Most Recommended Marketing Tools By Pro Bloggers

This is the Part 1 of the "Recommended Marketing Tools" series - where successful bloggers share the marketing tools they couldn't live without. Co-authored by James Richman.

Most successful bloggers are not only great storytellers. They know the best and most effective tools of the trade too.

In collaboration with James Richman of 1stWebDesigner, we've asked some of the most influential bloggers as to what are their 3 most recommended tools for content creation and promotion. We asked them what are the tools they couldn't live without and here's what they recommend.

Winning tools for this round are: Buffer, MailChimp and Google Analytics. Be sure to check out new tools and share with us in the comments what we've missed!

Kristi Hines

Kristi is author of Blogging for Business: A How-To Guide and one of the most trustedfreelance bloggers in the online space.

Her blog Kikolani covers blog marketing and blogging tips for personal, professional, and business bloggers.

Tools Kristi Can't Live Without

I am a marketing tool addict. I love seeking out new tools that can simplify specific areas of my business. While I was only asked to share three tools that I couldn't live without in my business, I couldn't help but sharing five that I use on a daily basis.

Cyfe

One of the biggest challenges of being a soloprenuer is finding the time to manage my clients and my business. I use a lot of different platforms for advertising, email marketing, invoicing, publishing, SEO, social media, and web analytics.

Cyfe is an all-in-one dashboard software that allows me to see data from most of the platforms I use in one place. It saves me a LOT of time - without it, I would have to go to Facebook Insights, FreshBooks, Google Analytics, MailChimp, Moz, and several other websites to see my business data on a daily basis.

Rival IQ

Competitive research can be a great teacher when it comes to marketing strategies. I use Rival IQ to keep up with other freelancers in my space to analyze their website, search, and social media strategy. I also use it to help my clients identify areas in their online marketing that could use some improvement based on what their competitors are doing.

My favorite feature is the ability to quickly compare multiple business's website titles, Twitter bios, Facebook descriptions, and other social taglines and get alerted when competitors make changes to any of these. It's a great way to make sure your business is offering what your customers want.

Oktopost

As a freelance writer, one of the things I do for my clients is promote the content I create. This helps them accomplish their content marketing goals, including traffic generation, social engagement, and conversions. Oktopost allows me to promote content to all of my social channels in one platform and get social engagement and click through analytics.

My favorite feature is the ability to not only post to my social profiles, but also to Facebook and LinkedIn groups. Thanks to the analytics Oktopost provides, I can see which groups offer the most engagement for my content and keep up with comments that need replies within each group.

Danny Brown

While Danny blogs about marketing and social media and where we're heading, he also blogs about what it means to us as humans.

How we can tell better stories; be better businesses; and live better lives. After all, business comes and goes; but we only get one shot at being good people, in life and in business. He's the co-author of Influence Marketing: How to Create, Manage, and Measure Brand Influencers in Social Media Marketing.

3 Tools Danny Can't Live Without

Sprout Social

It's the only social media dashboard worth using if you're serious about keeping tabs on engagement levels, topics that are important to you, and a mobile experience that replicates the desktop one perfectly.

It's not as cheap as Hootsuite, but the features are more than worth the investment(besides, Hootsuite gets pretty expensive if you want the kind of reporting that comes with your Sprout Social license).

Buffer

It's just perfection. Everyone is busy, and not always around when it comes to growing awareness of you or your brand.

Buffer makes it simple to schedule content delivery, and at a time when it makes sense for your audience. Their analytics are useful for seeing what type of content works, and they just make the web a better place. :)

MailPoet

This is a WordPress plugin that makes it easy to create email lists, forms, newsletters, and more.

Their features are excellent, they complement the most popular email services, support is awesome, and the metrics really help you understand how effective (or not) your email list is. Excellent, and the one I recommend every time.

Jacob Cass

Jacob Cass is a strategic, multi-disciplinary designer & Art Director who has worked with clients such as Disney, Jerry Seinfeld, Red Bull, Nike & VitaminWater.

Although his skill set is vast, his major skill sets lie in the world of art direction, visual design, brand identity design, brand strategy, UX, UI design, interactive design (mobile + web design) and print design.

3 Tools Jacob Can't Live Without

Buffer

It allows me to find great content to share, across multiple platforms, as well as give key insights to each post.

Follow Up Then

Allows me to follow up with people I email.

DropBox

Allows me to easily share files while having peace of mind.

Kevan Lee

Kevan is a professional writer with a knack for storytelling and is a Content Crafter at Buffer.

He specializes in blogging, email marketing, and content creation and writes for Buffer, Lifehacker, Time, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, The Huffington Post, The Next Web.

3 Tools Kevan Can't Live Without

Buffer

Quite simply, this saves me the most time in online marketing, every single day. I can schedule to every social media channel I've got, all in one chunk, then spend time the rest of the day to work deeply on other tasks, knowing my social media is well taken care of.

