Ian Cleary, an inbound and outbound marketer, shared a vast collection of marketing tools in this Social Media Marketing World presentation. I am always looking for tools to help me do what I do faster, easier, and better.
Cleary began his presentation by talking about a 5-step framework for content marketing. Each step builds upon the previous one. He grouped his marketing tools around each stage.
5. Analyze and optimize
4. Outbound marketing and promotion
3. Create and publish content
2. Content goals and funnels
1. Build your foundation
Build Your Foundation
In this step, the marketing tools are designed to help you develop a strong foundation. This is where you research your topic ahead of time and see where you sit among your competition.
SEMrush.com – Cleary recommends using this tool for doing a site audit.
Screamingfrog.com – This tool will help you optimize your website. It will let you look at your titles and meta descriptions at a glance.
AnswerthePublic.com – One of my favorite tools for generating content ideas.
Quora.com – Another tool for generating content ideas. You get to see what questions people are asking.
Moz.com – The Moz Opensite Explorer will help you determine domain and page authority. This lets you know where you or your competition ranks.
Content Goals and Funnels
When looking at content goals and funnels, you are trying to get visitors to move through your funnel. This means targeting with great content created around keywords.
Cleary discussed content for each stage of the funnel:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Conversion
- Retention
- Advocacy
Cleary stressed the importance of building an email list. He advocated for creating custom lead magnets for your content and using opt-ins for joining the email list. He presented some flow charts showing how to target and retarget visitors.
OptinMonster.com – This is a tool that will create opt-ins for blog posts and exit intent pop-ups. You can track and retarget based on the success of opt-in.
Google Analytics – Cleary recommends setting goals to track every stage of the funnel.
Create and Publish Content
Asana – Cleary recommends using a tool like Asana to create an editorial calendar. This is something I have recently begun doing.
Cleary spent a considerable amount of time talking about strategic content. Strategic content is your pillar content. It will take you more time to create but provide immensely more value. Strategic content ties internal content together. It also serves as a focal point for external content.
In order to conduct research, Cleary recommends these marketing tools:
Ahrefs.com – This site allows you to analyze the traffic for any link provided.
Social Warfare Plugins – Social Warfare provides an easy way to share content from your site. Additionally, it allows you to create custom images for different social media sites. It is a tool that I use.
Lumen5 – This is a wonderful tool that I also use for creating promotional videos from your website content.
Outbound Marketing
One of the goals is to get influencers to help promote your content.
AgoraPulse.com – This looks like a great tool for managing social media discussions. With this tool, you can also schedule content to be published on a schedule of your choosing.
Brand24.com – A tool for tracking how often you are mentioned.
Buzzsumo.com – Are you looking for influencers? This tool will help you find people sharing similar content.
Analyze and Optimize
Cleary’s go-to tool for analyzing and optimizing is Ahrefs.com, which was previously named. In this case, he is using it for finding popular content and links to content.
Cleary’s presentation led to some new tools that I will have to test out. I need to win the lottery 😉
