13 powerful (and free!) tools for digital marketers
These are the free tools I use as a digital marketing professional to make my life easier. Help me build a complete list by adding your favorites in the comments.
Free tools that help with content strategy and planning:
Answer the Public: a keyword tool that visualizes search questions and suggested autocomplete searches in an image called a search cloud.
BuzzSumo: Use this tool's content insights to generate ideas, create high-performing content, monitor your performance and identify influencers. Example: Enter a keyword "halloween" and see the top performing articles for that keyword and their engagement metrics.
HubSpot's Blog Idea Generator: Type in a keyword and download a spreadsheet of blog titles that could give you inspiration for writing.
Free tools that help with content writing:
Grammarly for Chrome: A grammar tool built in to Chrome so everything you type in Chrome is checked for correct grammar. Very helpful when writing blogs and social media posts. Even a fabulous writer can use another set of "eyes" on their content.
Capitalize My Title: A simple web tool that helps to quickly convert copy to sentence case, title case, all caps and more. I use this all the time for converting blog titles.
Coschedule Headline Analyzer: The headline of your blog post needs to grab the attention and emotion of a reader. Use this tool to see how your headlines rate on a scale of 1-100. Share it with your writers to ensure that they submit their best work (saves you time).
Free tools that help with search engine optimization:
Free SEO tools by Moz: Try any of these six free tools. Highlights: Free Domain Analysis, Keyword Explorer, and MozBar for SEO analysis on any page you visit.
Ubersuggest: This is Neil Patel's keyword tool. One new feature: you can now type in a competitor's domain to get better keyword ideas.
Google Keyword Planner: Research keywords to find out their volume and find new keyword ideas. You can get an estimate for how much it will cost to run an ad for certain words, which will help you plan a budget for your campaign.
Free tools that help with task management:
Trello: This is my personal favorite because it can be organized like a kanban board. I am a visual learner so the ability to see my work and how it flows through stages is importan to me.
What tools do you use?
Free tools that help with web and social design:
Canva: I am an Adobe Creative Suite user but this design tool has proved to be just as useful for quickly creating social visuals. There is a free version but I prefer using the Pro plan ($25/month) because I get access to high-quality images, can upload branding elements, and resize board quickly.
Unsplash: This is my all-time favorite free stock photo site.
The Noun Project: Need an icon? This is the site! Download an icon and throw it into Illustrator to change the colors if you don't want to pay.
I ended up with 13 tools. If you're superstitious (or even just a little stitious), help me add to this list so we can stay lucky!
Cheers! Johannah