Hi, content creator! It’s no secret that you need awesome content for your social media posts. But when you’re so busy creating awesome content and trying to grow your audience, that post might just not get made every time.
There are good tools to keep handy as a content creator. This is what this blog is about. Below, I have listed out important content creator softwares that you might need.
GIPHY
Everyone loves a GIF (actually pronounced JIF).
These days, places like Facebook, Twitter, and even Slack have integrated GIFs into their platforms.
Why?
Because they not only let people express themselves easily and without having to put feelings into words, but they also make brands more relatable.
With GIPHY, access hundreds of thousands of available GIFs ready for repurposing, or create your own to showcase products, features, and tutorials. Simply upload a series of pictures, add some text, and voila:
We created this for a post we shared on how Gillette influenced the purchase decision of a young man via their excellent video marketing.
SurveyMonkey
Quizzes are still hot., But it is important to also include an added layer of purpose so they drive conversions.
This is where players like BuzzFeed and Refinery29 shine, and for those interested in making their content a little more engaging, it can easily be done with tools like SurveyMonkey.
Yes, most commonly associated with its survey services, SurveyMonkey has branched out to include a variety of new content types, including quizzes.
Customizable to include your logo, theme, and whatever variation of questions formats you’d like to combine, drafting a simple or robust quiz has never been easier. They even include a bank of popularly used questions to help spark inspiration.
Access stats on scores, rankings, percentiles, and completion rates to ensure ROI on this content creation tool.
Snappa
Not everyone has the luxury of hiring a graphic designer. And often, even if they do have one or two dedicated staff members, the constant necessity for fresh content as an inbound tactic day in and day out can still create barriers to production.
Thankfully, tools like Snappa.io allow regular old marketers like you and me to create high-quality visual content without having to rely on design.
With a bevy of pre-designed templates in a variety of formats, start cranking out fresh content for your blog, social media, newsletter, paid media initiatives, and more. All your in-house design team has to do is make sure that everything matches brand guidelines.
Wideo
Not a spelling error, Wideo has been simplifying video animation since 2013. As an incredibly effective marketing tactic, many businesses have pined over having the ability to produce video content on a regular basis.
With ready made templates and its easy drag and drop interface, upload images and original creative to turn weeks or months of dedicated resources into a wheelhouse of daily marketing, promo, and explainer videos.
This video, which we used Wideo to create, has received upwards of 27K views on YouTube.
Venngage
Far from dead, the almighty infographic lives on to help content marketers — new and old — turn complex stories into aesthetically beautiful and comprehensible experiences.
With a sea of templates based on a variety of different layouts and constantly updated categories to suit your specific needs (think statistical, geographic, timeline, and charts), Venngage takes the cake in this department, leaving your graphic designer with more time free of grey hair.
Meme Generator
Meme Generator stays.
When we created our original list of awesome digital content creation tools back in 2014, Meme Generator was poised for greatness, but little did we know it would remain a reigning champ.
It remains one ofthe simplest and most popular tools a marketer could employ. It is safe to say that sometimes the fewer frills, the better.
Word to the wise, though, the meme game has stepped up since we last wrote of it — so be prepared to do your research and hit the Reddit forums to ensure memes are properly vetted and up to snuff.
Otherwise, you might get eaten by the internet sharks!
Gamefroot
Years ago, gamification was at the peak of inflated expectations on what Gartner would consider it’s 7 Step Hype Cycle. Nearly impossible to implement unless serious developer work went into creating an experience, today, companies like Gamefroot allow common laymen to develop, test, and publish games.
A handful of templates make it easy to test the waters. A marketplace of free assets will have your audiences engaged, having fun, and even educated about important information.
NoNotes.com
Used for recording, transcribing, and video captioning, NoNotes.com is a triple threat in among audiences thirsty for podcast, interviews, and video content.
The only problem is, most marketers don’t have the equipment to properly conduct a podcast fast enough… or hands to jot down notes during comprehensive interviews… or the time to transcribe all of the above for the purpose of providing transcripts or even captioning videos.
NoNotes.com is free to try and cheap to add to your fulltime toolkit, allowing you to do all of the above with ease.
Checklist
Checklist posts continue to perform really well across industries. They not only offer utility, they also force us to think about things we may not have previously considered.
Harder to translate into a blog post without the help of the design team and developers,
Checklist aims to solve the problem that many single content creators face — creating a blog post without the help of a design team or developers.
Create a checklist for any occasion, upload images, add a description, tag it, and then embed it right on your site or within a post. Forget about numbered bullet points. We’re not cavemen.
Designspiration
So, you’ve been left to your own devices but you don’t exactly consider yourself the most aesthetically inclined.
