay-per-click campaigns. And so it's nice to have two in one.
Now, once you know what your content is going to be about, you figured out your keywords,
you figured out your topics. Maybe you used Answer The Public to come up with an outline
of questions that you're going to answer, it's time to actually create it. Now I'm a huge fan
of Google Drive and G suite for business, because if you're going to be working with anyone else,
it's incredibly easy to share and work on things in real time. Just as an example,
when it comes to making videos like this, all of our graphics are done in Google slides and all of
our content outline and our writers work with Google docs, making it very easy for everyone
to collaborate in real time. And if you do decide to upgrade, it's less than $5 per month per user,
and it's just ridiculously cheap when you compare it to how much you're going to have to pay to
say Microsoft for their Office 365. And the other cool thing is you can be on a business workplace,
Google workplace plan and not everyone else has to unlike 365, where everyone needs a license in
order to see all of to use all of the full features of the document or spreadsheet.
And when it comes to creating graphics, because no content is complete without some graphics. Even
if you're doing podcasting, you still need that thumbnail, right? So “Canva” has been our number
one go-to tool for creating social media graphics and creating diagrams and graphics that help go
into videos like this one and also in our blog posts. It is totally worth it to upgrade for $10
a month. And the main reason you want to upgrade is, it allows you to use a bunch of icons,
graphics and illustrations that not everyone else is using because most people use the free plan.
You're much more likely to be using elements or templates, and you can actually remove
background on the paid plan as well. But you're just going to be much less likely to be using a
graphic template or element that someone else is using. Because once you start using Canva,
you will recognize their designs and templates everywhere. It's really, really used.
And so another way that you can help differentiate your graphics is going
to “Envato Elements” for about $16.50 a month. You get unlimited access to tons of graphics,
stock video footage. It is an absolute steal. Yes, there's some other things out there like
audio blocks and video blocks. But if you're looking for a budget solution,
that's all in one then in Envato Elements is definitely the way to go.
And the final one on this list, “Unsplash”, it's just a great place to go to find
great looking photos. And you don't have to worry about licensing.
Now, when it comes to video specifically, I want to quickly touch on my favorite video editor
and that has to be “Camtasia” for Mac or windows. The main reason I like Camtasia so much is you can
easily record screen capture. It's a very, very low learning curve and you don't have to deal with
real-time rendering when you're editing, which something like Final Cut Pro or Adobe, or DaVinci
Resolve all three, which are fully functional video editors, you're going to have to deal with.
And for most people creating content, they don't actually need all of that. And you can just wait
until you hire a video editor who knows how to do all that fancy stuff anyway, like what we did.
So the last one on our list here is going to be “Conversion.ai” This is a really new tool,
but I highly recommend you check it out, link in the description to learn more about it. This thing
will actually write content like from scratch. You can just type in some basic information,
like what you want your blog title to be, or what you want your blog post to be about.
And it will literally start writing completely new content for you. This is an absolute game changer.
And once the word gets out, we're going to have a flood of new content because you can literally
sit down and write a 5 or 6,000 word blog post in just a hour. And that's not an exaggeration.
This thing really is AI writing content for you. So I highly recommend you check that out
in the description. We are using this all the time everywhere, and it's not going away
because whatever's written in there, will totally pass Copyscape. There is no way to
tell the difference between what you've written and what conversion AI has written Jarvis.
So our last section is going to be of course optimization because once you've found your
keywords, you've created your content, it's time to make sure that you actually have some feedback
loop on how your content performed. There are two tools I recommend here, both are free. So number
one, you're going to roll your eyes probably, but “Google Analytics” I know, “Oh! you're supposed to
have Analytics on your site.” We all know that. Well, when it comes to Analytics, something that
is really, really great is you can actually dive in and see exactly how different pieces of content
are driving leads and sales through your funnel. So actually link up in the cards and
the description to a full-blown “UTM” tutorial. And this allows you to create free tracking links.
So, you know exactly which piece of content is driving those traffic and sales. This is
an absolute game changer. And even though it's been around for a while, it's just
seems to be a feature that a lot of new content marketers and entrepreneurs don't know about.
And as you can see from our examples, we can actually see down to the exact video where
people came from to our different funnels and offers. So this is an incredibly powerful tool
outside of just being able to see how long someone spent on your blog post.
UTM tracking is super underrated. So make sure you check out the link in the cards and the
description along with that link to conversion.ai, because that is even more of a game changer.
One of those two things, and you are ahead of 80% of the other content marketers out there.
Now, when it comes to actually making sure all your tracking codes are installed correctly,
I recommend using something called Google Tag Manager, and this removes the headache
of any sort of coding that you'd have to do with all of this tracking and of course,
you actually need this in order for you to get more advanced with your tracking later on down
the road. So I'll link up in the cards and the description to a full-blown Tag Manager course.
And that goes through how to install Google Analytics with Tag Manager, as well as all the
other tracking codes that you're going to want on your site to help you optimize your content.
So thank you so much for watching. Sincerely hope you have some ideas of some new tools to
try out. Make sure you check out that link to conversion.ai in the description. That is the
biggest new tool that we have found over the past few months. And it is going to just blow your mind
how much this AI can write for you. And you're going to be a content marketing machine,
once you get the hang of using this tool and pumping out posts every other day. It
is absolutely amazing what they've been able to do. So go ahead and check out that link in
the description, hit that “like” button, subscribe for more content marketing and
general marketing videos just like this one. Until the next, keep building the business you love.