Canva

Incredibly, I can create some pretty snazzy imagery at Canva - and I have zero design experience! It's intuitive, straightforward, and easy to learn. I create at least an image a day at the site.

MailChimp

I can send automatic emails every time a new blogpost publishes and greet new subscribers with a custom, happy message. Mailchimp handles it all, from start to finish.

Jason Swenk

Jason is a digital-preneur and author with 12+ years running a successful digital agency until he sold it in 2011.

He started his digital career with Arthur Andersen in the 90s. After realizing the vast opportunity in digital marketing, he quickly started his digital agency in 1999.

Since then, Jason has worked with some of the biggest clients in the World from Aflac, Lotus Cars, Hitachi, AT&T, Coke and Legal Zoom.

3 Tools Jason Can't Live Without

Infusionsoft 

Infusionsoft is a great platform to organize contacts and automate marketing efforts to help you save time and increase sales in the process.

TinyPNG 

TinyPNG uses smart lossy compression techniques to reduce the file size of your PNG files. By selectively decreasing the number of colors in the image, fewer bytes are required to store the data. The effect is nearly invisible but it makes a very large difference in file size!
tinypng.org

LeadPages

Leadpages is a dynamic software company that creates simple and beautiful software and web apps that allow businesses to grow large and devoted audiences. Their goal is to create insanely useful (and technologically sound) tools that work almost instantly, make life easier, and eventually change our industry.

Lewis Howes

Lewis Howes is a bestselling author, entrepreneur who has built several multi-million dollar online businesses, and former professional Arena League football player. He hosts The School of Greatness, a talk show distributed as a podcast.

Howes co-wrote the 2009 book,LinkedWorking: Generating Success on LinkedIn ... the World's Largest Professional Networking Website

3 Tools Lewis Can't Live Without

GoToWebinar

Aweber

It allows me to promote my webinars via email marketing.

LewisHowes (WordPress)

My WordPress blog allows me to post useful content to generate more leads for my business

Maria Elena Duron

Maria Elena specializes in creating community, connection and commerce working with high performing entrepreneurs, executives and businesses on how to manage their personal brand, the conglomeration of personal brands in their company and their business brand.

3 Tools Maria Can't Live Without

Twitter

As founder and moderator of #brandchat, Twitter has been the most useful and effective community building, connection and relationship building tool. It's also a great tool to keep up-to-speed with what's important in my industry and to our connections.

Constant Contact

A whole fleet of marketing tools (campaigns, newsletter, event marketing, email marketing, social campaigns, autoresponders and easy social sharing tools) that help the small business owner build their list. The quality of your list determines the quality of your business.

LeadPages
Provides the instant "lead page" creation to be able to quickly segment your list building. Again, your list is key to the success of your business.

Brian Honigman

Brian Honigman is a marketing consultant, freelance writer and professional speaker. He works with both startups and brands improving their content marketing, social media and search engine optimization efforts.

He's spoken at NYU, UNICEF, Huffington Post Live, the American Advertising Federation and for other organizations and conferences.

He is also a contributing writer to Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, Forbes, the Next Web, Wall Street Journal and others.

3 Tools Brian Can't Live Without

Buffer

Saves me time every day and allows me to quickly schedule social content for the weeks ahead while keeping in mind the unique nuances of each social channel I'm active on.

MailChimp

Allows me to quickly create a weekly newsletter that's beautiful, simple and engaging. It's a free way to build a healthy list of subscribers.

Contactually

Helps act as a mini-CRM to help me better manage the contacts in my greater network. Love using it on the go on mobile to help me better manage relationships with others when I have extra time.

Neal Rodriguez

Neal helps mid-sized businesses and enterprise level organizations meet and exceed the objectives for which their websites were developed.

He has a 10 year track record in generating exposure and revenue for companies from the search engines - SEO - major social media platforms, and everywhere else on the web.

4 Tools Neal Can't Live Without

I'm not the typical marketer who solely uses tools developed specifically for marketing activities. As a content marketer, I help clients and myself develop content that has the best chance of securing viral exposure.

I use several tools for this, such as Google Trends, the Reddit Top section, and just recently I've found BuzzSumo to be key in finding content that has enjoyed viral or at least the most exposure among a given topic. From there I aim to tie it to a brand's vertical and develop content ideas. I could also get ideas from random things that are occurring in my life at the moment.

Google Trends

BuzzSumo

Majestic

I also use some tools that are developed for marketing purposes. Such as Google's Keyword Planner and Majestic. These are mostly SEO plays; they tell me how popular keywords are and the quantity and quality of links that are pointing to a website I may want get a link from.

