Creating excellent content that can support your social media plan and maintaining consistency in it can be challenging. This is where content creation tools for creating content on social media come in handy. With the help of these tools, social media managers can produce visually appealing and powerful content for a variety of social media channels more quickly.
In this post, I will take you through the 17 must-have content creation tools that every social media manager should have.
Key Points:
- Content creation tools offer functions including scheduling posts, monitoring analytics, controlling several social media profiles, and engaging with followers.
- These tools improve the overall effectiveness of your social media marketing, save time, and simplify your social media operations.
- The best content creation tools should provide features that make it easier for you and your team to learn how to utilize the software.
- It also reveals topics that your audience is interested in, in addition to helping you understand how your brand is perceived.
- Before you can start creating content, you need to determine what kind of content will appeal to your target audience.
What Are Content Creation Tools?
Content creation tools are platforms or software that assist content producers in overseeing their workflows for producing content, maintaining quality and relevancy, managing social media accounts, and increasing the marketing and content team’s overall output.
Furthermore, these tools offer features like post scheduling, tracking analytics, managing several social media accounts, and interacting with followers. These tools can help you increase the overall efficacy of your social media marketing campaigns, save time, and streamline your social media workflows.
Sprout Social, Buffer, and Hootsuite are a few well-known social media management platforms for content creation.
How To Choose A Content Creation Platform
Consider asking yourself the following questions to help you decide which content creation platform is best for you:
- Does the product work with the social media tools you already have?
- How much will it cost, and how many users, clients, or projects will you need to support?
- Does the tool allow you to import and export in large quantities to improve your productivity?
- Does it have any capacity restrictions that would make it more difficult for you to expand its use throughout your company?
- Is there any AI-related functionality in the software?
- Can the user fully control and regulate its use?
- Does it offer any courses or programs that simplify the process of self-training you and your group to use the software?
- What security features does it have?
17 Free Content Creation Tools for Social Media Managers
Here are the top free content-creation tools for social media managers:
#1. Post Planner
- Price: Free.
- Best for: Creating a content calendar.
Post Planner aims to assist social media marketers in three essential tasks: locating excellent content, organizing the ideal publication schedule, and publishing regularly. It lets you make a timetable based on content types and pricing and curates suggested material (more on that later).
Post Planner’s Find function makes it simple to locate content that has been shown to engage users. Additionally, you can choose the content type for each time slot in your schedule rather than just choosing the time slots to create your sharing plan; Post Planner will then fill the slots with the content you have selected.
#2. Crowdfire
- Price: Free.
- Best for: Social media tracking.
Over time, Crowdfire has continued to introduce additional features. In addition to content scheduling, it lets you follow and unfollow users on Twitter and recommends articles to share.
Furthermore, Crowdfire allows you to link your blogs, YouTube channels, and online stores, and it automatically generates social media postings for any updates you make to your websites.
#3. CoSchedule
- Price: Free.
- Best for: Creating a marketing calendar.
CoSchedule offers one of the best marketing calendars in the industry. It offers free basic calendar access. You and your team can organize and work together to generate tasks, events, and content for social media with CoSchedule.
For content marketers looking to streamline teamwork and manage all of their initiatives (social media, content, events, emails, etc.), CoSchedule is an excellent tool. You may use their ReQueue tool to automatically determine the optimum times to post and to fill in any holes in your social media calendar with your greatest content.
#4. Google Trends
- Price: Free.
- Best for: Find Trending Topics
If anyone knows what subjects people are interested in on the Internet, it’s Google. Fortunately for social media managers and content producers, the potent search engine has developed a tool called Google Trends that makes these insights available to all users.
Simply enter industry-relevant terms to gain access to data that may be used to develop hashtag campaigns and focused advertising.
Best features:
- Examining the prevalence of certain keywords in various languages and locales.
- Finding out which search terms are trending in your sector.
#5. Quuu
- Price: Free.
- Best for: Automating content curation
Content curation can be time-consuming—and boring—but Quuu offers a solution to this issue by compiling manually approved content onto a single platform. Quuu will locate content that meets your demands; all you have to do is link your social media schedules and select the interests of your audience.
#6. Biteable
- Price: Free.
- Best for: Creating short videos
With Biteable, you no longer need to be an expert editor to produce your own videos, and video marketing has grown to be incredibly potent.
Additionally, you can quickly create branded films for social media and other uses by using over 800,000 real-life stock footage, animations, and themes.
Best features:
- Assign editing access to team members when you share projects with them.
- Obtain the rights to use your videos commercially.
- Put in your unique watermarks.
#7. Canva
- Price: Free.
- Best for: Design custom graphic elements
Even if video content has grown in popularity, photographs are still essential for any brand to have on social media. While not everyone has the skills to edit or create a visual aspect, Canva and other similar programs can make these chores much simpler.