That’s okay, Designspiration has you colored, I mean, covered…
Select their handy paintbrush, select up to five colors, and get ready for a host of visual ideas and concepts to help bolster your creativity. Okay, so they’ve got you colored.
PhraseGenerator
Turning quotes into graphics for social media is more common than not these days, but if you don’t have anything to contribute to the conversation, how can you reap the benefits?
Unless you’ve got talented in-house writers who can shell out some serious inspiration, best to stick to the classics. And now, they are easier to find than ever. While fairly rudimentary looking, PhraseGenerator let’s you mine academic, financial, political, historical, and even headlines, to surface the perfect motivational sentences for your audience.
ThingLink
Take your images, graphics, and videos and make them interactive. Tagging important elements with rich links not only drive deeper engagement, but also meaningful conversions.
Use ThingLink to enhance the shopping experience, capture audience attention, and deconstruct ideas. It’s having the power of a Pinterest shopping button right on your owned, native content.
Lucidpress
A stellar solution for any organization, Lucidpress offers a slew of options for creating your own content. From brand templating to banner ads, Lucidpress is easy to use and laden with user-friendly features. Lucidpress also offers team management of assets, real-time collaboration and tool integration.
Pricing:
- Free
- Pro, $10/mo.
- Team, $12/user/mo.
- Business, custom pricing
Venngage
Venngage is content creator software filled with hundreds of unique templates you can choose from to visually tell a story. Pick a template, add charts, text and visuals, and then customize your new infographic with colors and fonts to make it your own.
Pricing:
- Free, limited plan
- Premium, $19/mo.
- Business, $49/mo.
- Enterprise, custom pricing
- 50% off for students and nonprofits
Stencil
Stencil is a wonderful option for easily creating compelling ads, social media graphics, impressive blog headers and more. Its graphic design tool is user-friendly for anyone, whether you’re a social media marketer, business owner or blogger. All paid plans even come with a 7-day money-back guarantee.
Pricing:
- Free
- Pro, $9/mo.
- Unlimited, $12/mo.
Creatopy
Bring your designs to life with Creatopy (formerly known as Bannersnack). Transform stagnant content into designs that move with Creatopy’s video editing tool. Creatopy delivers templates based on your industry, expert guidance, timely resources and more all in one graphic design platform.
Pricing:
- Free
- Create, $17/mo.
- Automate, $35/mo.
- Enterprise, custom pricing
Visme
Need help with your visual content? Visme offers an extensive library of templates, objects, icons and so much more to choose from. You can build infographics, ad banners, reports, charts and social media visuals while also creating interactive assets.
Pricing:
- Free
- Standard, $15/mo.
- Business, $29/mo.
- Enterprise, custom pricing
- Discounts for education and nonprofit plans
Ceros
Ceros allows anyone in design or content marketing to create immersive content without having to write a single line of code. With Ceros, you can transform your emails, documents, and even Snapchat quizzes.
Pricing:
Foleon
Content creation software meant for driving engagement across multiple devices, Foleon helps customer-facing teams to create on-brand, high-performing content at scale. Foleon provides access to customizable templates, role setting and theme controls for everyone in your organization.
Pricing:
- Request a demo from Foleon
Content creation tools for copy
WordPress
Blogger or not, coder or not, WordPress is a solid option for creating copy. This user-friendly platform allows just about anyone on your team to build, post and share blog content.
Pricing:
- Free
- Personal, $4/mo.
- Premium, $8/mo.
- Business, $25/mo.
- eCommerce, $45/mo.
Socialbakers
If you need inspiration for the right content to create, check out Socialbakers. This content ideas tool helps you tap into the best performing content across social media platforms and lets you curate your own, knowing it’s going to work.
Pricing:
Scoop.it
Scoop.it gives you the ability to curate content from a range of third-party sources, all selected and editorialized for you. Create and share the content you want in a range of different ways, whether internally or on your social media.
Pricing:
- Individuals, free
- Businesses, request a demo
Google Trends
Google Trends analyzes the popularity of search terms across timeframes, regions and languages. It sounds technical, but it’s a truly useful tool that will help you create highly sought-after content without doing too much work behind the scenes.
Pricing:
- Free with a Google account
Conclusion
Fortunately, free content creator tools are available. Buffer is a free scheduling software tool for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn that allows users to publish the same content in multiple social networks at once. The best thing about Buffer is that it comes with analytics built in. Post Planner is another user friendly tool that works for personal and team use. With it you can schedule up to five posts to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ circles and even Pinterest at once. It also comes with automated analytics for your business Facebook page and reports whenever you would like them.