Keyword Planner

Jeremy Goldman

Jeremy Goldman has been working with companies looking to take their operations online and inject "social" into their processes for over a decade and the author of Going Social: Excite Customers, Generate Buzz, and Energize Your Brand with the Power of Social Media.

Under Jeremy's leadership, Kiehl's won the 2009 WebAward for Outstanding Achievement in Web Development, achieved a Top 25 ranking in the L2 Digital IQ Index in the Beauty & Skincare category, and received a Top 50 Facebook IQ ranking amongst all luxury brands.

3 Tools Jeremy Can't Live Without

Buffer

Such an easy to use interface that lets me send content to multiple social platforms at once. Plus, as someone always on the go, the ability to easily schedule content for the perfect time is a must.

Evernote
As a digital marketer, this is an no-brainer. Evernote lets me quickly and easily store random ideas for blog posts that pop into my head, wherever I am. If I find an article that inspires me, I can email that to Evernote, or use their easy Chrome extension to clip content. It's the second brain I never knew I needed.

SocialBro

The most underrated platform out there for managing and parsing your Twitter following, SocialBro lets me surface interesting and unexpected relationships, create dynamic Twitter lists, target my content at the perfect time, and so much more.

Francisco Rosales

Francisco works with small and mid-size business on creating and implementing successful online strategies through social media, advertising, content and email marketing.

He is also author of the online courses "Likeable to Profitable" and "Email Marketing [not so] 101." As well as he offers training and consulting and blogs at SocialMouths, an award-winning social media blog.

3 Tools Francisco Can't Live Without

Mailchimp

Basically because I use email marketing as a lead generation tool, and there is nothing online that can compare to the effectiveness of email to drive conversions. Mailchimp simply because I consider it the best ESP in the market by far.

Facebook Power Editor

Just because Facebook practically killed organic reach doesn't mean the platform no longer works to generate leads and drive business. The opportunities Power Editor offers to tap into different kinds of audiences of highly targeted prospects is not available anywhere else.

Insightly

I use Insightly as my CRM. Many of us focus too much on marketing and then drop the ball on sales. This gives me visibility of the opportunities and the relationships being established at the business level.

We hope these recommended tools by some of the influential bloggers help you better craft your content as well. Writing great articles is just half the battle. You need the most efficient tools as well to aid in your promotion and getting your content discovered by more and more people.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonha-revesencio/most-recommended-marketing-tools-by-pro-bloggers_b_6633850.html

How to find Keywords People Use

Winning at SEO calls for outmaneuvering the field.

Let’s examine how to find keywords your competitors aren’t using—with tactics they don’t even know about.

“Keywords don’t matter much anymore.” You find it written everywhere lately.

I asked a friend who eats analytics for breakfast and snacks on SEO all day long, “Whatcha’ think about that man?” He smirked. Then he turned toward his massive monitor, typed “g-o-o-g-l-e-(.)-c-o-m” on his keyboard. The ubiquitous page with the crude, but familiar multi-color logo and single blank field popped right up.

He turned back to me and said, “What do I do now Barry?” His point was pretty clear. However all-powerful the search engine that changed the world may be, it can’t yet read your mind. Whether you choose to type or talk, you tell it what you’re looking for with a string of words.

Notice I wrote, “string of words.” I meant to suggest three, four, or more, words. These searches have come to be known as “long tail” and represent the majority of searches. It’s also important to note long tail keywords, being more specific than one or two word searches (or “head” keywords), have proven to deliver superior conversion

To illustrate, consider “acoustic guitar” vs. “Used Taylor 12-string acoustic-electric guitar.” It seems intuitive the longer, far more specific term suggests the searcher has a better idea of the product he seeks and is therefore closer to reaching for his wallet. Research consistently provides confirmation.

Perhaps an even more important reason long tail keyword enters the SEO discussion so often is because as an online marketer you have a remarkably higher chance of earning page one search results by developing content targeting the lengthier phrases. The “big fish in a small pond” metaphor applies.

By strategically implementing long tail keywords, you’re far more likely to rank high, attract the audience you desire, and show motivated prospects the way to your website.

Your challenge is to identify the right long tail keywords

How do you do this?

Almost anyone you ask will immediately cite Google Keyword Planner, a tool made available for free to anyone who registers for an account. As advertised, Keyword Planner will provide keyword ideas and traffic estimates. However, it’s a safe bet to assume your competition will be using the very same tool, get served the same data, and are likely to make similar decisions.

Consider the advantage you’ll seize if you’re able to identify untapped long tail keywords the competitors in your niche don’t know about or use.

The roads less traveled

Understand, Google Keyword Planner isn’t all that great about delivering new keyword ideas. The keywords you’re shown are of course tied to the term you enter and that’s that. However, if you want to explore the roads less traveled by competitors, it’s time to try alternative and smart ways to find niche keywords.

