Top 15 Content Planning Tools for Content Marketing

Content marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies for ROI on money spent, get the content planning tools the pros use to up your game.

Content Planning Tools

Believe it or not, content marketing is still a pretty new form of marketing for many businesses. Research from the Content Marketing Institute indicated that having a content strategy is one of the most crucial factors in deciding whether your business will fail or succeed. And content strategy means content planning! 

 

To start with, one might question what is content? In 1996, nearly two decades ago, Bill Gates declared the statement “CONTENT IS KING” where he stated:

 

“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.”

 

Also, according to a survey from the Custom Content Council, 72% of marketers feel that content marketing offers a better ROI than other advertising, while 69% feel that it’s more powerful than direct mail and PR. 

 

The facts say enough!

Creating a lasting content marketing strategy requires the use of the best content planning tools.

Are you spending your time and money on the best tools for content marketing? 

Some marketers are still a bit skeptical about what are the best tools for content marketing. This article will give you a quick overview of the best tools for content planning to keep your business booming. 

 

Let’s get started:

 

1. ProofHub

 

ProofHub has everything your marketing team will need in terms of content planning tools. The best friend to collaborate with the team and organize all your social media marketing data. It is a cloud-based tool with powerful features to plan, collaborate, organize, and deliver content much easier and faster. 

  • ProofHub Gantt charts help to keep an eye on how the work is progressing
  • Track time with timesheets and add multiple timers to get things completed in the specified time frame
  • Break down content ideas into smaller milestones 
  • Custom roles to work together with people

ProofHub helps marketing teams to drop a lot of weight off their shoulders by organizing tasks, posting, and sharing. 

Integrations: ProofHub is integrated with many third-party apps like Freshbooks, Google calendar and iCal, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Onedrive, and Outlook.

Price: Essential plan $45 /month, billed annually and ultimate control plan $89 /month (SAVE 41%!). A discount of 20% on monthly billing and 20% + 10% on annual billing on ProofHub’s Essential Plan to nonprofit organizations.

Free trial: Start the free trial with all features. No contracts. No per-user fees. Unlimited users.

2. HubSpot

HubSpot marketing hub has a vast knowledge base around the best practices of content marketing strategy. HubSpot builds a foundation for content marketing plan to create a content strategy that works as per the modern search. 

  • Create personalized landing pages, emails, web pages
  • Monitor and create effective blog posts
  • Distribute content via social media
  • Content creator and editor

Integrations: There are a number of integrations that work with the HubSpot software, typically Salesforce, GoToWebinar, SurveyMonkey, WordPress, Zapier, Eventbrite, G Suite, Shopify, and Slack.

 

Price: Starter plan at $35/month, Professional at $560/month, and Enterprise at $3,200/month. 

 

Free trial: Start your free 30-day trial. There’s no risk, no obligation, and no credit card required.

 

3. Pocket

When you find something you want to read later, Pocket is for bookmarking your resources. Definitely, reading can make you a bright writer. With Pocket, you can spend most of your time on stories that matter to you. You find a really interesting piece – simply pop it in your pocket for later. What else?

  • Follow interesting people to see what they’re recommending
  • Highlight an excerpt and include that in your share
  • Options of keeping it public/private

Pocket lets you save interesting articles to view files later on iPhones, iPads, PCs and any mobile device. Available on iPhone, iPad, Android, and Kindle Fire.

Integrations: Pocket is integrated into over 500 applications across many platforms you may already use.

Pricing: Plans from $4.99/month or $44.99/year. Go premium at $44.99/yr.

Free trial: Free version is available. 

4. Buzzsumo

Until you know what kind of content is trending in your industry, you cannot have the best results. Buzzsumo is a content performance analysis tool that identifies the influencers who are creating popular, newsworthy content. No tool is as close as Buzzsumo in providing the insights to quickly identify what content is working well in the industry.  Also, 

 

  • Know the influencers in your industry to market your content
  • Find what content was most shared across all social networks 
  • Get content alerts to see content that mentions your keyword
  • Track how your competitor’s content is performing 

 

All-in-all, this tool is perfect for editorial planning and scheduling. 

 

Integrations: Content from BuzzSumo can be shared to a social network or via a social scheduling tool such as Hootsuite or Buffer. You may also connect your Twitter account to BuzzSumo.

 

Pricing: Pro plan at $79/month and plus plan at $139/month (Recommended). 

 

Free trial: All plans include a free 7-day trial. No credit card needed. 

5. Buffer

If you want to be a content marketing expert, use Buffer to plan your data on social media. Manage multiple accounts: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn from your dashboard. 

 

  • Schedule posts for your social media at once
  • Review analytics to see how your posts are performing
  • Add up to 25 members to give them the appropriate access level

 

Try Buffer and see how it makes a difference to your social media management. 

 

Integrations: Integrate Buffer with your favorite apps: MailChimp, Pipedrive, Slack, Salesforce, SharePoint, and many more. 

 

Pricing: Pro plan at $15/month billed monthly and Premium plan at $65/month billed monthly.

 

Free trial: Try the basic free plan: 3 social accounts, 10 scheduled posts, 1 user. 

 

6. Parse.ly 

Content analytics is one of the key ways to transform your content strategy into a dynamic business booster. The simple, aesthetically appealing, and informative platform of Parese.ly lets you track the performance of topics, capitalize on web trends, promote in-demand content, and many more.

 

  • Analyze data from both inbound and outbound collateral 
  • In one dashboard connect your email marketing, social media, and blog content
  • Join in on conversations happening around your brand in real-time                                                     

 

Integrations: Integrates with best-in-class technologies: Cloudflare, Drupal, Looker, Facebook, Segment, and many more. 

 

Pricing: Starter plan at $500 per month. 

