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As a content creator, making engaging content is an essential part of your job. High quality and consistency are key to growing as a creator, and the tools you use can significantly enhance and influence your progress.
With the right tools, you can create better-quality blog posts, images, videos, podcasts, and any other content type you want to produce. In this article, we will be discussing the top 10 content creation and marketing tools that every creator needs to have in their arsenal to take their content to the next level.
Content Research Tools
1. Buzzsumo: Free & paid plans starting at $99/month
A tool that helps content creators identify the most popular content in a chosen niche. Its features include content alert notifications, competitor analysis, and a topic explorer. Buzzsumo also has a tool that can validate your current content strategy to be sure it is effective.
2. SEMrush: Free & paid plans starting at $129/month
An all-in-one marketing toolkit that includes content marketing tools for competitors’ research, keyword analysis, and content optimization. The tool provides data on keyword performance, ad copies, and link building.
3. Google Trends: Free
This tool provides data on how certain keywords and topics perform over time. It is useful for content creators who want to monitor current trends and create timely content that resonates with their audience. You can also research topics, ranges, and time ranges to help you identify trends within your niche.
4. AnswerThePublic: Paid plans ranging from $9-$99/month
A search tool that provides content creators with insights into what people are searching for in their niche. It creates a visual representation of autocomplete suggestions from search engines such as Google.
Content Planning
5. Trello: Free & paid plans starting at $10/month
An easy-to-use project management tool that helps creators plan and organize their content ideas. Its features include task management, prioritization, checklists, and collaboration.
6. Asana: Free and paid plans starting at $11/month
Another popular content planning tool that provides various features like task management, calendar view, customized fields, and team collaboration.
Visual Content Creation
7. Canva: Free and paid plans starting at $10/month
A powerful tool for designing and creating visual content. It has a user-friendly interface and offers templates, graphics, and a photo library to assist creators in creating graphic design content. If you arenât well versed in photoshop quite yet, Canva is a great beginner tool to create eye-catching graphics.
8. Piktochart: Free & paid plans starting at $29/month
A tool that allows users to easily create infographics, presentations, and other visual content.
9. Adobe Spark: Free & paid plans starting at $10/month
It offers a simple way to create engaging visual content like social media graphics, videos, and web pages. For a monthly subscription, you can create brand customizations, gain access to premium templates, and collaboration tools.
Image Tools
10. Adobe Photoshop: Paid plans starting at $21/month with free trial
A widely used image editing software that offers advanced features like layer management, camera raw processing, retouching, and more. This is a more advanced software, however, taking the time to learn one Adobe program will help you develop transferable skills into using their other products. This is also a great platform for creating designs for branded items like custom merchandise.
11. Pixlr: Free & paid plans starting at $8/month
An online image editing tool that offers both advanced and simple editing options, suited for both professionals and beginners.
Video Tools
12. Adobe Premiere Pro: Paid plans starting at $21/month
A professional video editing software that provides creators with a wide range of features, including multi-cam editing, color grading, and advanced audio editing. This is one of the most, if not the most, popular video editing tools for creators. Beyond just editing traditional content for YouTube, you can edit the dimensions to make content postable to other platforms such as TikTok.
13. Final Cut Pro X: $300 one-time purchase
A professional video editing software for Mac users that provides advanced features like multi-cam editing, color correction, motion graphics, and more.
14. DaVinci Resolve: Free and $300 one-time purchase
A video editing software that offers advanced video editing tools like color correction, audio post-production, and visual effects. The paid plan includes features like 3D and multi-user collaboration tools.
Content Writing Tools
15. Grammarly: Free and paid plans starting at $12/month
Improves the quality of written content by identifying and correcting grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and punctuation errors. It provides an easy-to-understand interface and contextual suggestions for the corrections. They also have a browser extension that automatically checks any email or documents on your web browser.
16. Hemingway: Free and paid desktop version for a $20 one-time fee
A web-based tool that can help content creators simplify their writing and make it easier to read. The tool identifies long and complex sentences, passive voice, adverbs, and uses color-coding to highlight them for the user while providing them ways to fix these issues.
Content Creation Apps Creators Love
Having the right editing apps can be a game-changer for creators when it comes to producing content on tight deadlines on-the-go. Here are the top content creation apps that every creator should have on their smartphone.
17. Mojo: Free and paid plans starting at $8/month
Helps creators create eye-catching Instagram stories with stylish templates and easy-to-use text overlays.
18. Adobe Lightroom: Free and paid plans starting at $10/month
A powerful photo editing app for both professional photographers and beginners. It offers a wide range of editing tools to enhance your photos, including exposure adjustments, color grading, and more.
19. InShot: Free with in-app purchases
An all-in-one mobile video editing app with an easy-to-use interface. It offers various features like video trimming, cropping, adding music, sound effects, and more.
20. CapCut: Free with in-app purchases
A user-friendly mobile video editor with features like transitions, filters, and text overlays. Perfect for TikTok creators looking to participate in trends or make seamless videos.
Content Creation Resources
To take your content creation skills to the next level, we recommend using the following educational resources:
YouTube Creators:Â
This is YouTube’s educational hub for creators, featuring tutorials, courses, and expert advice on how to create successful videos.
Content Marketing University:
A free online course from Content Marketing Institute, this program teaches creators how to create compelling content that drives engagement and conversions.
Canva Design School:
A website with free tutorials, courses, and resources to help creators improve their graphic design skills. It offers a range of design templates, stock images, and design tools that creators can use to create their projects.
LinkedIn Learning:
An online platform that offers over 16,000 courses on various topics, including creative skills. Creators can learn from industry experts, get personalized recommendations, and track their progress.
Hootsuite Academy:
Offers online courses and certifications on social media marketing, branding, and content strategy. Creators can learn how to create engaging content for different social media platforms and how to analyze and measure the performance of their content.
BuzzSumo:
A content marketing tool that helps creators identify the most popular and trending content on social media. It provides insights on the topics, formats, and distribution channels that resonate with the audience, allowing creators to create content that is shareable and engaging.
Take Your Content to the Next Level
Now that you have a toolbox of resources other creators in the industry are using, you should start playing around and testing which programs or softwares work best for you and what youâre trying to achieve.
Once youâre comfortable with content creation and youâre looking to take your content monetization game to the next level, join Fourthwall â the e-commerce platform that allows creators to launch a website, sell products, and offer memberships to their supporters.