According to Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide by Backlinko, your goal is to identify niche markets, subsegments of larger markets. The eBook explains you begin by creating a niche cloud map. You create “clouds” that float around your industry.

image: http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/basketball-cloud.png.png

Maybe this cloud floating (or mind mapping) type of exercise will come easy to you. Maybe it won’t. The good news is there are quite a few useful hack-like approaches that will serve you well. And in fact, while niche hunting, you’ll find you’re conducting market research and getting inside the minds of your customers.

Start with Wikipedia

Maybe you curse Wikipedia for dominating page one Google results the way it does, but check this out. I entered “antivirus software” in Wikipedia.

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Wikipedia-Antivirus-Software.png.png

The table of contents shows a plethora of related terms the Keyword Planner is unlikely to: “signature-based detection,” “rogue security applications,” “hardware and network firewall.” These could be niche keywords worth considering.

And that’s just the table of contents. The long and detailed article on the topic introduces hundreds of related terms, most of them linked to additional resources. For instance, I clicked “intrusion detection systems” and related ideas came flying at me.

Find common questions on forums

When your goal is to crawl inside the mind of customers and gain insights into topics being discussed in your niche, snooping around in industry forums can be enormously informative.

I did a search for “digital printing +forums” and selected the first listing, “Digital Printing Discussion – Print Planet.” Bingo. The forum site presented 408 threads.

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Forum-Questions.png.png

I’d consider the titles (or at least, ideas extracted from them) from three of the four discussion threads above to be potential keyword possibilities: digital printer for rapid prototyping; high quality prints on a used color digital printer; color press on textured stocks.

Many forums are subdivided into a long list of niche markets. Print Planet, for example, included forums specifically for prepress and workflow, post press and binding, ink and substrates, wide format, etc. Each niche within the niche included a ton of threads likely to be ideal for mining ideas.

Just start typing in Google

Google and other search engines attempt to anticipate your search needs based on user history. As you see here, “home remodeling” invoked a trio of related ideas.

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Google-Search-Keyword-Suggestions.png.png

Bing was even more prolific.

image: http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Bing-Search-Keyword-Suggestions.png.png

After performing your search, be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page where you’ll find an additional, usually longer, list of suggested keyword strings. Some are related ideas, but don’t include the exact words entered, such as “bathroom” and “additions.”

image: http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Home-Remodeling-Related-Search.png.png

eHow is a keyword epicenter

eHow, a popular site from Demand Media, can be a keywords goldmine. The website attempts to find long tail keywords it can rank for with highly targeted content. I put myself in the mindset of a massage therapist and simply searched “massage.” The following is a small sample from the many pages served.

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/eHow-Search-Results.png.png

You might say, “Yeah, but with the might and technology behind the eHow site, I’ll lose the battle to them.” Perhaps not. In a helpful eBook from Wordstream, How to Find Your Most Cost-Effective Keywords, the author explains the content tends to be produced on the cheap and therefore, is often lame. Considering the many changes Google has made in recent years to favor deep and informative content, it’s possible, even with minimal domain or page authority, you can create superior content to rank on the first page.

Try Q&A sites

The keyword hunting strategy I explained above where you tap into forums can also be applied on question and answer websites including:

• Quora
• Yahoo Answers
• Answers.com
• Askville by Amazon

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Quora-Example-Search.png.png

On Quora, I searched for “Facebook advertising” and found questions about “advertising mobile apps” and “ways to track conversions” among a very long list of questions. The answers too, provide helpful hints. For instance, the first answer for the first question above included “promoting app downloads” and “algorithms for the optimization of ad programs.”

If you like this strategy, check out these tips for using Quora an SEO idea source.

Übersuggest is free and fab

At ubersuggest.org you’ll find a free tool that suggests a massive list of keywords for just about any term you enter. I tried “bifocals.”

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/ubersuggest-example-search.png.png

The list here is for keywords where bifocals is followed by an “f.” The tool covers the entire alphabet. You can create a “basket” to collect the ideas you like. Also, you can click any phrase to invoke more. I clicked the plus sign for the first one above and got “bifocals fun facts” and more.

A similar tool, also free, simply called “Keyword Tool,” gives you up to 750 suggestions for every keyword and is free.

image: http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Screen-Shot-2015-01-10-at-10.04.48-AM.png.png

Happy hunting

If you take just one idea away from this post, let is be this: long tail dominates Google search activity and every form of search. In fact, CNET reported 15% of Google queries have never been seen before. That’s 500,000,000 searches per day.

Armed with an understanding of this reality, take a smart approach by finding niche keywords. Dig deep aiming to uncover real-world jargon. Try some or all of the six approaches I’ve suggested. Identify long tail keywords to inform your content development. Publish the best page on the web for the phrases you’ve chosen and we’ll see you on page one.

HERE’S A FREE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO SEO.

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/SEO-Simplified-300x241.png.png