Idea Generation and Planning Tools

Instant.ly – on-demand consumer insights from all over the world.

Feedly – RSS reader for storing a feed of all the best blogs within your niche. There’s a great mobile app as well.

Visual.ly – my favourite library of infographics. This is perfect for getting some creative inspiration.

Consumer Barometer – a project created by Google that gives free consumer insights across a whole range of sectors.

Trello – free project management suite that’s great for organising content from multiple authors.

Basecamp – my favourite project management platform that’s incredibly simple to use and can save you a ton of time.

Pocket – save content to read for later with Pocket. Seriously helpful when you haven’t got a lot of free time.

Evernote – organise all of your campaigns and have a central location to store your ideas.

NerdyData – source code search engine (great for data analysis to go into your content).

Quantcast – gather stats on millions of websites.

Balsamiq – easy-to-use design wireframing software.

Contently – collaborative content platform full to the brim with great ideas.

Yutongo – crowdsourced brainstorming and ideas platform.

Google Public Data Explorer – tons of stats and data on all kinds of things!

BuzzSumo – content analysis tool that can give you endless ideas for new content.

Survey Monkey – great tool to run polls and surveys.

Qualaroo – get insights from your website visitors to understand what they want to see from you.

Dribbble – huge amounts of creative inspiration from designers the world over.

Worldometers – real time world statistics.

Content Creation Tools

99designs – huge base of designers that can create all kinds of content for you on a budget.

48hourslogo – design content community. Tell them what you want, say how much you’ll pay and watch as designers bid to work with you.

Grammarly – make srue you don’t have any speling mistackes with Grammarly.

This proofreading gig on Fiverr – this guy is the only reason why any of my content is legible.

Google Fusion Tables – create interactive charts and tables for free.

SlideShare – create and promote online slide shows.

Speechpad – speech to text and video transcriptions (really cost effective).

Infogr.am – simply to use, free infographic creation tool.

PiktoChart – create your own infographics, reports and presentations.

ReciteThis – turn a simple quote into a beatiful-looking image.

Pinwords – overlay text to your images for sharing on Pinterest. Simple, but very effective tool.

Kuler – fantastic colour wheel tool from Adobe. Find which colour work within your designs and create your own colour palette. This is particularly useful when writing up design briefs.

Pressbooks – turn your content into an online book that’s ready to go into Apple’s iBook store, the Kindle store and many more.

Hype My Hangout – create cool Google+ videos to promote your content.

Writtent – hire good quality content writers to produce content for you.

Guides.io – create interactive step-by-step guides.

crowdSPRING – design marketplace to et all kinds of content created.

TagCrowd – create simple word clouds from any text.

Camtasia – screen recording and video editing suite (I use this for my video tutorials).

LICEcap – free software for creating animated gif images.

Resize.it – resize and crop any image.

Print Friendly – turn any webpage into a compressed PDF. This is perfect for when you offer a PDF download of your content.

PunchTab – competition/giveaway platform.

Rafflecopter – another competition/giveaway platform.

Swiftly – cost-effective, small design jobs.

Content Promotion Tools

Wisestamp – custom email signatures that allow you to insert a link to your latest blog post (it pulls in automatically from your RSS feed).

Social Locker plugin for WordPress – allow users to access locked content in return for sharing your article via social media.

MailChimp – email marketing software.

Buffer – social media sharing tool. This is probably in my top 3 most important tools.

BuzzStream – intelligent blogger outreach tool that has tons more features for getting your content seen.

ResponseSource – UK-focused journalist enquiry service.

HARO – connect with journalists and bloggers.

PitchBox – prospecting, outreach and relationship-building platform.

Muck Rack – tool for connecting with journalists and bloggers via social media.

Reddit Advertising – Reddit’s advertising service.

StumbleUpon Paid Discovery – StumbleUpon’s paid advertising platform.

TubeAssist – automated YouTube marketing tool.

IFTTT – connect tons of different tools together to work smarter and more efficiently.

Followerwonk – Twitter analytics and prospecting tool.

Sprout Social – integrated social media management software.

Outbrain – paid content delivery network.

Image Raider – reverse image search engine. Find who’s using your images.

Pinstamatic – Pinterest marketing tool.

Boomerang for Gmail – free app for Gmail to schedule email sending an automate follow-ups. This is a must for anyone serious about outreach.

by Matthew Barby