11 Best Tools to Manage Content Marketing in 2021

The average blog post takes between three and four hours to write. That’s before image creation, distribution, and any internal review processes.

While you could hack together your content marketing strategy with Google Docs and email, there’s a host of free and paid tools that can make the process easier and more collaborative, leading to more efficient workflows and consistent output.

In this post, we’re taking a closer look at 11 tools that can help you manage your content marketing in 2021.

Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash.

1. Trello

Whether you have a team or do your content marketing yourself, Trello makes it easy to stay on top of your content projects.

You can manage multiple projects and organize specific tasks using Trello boards that contain lists and cards. This tool helps increase your productivity and is particularly useful for visual learners.

You can use the boards to set up workflows that fit your business’s needs and customize boards to fit your projects, including incorporating due dates, timelines, calendars, and so on.

Each board contains cards you can use to assign tasks, create checklists, include due dates, and more. As you complete tasks, you can move the cards through the different columns of your workflow, so you always know what’s happening on your projects.

Trello also offers Power-Ups and integrations to help you further customize and improve your productivity. There are several different Trello plans, including a free plan.

2. Asana

Asana makes it easy for your team to manage, set up, and track projects. It’s a breeze to communicate and collaborate from the start to the end of a project.

This flexible platform allows you to customize your workflow for your team’s needs. You can set up tasks, create to-dos, customize fields, and more. Additionally, you can select from different project views, such as lists, timelines, and boards. Asana will save your team time and increase efficiency so that you can stay on track with your content plans.

Asana offers a free Basic project management plan for teams or individuals. Pricing for paid packages starts at $10.99 per user, per month when billed annually.

3. JotForm Approvals

With JotForm Approvals, it’s easy to create approval workflows for your content marketing processes. Whether you’re writing blog posts, publishing case studies, recording videos, or simply posting to social media, there’s a good chance that at least a few of these marketing assets will need to be reviewed by several people.

If you already use JotForm’s forms for approvals, they can feed directly into your publication workflow. You can also set up custom notifications, submission links, widgets, if-else conditions, parallel approvals, and autoresponders.

The best part — it’s free to sign up and get started.

4. CoSchedule

If you want to organize your marketing in one convenient place, CoSchedule can help. The Marketing Calendar displays all of your projects in a calendar view. This makes it easy to see your progress and the big picture, so your content strategy and team stay organized.

The Marketing Suite option helps you publish more content more efficiently and saves you time. It shows your content in a calendar view that updates in real time. Additionally, it helps you streamline your editorial process and centralize your publishing and promotions.

Pricing for the Marketing Calendar starts at $29 per user, per month when billed annually. To learn more about pricing for the Marketing Suite, contact the CoSchedule sales team.

5. Yoast

Yoast’s plug-ins help you get more traffic from search engines by optimizing your SEO strategy. The plug-ins take care of the code and many technical aspects of SEO so you can focus on your strategy.

Yoast can help you increase engagement, get your content found by search engines, and attract visitors from social media. Depending on your plan, you can use Yoast to help improve your keyword optimization, get warnings about out-of-date content, see stats about readability, get internal link suggestions, and more.

Yoast has a free version that includes many critical features. The Premium plan, which has more features, costs $89 for one site for one year.

6. Canva

You need beautifully designed content with quality images to help your blog and social media posts stand out. Canva makes adding images and designing your content simple.

Canva provides templates and layouts designed for different social media platforms, flyers, presentations, and more. The templates and preset layouts ensure your images and designs are the correct sizes for the platform you’re using, saving you time. Canva also allows you to customize your images and designs to express your brand the way you want.

Canva offers a free version that includes more than 250,000 free templates and over 100 different design types to get you started.

7. Ahrefs

Ahrefs can help you improve your SEO ranking and search traffic as well as assist in researching your competitors. You’ll be able to monitor your business’s progress and competitors, including keywords, mobile ranking, and more.

You can use this tool as part of your content planning process to identify topics that will help you improve your reach. Ahrefs can then help you monitor and measure how your content is performing.

Pricing starts at $99 per month, or you can select an annual plan to save money. Ahrefs also offers a seven-day trial for $7.

8. Grammarly

You want your content to be professional and error-free. Grammarly helps you identify grammar and spelling errors so you present easy-to-read content to your readers. Additionally, Grammarly provides an analysis of your writing and provides a plagiarism checker.

You can install Grammarly on your computer. There’s also a free Chrome extension so you can check your writing across the different programs you use.

Grammarly has a free option. Pricing for paid accounts starts at $12 per month.

9. Hootsuite

While sharing your content across various social media platforms helps you grow your business, it’s also time-consuming.

Hootsuite makes it easy to manage and schedule your posts in one place. This platform also helps you schedule your content at the right times for your target audience.

You can draft posts, check your social media calendar, share content, and view your most recent posts across all platforms from your dashboard.

The analytics dashboard gives you insights on your top-performing content. The tool also makes it easy to respond to customers quickly.

10. BuzzSumo

If you want help identifying topics that will lead to high-performing content or analyzing your content’s performance, BuzzSumo can help.

BuzzSumo helps you hone your content marketing in four critical ways:

• Review and identify high-performing content so you can create content that will get likes, shares, and links
• Analyze your content marketing strategy so you have data to help guide you
• Discover influencers that may be a good fit for your brand
• Monitor trends and comments so you can stay up to date and respond swiftly

Pricing starts at $99 per month if paying month to month and $79 per month if paying annually. BuzzSumo also offers a free 30-day trial.

11. ConvertKit

If you’re looking for tools to make email marketing more efficient, ConvertKit can help. ConvertKit makes it easier to streamline your email marketing so that you can reach your audience.

This tool enables you to create landing pages using templates or your own customized designs. You can then build and nurture your relationship with your audience through email. ConvertKit lets you send personalized emails and even segment your audience into groups. You can also create sales pages to sell digital products and automate your sales funnel.

You can integrate ConvertKit with the other tools you use in your business.

ConvertKit provides a free plan for up to 1,000 subscribers, including unlimited landing pages, forms, email broadcasts, and more. Paid plans start at $29 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers and offer additional features. Pricing increases as your subscriber base grows.

Content marketing is essential for growing your business and staying engaged with your audience. That said, it doesn’t need to be time-consuming. Finding the right tools for your content marketing strategy will save you time and increase your productivity and consistency.