Canva’s creative features for graphs and charts, photo editing, apps, and even print make it possible for non-designers to produce visually stunning content.
Best features:
- Get access to over 100 design types and 8,000 free templates.
- Establish your brand’s visual identity throughout all of your creations by using brand kits.
- Export your works as MP4 or animated GIFs.
#8. Unfold
- Price: Free.
- Best for: Create templates for Instagram Stories
Since 2016, Instagram Stories have grown to be a significant component of the photo-sharing app, with 500 million users utilizing them daily.
Large companies like Prada use the Unfold app, to create and post interesting, consistent Instagram Stories with the platform’s endless collection of templates.
Best features:
- Set your brand’s color palette.
- Upload custom fonts and stickers.
- Use a stori.es link to further share your stories.
Note that the app is accessible on Android and iOS devices.
#9. Mention
- Price: Free.
- Best for: Monitor your brand’s mentions
Mention is a tool that monitors online discussions surrounding your business and sector. The tool gathers conversations about your company and its rivals by crawling social media pages, forums, blogs, and other online spaces. This will not only help you learn how your brand is perceived, but it will also reveal important subjects that your audience is interested in, allowing you to incorporate them into your strategy.
Best features:
- To cut through the clutter and concentrate on pertinent discussions, use advanced research tools.
- Sort significant posts into smart folders.
- Post content and arrange it according to pertinent insights.
Read more on social listening and brand monitoring in the following:
- Social Listening Software: Your Key to Understanding and Engaging Your Audience
- Online Brand Monitoring, Everything You Need to Know
#10. Audiense
- Price: Free.
- Best for: Discovering new target audience
Audiense helps you achieve your digital marketing goals by focusing your efforts on the right target audiences.
The tool offers a product named Insights, which generates detailed reports that include demographics, interests, purchase patterns, and other information to assist you in understanding and engaging relevant audiences.
Best features:
- Establish benchmarks with other markets, nations, and rivals.
- Compare your segments to other audiences and industry baselines.
#11. AddThis
- Price: Free.
- Best for: Encouraging users to share your content
An important indicator to track is the number of shares your content receives, since this shows how popular your brand is and how well your message gets to your target audience.
AddThis makes sure that your content is as shareable as possible. This includes making sure it is interesting and pertinent, as well as creating share buttons that you can use on your website, landing pages, emails, and other platforms.
Best features:
- Utilize the options for image sharing on your website.
- Show share amounts.
- Select from Floating Bars, Pop-Ups, Share Button Banners, and more.
#12. Filestage
- Price: Free.
- Best for: Content reviews.
Filestage is a platform that facilitates collaborative content evaluation and approval, streamlining the feedback process for the creation of social media content. It makes it possible for your group to quickly examine and accept pictures, videos, and other types of multimedia content.
Best features:
- Streamlines the approval and feedback procedure
- Real-time commentary and cooperation
- Features for file organization and version control
- Combination with widely used project management software
For marketing teams and agencies looking to expedite the approval and content review process for their social media campaigns, Filestage is the perfect design approval software.
#13. Miro
- Price: Free.
- Best for: Brainstorming
Miro is a digital whiteboard tool ideal for idea generation for social media content. To plan and arrange your thoughts in one place, create mind maps, task lists, flowcharts, and mockups.
Best features:
- Large work area for intricate or substantial content creation initiatives
- Integrated planning resources, like task delegation and calendars
- Templates that improve the efficiency of social media content planning
- A drag-and-drop interface that is easy to use
- Visually arrange social media material
It is one of the best content production tools for team brainstorming and post-planning. Social media creators and teams that value collaboration should use it the most.
#14. Easil
- Price: Free.
- Best for: Graphic design.
Easil is an easy-to-use design tool with a focus on producing eye-catching visuals for social networking. It offers multiple customization possibilities, drag-and-drop capability, and pre-designed layouts.
Best features:
- A user-friendly layout with intuitive features
- Large collection of design elements and templates
- Features that promote collaboration in team projects
- Connectivity with widely used social media networks
This tool is for small businesses, bloggers, and social media managers who wish to swiftly and simply generate aesthetically pleasing graphics.
#15. Crello
- Price: Free.
- Best for: Graphic design.
Crello is an online graphic design tool that provides a selection of templates and design elements for creating content for social networking platforms. It offers basic editing capabilities and an easy-to-use interface.
Best features:
- Large library of design elements and templates
- User-friendly interface with drag-and-drop capabilities
- Features that promote collaboration in team projects
- Connectivity with widely used social media networks
This tool is for small businesses, bloggers, and individuals looking for an easy and affordable way to create social media graphics.
#16. Over
- Price: Free.
- Best for: Creating templates.
