16 Content Creation Tools and Software You Should Know

Content creation is a time-consuming endeavor. In many ways, it’s a great opportunity to share information about your brand or to interact with your audience, but it can also be a time-sink if you’re not careful.

With the right design tools, creators can do more on a tight timeline and improve the quality of their content. Higher-quality content benefits both the business and the audience—building social proof, encouraging referrals, and more.

To help you get started with content creation, here’s more information on social media tools, design tools, and other features you may want to try as a new content creator.

What is a social media tool?

Social media tools are content creation tools that help creators make content faster, streamline processes, and improve content outcomes. These applications are highly focused on improving your company’s presence on social media platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

The most popular tools on the market today help with everything from creating videos and podcasts to images and blog posts. There are options with tools for graphic design, creating content ideas, social media posts, and even editing video content.

As you look for a social media tool to tackle daily processes, keep in mind these key functions you’ll want to have in your social media toolkit. You may want to select a tool that offers audience monitoring, content creation, collaborative options, analytics, or post scheduling.

3 Top Content Writing Tools for Marketers

Tackling content writing and editing can be tough if you aren’t a native English speaker or you aren’t fluent in your target language. Grammar can be complex, and knowing that you have everything right for your blog, article, white paper, or other content isn’t always easy. Things only get more complex when you think about making content for other markets; you’ll need to translate and check your work in an entirely new language.

Fortunately, there are some helpful content writing and editing tools creators can use to generate and check their work.

Grammarly

Grammarly is a writing assistant. It offers several different services, including plagiarism checking, style and tone adjustments, grammar and spelling checks, clarity checks, and artificial intelligence to create content. It has a desktop app, website, and browser extension and can be integrated into multiple platforms, making it an ideal tool for correcting emails or checking documents before they go to print. A free version is available, or you can opt for an annual plan for $144.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot. This chatbot is unique because it uses machine learning to create dialog. You simply tell the AI what you want to talk or write about, and it will produce text content generated from scratch. It can help with multiple activities, including critiquing work you’ve already completed, debugging code, generating text, answering questions, and so on. Interestingly, ChatGPT does work in multiple languages, so it could be a helpful tool if you want to translate your website from English to Spanish, French, or another target language from around the world. The free version of ChatGPT is available online, but there are options to upgrade to newer versions for a fee.

Jasper

Jasper is an artificial intelligence tool with several core features, including an AI image suite, campaigns, BrandVoice, and chat. The AI can help you create content by tapping into a centralized database specific to your company; you just have to upload your information and let it get to work. Today, over 100,000 companies use Jasper to create content that is on brand, gain insights into how the content is working for them, and more. Jasper has a creator plan that starts at $39 a month per seat, or you can upgrade to Pro or Business plans to do more.

4 Tools for Creating Digital Marketing Images

One of the toughest aspects of content creation or running a small business is the time it takes to learn how to create good images. Not everyone has time to learn photography or graphic design, but without images, marketing your company is nothing but hard text.

Good images do matter. When you use high-quality images, your audience will be more likely to interact with you and engage with your social media posts. For creating high-quality images and graphics, these digital marketing and graphics tools are a good fit.

Canva

Canva is a popular social media tool that helps you build everything from website layouts to high-quality images. When you log in to Canva, you can design almost anything; you have immediate access to hundreds of designs, templates, and graphics. With a simple search, you’re able to look for graphics across a wide range of topics, too, so whether you’re looking for Halloween-themed imagery or you want a solid background color for your website, it’s all available. It is user-friendly and has a free version, making it a good choice for small business owners and other users.

PicMonkey

PicMonkey is a photo editor. It gives you access to design tools and photo retouching options that make it simple to create high-quality images for your social media posts or other needs. It works with YouTube, Facebook, and other social media platforms. It also has options to create logos and other content from templates. PicMonkey is $7.99 per month with a free seven-day trial.

Unsplash

If you need royalty-free images, Unsplash is a good option. The image database has a large number of images you can use without worrying about paying for a license. Some images may require you to give credit to the photographer, so keep that in mind when you download them (and keep track of the images you use).

VistaCreate

VistaCreate lets you make content using its comprehensive set of tools. You can use creative assets (which include over 70 million royalty-free stock photos) and sticker maker to create content, while the design elements and background remover tools allow you to customize them. VistaCreate has a free service and a paid service starting at $10 a month.