 

Free trial: Free 30-day trial. No credit card required.

 

7. GatherContent

It’s a huge relief to have all your information and ideas in one place to create great content. GatherContent is a tool that streamlines the way you gather and organize your content. Define the editorial schedule from within GatherContent.

  • One central location for everything
  • Create folders to hold all your information
  • Keep content up-to-date and consistent

 

Integrations: Build your own integrations with GatherContent fully documented API.

 

Pricing: Starter plan at $83/mo (Save $198!). 

 

Free trial: All plans start with a 30-day free trial. You must try it!

 

8. Kred

After making enough content strategies, it is equally important to measure how your content marketing strategy actually moves the needle in your industry. Kred is the perfect resource for building credibility and trust that measures influence by the number of mentions, retweets, and replies you receive. Outreach measures the mentions, retweets and replies you send out.

 

  • Kred gives two different scores: influence and outreach
  • Analyze Facebook and Twitter activities
  • Build your own influencer status to enhance your online presence

You can connect with Facebook, Twitter or email to log in and start measuring your online influence. 

 

Integrations: All you need is an API Key and you’re ready to integrate! 

 

Pricing: Influencer plan at $10/month (100 +KRED), power user at  $100/month (1,000 +KRED) and team plan at $1,000/month (20,000 +KRED).

 

Free trial: Free trial available. Create up to 10 actionable +Kred Coins.

 

9. Copyscape

As a content marketer, it’s best to use unique content. By using the best plagiarism checkers, your file will be authentically checked to keep you out of trouble with Google and publishers. The Copyscape is a famous plagiarism tool that shields your content from plagiarism.

  • Simply put the URL of your post in the URL segment and check
  • You can access it from any location
  • The procedure is straightforward and simple

Pricing: Starting from $4.95/month.

 

Free trial: Free, Subscription.

 

10. Coschedule Headline Analyser

Your headlines are crucial in content marketing! Headlines draw future prospects in. This tool is ideal for crafting the perfect headline bringing out the ability to result better in social shares, traffic, and SEO ranking. It checks your selected title for the following factors:

  • Word balance
  • Headline type
  • First Three, Last Three Words
  • Keywords
  • Google search preview
  • Email subject line preview

Integrations: Create content using Google Docs. Publish directly to WordPress. Sync your Evernote notes directly in CoSchedule, integrate with all your favorite social media networks, easily connect your MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, and Active Campaign. 

 

Pricing: Starting at $80/month billed annually. 

Free trial: 14-day free trial. 

11. DivvyHQ

They promise to handle the most challenging part of the content process. DivvyHQ checks off an impressive amount of content strategy, content planning and production workflow for content marketers.  

  • Get your team organized and aligned
  • Real-time dashboard to have visibility
  • Custom content workflows
  • Track content performance

This is one power planning tool available at an affordable rate.

 

Integrations: DivvyHQ supports integration with all leading social media platforms.

 

Pricing: DivvyHQ LITE plan at $25/user/month, DivvyHQ PRO plan at $95/user/month, DivvyHQ enterprise plan at $195/user/month. 

 

Free trial: 14-day free trial. No credit card needed. 

12. Content DJ

Content DJ is for content creators on each step of the process including finding, sharing and tracking engagement. It offers a visual calendar with color-coding capability so you can see your content in a single view. 

  • Add keywords relevant to the content you want to share
  • A set of analytics tools to help you track followers, retweets and mentions

 

Pricing: Starter plan at $29.00 per user/month.

 

Free trial: Get started with a free 14-day trial. 

13. Sniply

Well, social media is becoming the next big thing. Sniply is one of the successful ways to drive conversion through the content you share on social media. Whatever you share across, add a call-to-action so people can discover you while they read. It’s the best way to promote yourself or your brand while sharing content.

  • Embed your call-to-actions onto every piece of content
  • Add custom messages into articles from CNN, TechCrunch, Mashable, BBC, anywhere
  • Create shortened branded links to share on Twitter etc. 

It is simple, easy to use and a very cost-effective way to drive traffic to your website or blog.

Integrations: Sniply integrates with 1,500+ apps to automate your work. 

 

Pricing: Basic plan at  $29 /month (5,000 clicks /mo, 2 brand profiles, 1 team member)

 

Free trial: All plans include unlimited links. Try any plan for 14 days free!

 

14. Hootsuite

A content calendar for social media works relatably with your social media content strategy to save you time and effort. You’ll get a good mix of content that supports social media goals and objectives.

  • Never miss any important dates 
  • Stick to a consistent posting schedule
  • Share on a cloud platform like Google Sheets or Dropbox 

Try Hootsuite to track the success of all your efforts. 

Integrations: Connect with 20+ social networks.

 

Pricing: Professional plan at 18.15 USD/month (10 social profiles, unlimited scheduling, 1 user)

 

Free trial: Free 30-day trial: 3 social profiles | 30 Scheduled Messages | 1 user.

 

15. Outbrain.com 

This content discovery tool helps connect marketers to their target audience through personalized recommendations. Outbrain.com offers a personalized reader experience and expose your content to engaged readers. 

  • Get what you want to target
  • Learn your audience patterns
  • Set goals for your content
  • Set a content schedule

You can powerfully establish a creative, invaluable, and unique online presence.

Integrations: Outbrain integrates with the following business systems and applications: Shopify, eBay, Amazon, Magento, WooCommerce, Bigcommerce, QuickBooks, Xero, and Inventory Planner. 

 

Pricing: Starting price at $20.00/one-time.

 

Free trial:  You will be charged for the number of clicks you receive based on the CPC you set.

 

Each of the content planning tools mentioned above will take your content marketing efforts to the next level! You simply cannot ignore the power of content planning in content marketing to promote yourself/your brand online.