Over is a smartphone app that lets users edit and produce visual material right from their phones. It provides an extensive range of design elements, typefaces, and templates. For people and social media managers looking for a portable way to create and share content while on the go, Over is a good option.
Best features:
- Mobile-friendly interface for on-the-go content creation
- Extensive library of templates and design assets
- Social media scheduling and publishing features
- Collaboration features for team projects
#17. InVideo
InVideo is an online application for creating and editing videos that comes with several pre-made themes, design components, and customization choices. With it, users may produce polished films for social media. Content producers, marketers, and companies looking to produce professional films for their social media platforms can use InVideo.
Best features:
- Large collection of stock footage, templates, and design elements
- Interface that is easy to use and has drag-and-drop capabilities
- Features that promote collaboration in team projects
- Connectivity with widely used social media networks
How Do You Create Content On Social Media?
#1. Carry Out Your Research.
The first step in any good procedure is research. You must ascertain the kind of material that appeals to your audience or potential target audience before you can begin producing it.
You can begin with your social media analytics if you already have a sizable following on several social media platforms. These will assist you in comprehending what is now effective for you so that you might emulate this achievement.
However, societal trends change quickly, so you must learn a lot about your industry and what people are talking about when they mention your company on social media by engaging in social listening.
Lastly, pay attention to popular music, topics, and hashtags. You shouldn’t follow every trend, just pick the useful ones that could increase audience engagement and reach.
#2. Set Specific Goals.
Next, you may start establishing objectives for your social media content. Are you attempting to promote your vlog to viewers? Do you want to expand your fan base or generate revenue with social media marketing?
The type of content you create depends on your goals. If you are writing a post to increase brand awareness and engagement, for example, your call to action will be very different from that of a sales piece.
Utilizing the SMART goal-setting framework to help you define your goals more precisely is a smart move. This compels you to carefully consider what you can do with your social media material and how you can reach your desired goals.
Read Also: SMART PR Goals: Examples & All You Need
#3. Have A Brainstorming Session.
Regardless of the size of your team, you should take some time to write down some thoughts on the whiteboard.
This is the time for “no bad ideas.” Every member of your team has distinct social media experiences, both personally and professionally, which will influence their expectations and suggestions for content. All of that knowledge enters your common brain when it is openly shared by all, and it can develop into excellent social media campaigns.
#4. Assign Roles
It’s also necessary to establish a strong approval procedure for social media posts so that everyone knows how their contributions fit into the bigger picture and how missing deadlines can affect the team as a whole.
Additionally, you can consider whether you would like to hire freelance writers or designers to handle some of the digital content generation tasks.
Read Also: SMART PR Goals: Examples & All You Need
#5. Build A Content Calendar.
To optimize your digital content creation efforts, you can organize your content mix across social platforms with the use of a social media content calendar.
A content calendar will assist you in organizing how to use content resources across your social accounts. We have developed a content calendar template. Note that your continuous content requirements should be included in your content schedule.
Here’s how you can use our free template to build up your content calendar.
#6. Schedule Your Content.
It’s time to prepare your content for publication when you’ve completed your content calendar. Yes, you could manually post each message at the designated time, but that would take a lot of effort and increase the likelihood of making basic errors like typos and broken links.
By planning ahead, you can see your content strategy in real-time and have more time to review every element. By combining the time you spend generating material into a single block rather than requiring you to take breaks throughout the day, it also streamlines your process.
#7. Create A Content Library.
Every social media post doesn’t have to be made from scratch. You can use any popular social media post as a template for other posts in the future. Whether the photos are produced internally or obtained from a royalty-free source, you can also include authorized images in your content library.
Additionally, you’ll have more alternatives for producing fresh social media material without having to start from scratch as your content library expands.
#8. Analyze Your Results.
This is where you examine your outcomes to determine what worked and what didn’t, then utilize the information to inform your future planning and research.
What Are Content Creation AI Tools for Social Media?
AI content creation tools create a variety of content, including blog entries, social network postings, product descriptions, and articles, using artificial intelligence methods and technology.
With merely a prompt, AI-powered social media content creation tools can create posts and produce captions, hashtags, memes, carousels, reels, and videos.
What Is the Best Platform to Be a Content Creator?
YouTube is the best platform for content creators. A typical YouTuber should anticipate making about $0.018 per view, or about $18 for every 1,000 ad views on their videos, based on YouTube’s channel monetization policies and guidelines.
Read more on How to Be a Content Creator That Brands Are Desperate to Hire
What Is the Highest-Paying Social Media Platform for Content Creators?
Studies have shown that TikTok is the most lucrative social media platform, with YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram coming in order of preference.
Which Is the Best Tool for Social Media Content Ideas?
One of the best resources for social media content inspiration is Google Trends, which provides information on the most popular search terms and suggests content ideas that are currently trending.
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The Ultimate Guide to Building a High-Performance Content Creation Workflow
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