3 Video Creation Tools

Videography is a demanding field, and editing your videos can be overwhelming if you’re not familiar with the software.

To create professional-looking videos without going back to school, it can help to use video creation tools. Some will have templates or presets to speed up editing, so you can spend more time on other parts of the creative process. Here are a few you may be interested in:

Animoto

If you don’t have video editing skills, you may like to work with Animoto. Animoto is a drag-and-drop video creator that has templates you can use to make editing easy. Or, if you prefer, you can upload your own video. Animoto has features to help you create the right-sized videos for social media, tutorials, and product demos. It offers a free plan to get started.

Biteable

Biteable is an alternative to Animoto and is currently used by over 10,000 companies around the world. This platform is an online video maker with templates, video editing tools such as video trimmers and resizers, and additional resources. Biteable starts at $15 a month.

Promo

Promo is a platform that uses artificial intelligence to create videos for marketing purposes—all you need to do to generate a video is enter a web address or topic idea. The AI will generate videos at the push of a button. Promo also streamlines production by coming up with creative ideas, planning, and creating AI-generated titles and descriptions for your content. The annual plan starts at $59 per month.

3 Social Marketing Tools for Effective Campaigns

Social marketing tools help plan and execute social media marketing campaigns. These tools assist with scheduling posts, managing campaigns, and analyzing performance.

Some you may want to try include:

Buffer

Buffer helps you schedule Instagram posts, but its most unique perk is that it’s a visual interface. When you use it, you can see exactly what your post is going to look like. Buffer gives you analytics to show which posts are optimal, and it also lets you cross-post for effective marketing. It offers a free plan for you to try as you get started.

CoSchedule

With CoSchedule, you can see all of your meetings and scheduled activities in one place. CoSchedule Calendars gives you an overarching view of all your content calendars, meeting schedules, and more on one simple dashboard. You can get started for free if you handle basic social media publishing (the free plan allows for up to 15 scheduled social messages across two social profiles).

Later

Later is a social media management tool that can automate your daily tasks. Using automation tools speeds up tasks such as publishing your content, allowing you to spend more time creating content to share with your target audience. This visual-first platform starts at $16.67 per month.

3 SEO and Research Tools for Content Optimization

To improve SEO and conduct market research, you should opt for tools that take a deeper look into what makes your website land in top search results or the keywords people are searching for right now.

To get started on optimizing your content, try these tools:

Ahrefs

For marketing powered by big data, you can use Ahrefs. Ahrefs is an all-in-one marketing intelligence platform that starts by studying your competitors’ websites. Then, you can use it to audit and optimize your own website with the tool’s site audit feature. Taking Ahrefs further, you can track mentions and links about your company to learn what people have to say about your business. Ahrefs has a Lite plan that starts at $129 per month, or you can upgrade for additional features.

Semrush

Semrush focuses on getting you measurable results from your online marketing campaigns. It states that it assists with SEO, competitor research, social media marketing, pay-per-click advertising, and much more. Whether you’re keen on doing market research or you want to focus on content marketing, you can use Semrush’s SEO, content marketing, advertising, market research, and other toolkits to get the most out of your efforts. Semrush starts at $139.95 per month for up to five projects.

Graphite

Graphite is a service that calls itself your partner in growth. With Graphite, the goal is to identify core keywords that will help your content thrive. Additionally, the platform will identify when you’ve used enough keywords and when your content is long enough, and it can also help you compare your content to what competitors already have out there. With this tool, editing your content to improve SEO is a cinch. Graphite’s pricing isn’t listed online because plans are customized to the individual.

Consolidate Your Social Media Channels With Podium Inbox

Working with social media takes a lot of time, but it’s worth it as you build an audience that supports your brand’s products and services. Artificial intelligence and automation can take a lot off your plate, freeing you up to work on other aspects of your business.

Using a tool that consolidates all of your social media interactions into one place offers even more advantages. With Podium Inbox, you can get your social messages, calls, texts, and chats in one AI-powered inbox. Using automated responses, all leads get routed to the right person and answered within five minutes or less, improving your brand’s customer service processes and ensuring your leads don’t get lost in the crowd.

Ready to see how Podium Inbox can streamline communications across all your channels? Watch a demo.