Working in marketing can be incredibly hard work; there is so much to stay well versed on, to monitor, to track and to plan. So much so that if someone were to try to do it all without the use of a few handy tools, they’d find themselves working all night long.
There are a variety of different tools out there on the world wide web that advertise themselves as being the answer to all marketer’s prayers, so it can be difficult to pick out the best of the best, especially for those new to the sector who aren’t sure where to start.
With this in mind, and to save people having to spend hours looking up reviews for each individual tool, below are six inbound marketing tools for those who do work in the sector and find themselves needing a time-saver or two!
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a crucial tool for analysing and keeping track of the performance of both what’s trending or popular and how a competitor’s content is performing. It allows a user to follow brand and keyword mentions on social media channels, which can help to see what works, what doesn’t and what not to do.
BuzzSumo is incredibly handy to use before a brainstorming session; competitors’ successes and failings can be a great inspiration to strive to do better. It’s also handy to see what’s topical right now that may be worth piggybacking onto.
SEMrush
SEMrush is an industry must and is perfect for keyword research for a variety of sectors. The functions of this tool are ideal for tracking the performance of organic and paid searches, as well as monitoring the audience growth for a client’s different social media channels.
Knowing if content is organic or paid for is detrimental, especially if a user deals with clients who demand to know such stats.
CoSchedule
There is not always enough time during the work day to publish every little thing a client wants, so a tool to help with this is more than appreciated.
CoSchedule helps to keep a user more organised, allowing them to schedule posts and social updates for every one of their social media channels. Once a post is live, the tool also enables a user to keep a keen eye on the performance of each post meaning keeping on top of social has never been easier.
Screaming Frog
The content created by a user is only ever as great as the website it sits on. If the technical foundation of a website is broken from an organic search perspective, a business has no hope of improving their traffic with new and updated content, even if their content is amazing.
Screaming Frog is a website crawler which allows a business or individual to crawl a websites’ URL’s to identify any on-page SEO issues such as rogue no-index tags, 404s, missing title tags and meta-descriptions, as well as a number of other issues.
Before anyone starts producing content they should crawl their website to ensure there are no underlying technical SEO issues.
Buffer
Buffer is another tool to help those who are busy to schedule every post for the evening or weekend.
Buffer permits users to track which updates get the most engagement, enabling businesses to be smarter with the types of content they share. Buffer is really a no-brainer if for those who take their social media channels seriously.
BuzzStream
Buzzstream is a must for those who need to outreach to influencers or journalists on a regular or even semi-regular basis.
Outreach is an incredibly important part of inbound marketing and should not be ignored or overlooked, even by those businesses who think they will manage without.
Using BuzzStream, businesses can create neat email templates which can be personalised to different prospects. This means that recipients are far more likely to reply as the email will feel as if a business or user has taken time out of their day to specifically tailor it to them. The platform also gives users the ability to manage and maintain their relationships; an absolute requirement in the industry.
Tools like the ones mentioned are used by the majority of those working in the marketing industry as, not only do they make life much easier, but they will help get jobs done with superior accuracy, organisation and in record time.
