We’ve all got a lot of work on our desks these days, so finding some tools that will make life a little easier for us is always good, right? Finding tools for your content marketing strategy is even better. Use these content marketing tools to keep your marketing moving along at a good pace, and never be out of ideas for content pieces again.

Find your ideas

Keep your idea list full with these tools:

• BestoftheWeb – Find people, information, and sites to read about, or write about.
• Wefollow – Find influencers on any topic.
• Newsgrape – Think Google Alerts on steroids.
• Buzzstream – Not sure what to write about? Use the Link Building Query Generator to create search topics and see who’s searching for them or talking about them. Research yourself, your competitors, keywords, and more.
• Spyfu – Sneaky ninja research tool. Find out your competitors’ keywords for their site. A great way to generate traffic is by creating content on those keywords, as well as adding the keywords to your own SEO plan (if you want.)
• Ritetag – Discover the right hashtags to use with your Twitter work.
• Pearltrees – A one-stop shop for collecting web pages, info, links, videos, etc.
• Trap.it – A research tool that scours the Internet for you and gathers the info in one spot.
• Scribd – A collection of original content from around the world. Good for research and ideas.
• Slideshare – Collection of presentations. Share privately or publicly, embed the content on websites, company intranets, and social media. Great place to find ideas, but also to share your ideas with others.

Create interesting content formats

• Simplebooklet – Create multipage digital brochure, product guide, sliders or flip book from your browser. Create it from scratch or convert a PDF.
• Wufoo – Create simple online forms to capture your leads’ information.
• Polymaps – A free downloadable app that lets you create interesting maps with your data.
• Bubbl.us – Online brainstorming and mind mapping tool. Great for creating flowcharts without downloading any software.
• Visual.ly or Piktochart – Create infographics and data visualizations online. No coding required.
• Glossi or Flockler – Create your own digital magazine.
• Contently – An online marketplace that connects quality journalism talent with quality publishers. Manage your content strategy and production through their interface.
• Paper.li or Storify.com – Create your own online newspaper from your social media accounts.
• List.ly – Create a list of online items that is curated, analyzed, and promoted.

Manage your content

• Buffer – A social media management tool. Use to schedule content, and manage multiple accounts for multiple social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn).
• Divvyhq – Cloud-based editorial calendar.
• Trello – A project management tool for your content marketing efforts.

Analyze your efforts

• SimplyMeasured – Analyze your social media efforts.
• Socialcrawlitics – Analyze your competitor’s social media efforts. Another sneaky tool.
• Manageflitter – A Twitter tool that analyzes your followers, who you’re following, makes suggestions, and gives you a ton of other metrics.

There are also full content marketing management systems out there as well, however I wanted to highlight the free and modestly priced options for you, as you can get a lot of use out of these tools too. Especially if you’re just starting out and aren’t sure if you want to spend the money on the enterprise options.

What tools are you using for your content marketing efforts? Any of these ones? Others that you’d like to share with me? Hit the comments and let me know.