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#1: The best content marketing tools for the research phase.

#2: The best content marketing tools for the creation phase.

#3: The best content marketing tools for the optimization phase.

We mentioned how much content marketing is an opportunity to build an audience in an authentic way, if you’re willing to invest the time to do things right.

Want to understand more about each phase of content marketing, why it’s important and the details about how to do it? Get a copy of ROI or RIP – The Lean Content Marketing Handbook for SMBs. It’s over 80 pages of best practices for developing and executing a content marketing strategy.

This week, we’ll go over the best content marketing tools to help you in your optimization phase.

Best content marketing tools for the publishing phase

1. To create your blog: WordPress.

We recommend you install WordPress on your website, rather than use an offsite WordPress.com hosted blog. WordPress is pretty much the go-to content marketing platform right now.

2. To automate publishing to your blog, social media accounts and even to your email subscribers: Scoop.it Content Director.

Content Director can automatically create and publish your curated posts to a WordPress blog or to your social media accounts. You can even set it up to send a curated email to your subscriber list. Any basic Scoop.It account can also send a curated email to your subscriber list.

3. Use an email service provider to handle basic newsletter functions: MailChimp.

Email marketing is one of the major components of any good content marketing campaign. While MailChimp is only one of dozens of email service providers you could use, it’s affordable, super-easy to use, and widely praised. AWeber is a good choice if you want more advanced features.

4. To automate publishing tasks: Zapier.

Zapier will let you set up systems that you probably thought would require a full-time developer. It’s extremely powerful, almost endlessly flexible and actually very easy to use. So if you want to pass information from one online tool to another, that’s not a problem. If you’re not using it, I’m pretty sure you could probably be saving yourself at least three hours of work per week.

If you love Zapier, check out IFTTT (If This, Then That). It has even more capabilities and personal applications. Check out Shopify’s post, 9 Clever Ways to Automate Your Small Business with IFTTT, for inspiration.

Want to work smarter and start generating real results from your content marketing? Find out how to use the new Scoop.it Content Director to help you become a smarter marketer!