29 free Internet tools to improve your marketing starting today
This post originally appeared on the Buffer blog.
Aren’t shortcuts just the best?
While everyone else takes the long way, you and your shortcut get to breeze right through, skipping a few steps and feeling pretty smart doing it.
Finding a good marketing shortcut feels especially great, considering all that we marketers have to do in a day.
That’s why I went hunting for the top free marketing tools in a variety of marketing categories. These tools – all quick hits you can get started with easily – focus on everything from research and writing to benchmarking and analyzing. Here’s hoping you find the perfect shortcut for your work!
Research Tools
We’ll start at the beginning: researching topics, sites and ideas.
1. Google Scholar
I don’t know why more people don’t talk about Google Scholar, but I love this tool for researching science-heavy articles and digging into emerging studies. It limits your search to articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.
Pair it with a Google Alert to get amazing research on your topics of interest delivered right to your inbox.
2. Open Site Explorer
Described as a search engine for links, Open Site Explorer allows you to see a list of the sites that are linking to you – or another site.
Links are great for SEO, and this is great info for building better relationships with sites that like what you do, or even keeping an eye on competing sites.
3. Google Trends
See what the world is searching for and how interest in concepts has changed over time with Google Trends.
For example, I feel like I’m suddenly hearing about “growth hacker” and “growth hacking.” Are you, too? I input those terms into Google Trends and it looks like there is a sudden new interest in the concept.
Ideation Tools
4. Blog Topic Generator
Stumped for ideas? Give Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator a few nouns that describe your content areas and it’ll spit out a week’s worth of post ideas.
I put in the words “social media” “content marketing” and “aardvarks” (how could I resist?) and got the following:
- 10 Signs You Should Invest In Social Media
- Think You’re Cut Out For Doing Content Marketing? Take This Quiz
- Miley Cyrus And Aardvarks: 10 Surprising Things They Have In Common
- 15 Best Blogs To Follow About Social Media
- What Will Content Marketing Be Like In 100 Years?
Not bad, huh? Which one do you want to read?
5. Content Idea Generator
Enter a keyword for a fun, irreverent suggestion from Portent’s Content Idea Generator.
Next: Reading and Writing Tools