Social Media Apps You Should Be Using in 2016 (But Probably Aren’t)

 Social Media Apps You Should Be Using in 2016 (But Probably Aren’t)

The Roll

You already know the importance of visuals for your social media and content marketing, and The Roll app will help you make sure your images are the best they can be. Gizmodo explains, “With the help of an AI called EyeEm Vision, The Roll analyzes your photos, rates them on a zero to 100 scale, and adds keywords for easy search (much like Google Photos). EyeEm says it’s currently using thousands of different tags, and of course the best thing about AI is that the app is always learning, so more will likely be added as more people use the app.”

The Roll has more features than I have time to write about it here. Just do yourself a favor and check it out. Your visual content will thank you.

Download The Roll for iPhone

Tuurnt

Tuurnt is a social media app and platform following in the ephemeral footsteps of Snapchat. Giving users 24 hours to respond to photos and videos, Tuurnt turns regular visual posts into social events where participation and contribution from both known contacts and public users is encouraged. As the creators share, “Gone are the days of one-way viewing only of other people’s video. With Tuurnt, everyone can join in and create a memorable conversation using videos and images.“

Download Tuurnt for iPhone

Storehouse

Both storytelling and visual media are key components of any content marketing plan, and the Storehouse app allows you to marry these two in the most aesthetically pleasing way possible. The app allows you to take photos and videos from your phone’s camera roll (or from Instagram, Flickr, and Dropbox) to create a shareable “story.” TechCrunch named Storehouse “The Best Mobile Application” in 2015, and declared “It features one of the best visual editing interfaces I’ve ever used and a crisp, standout presentation style.”

Download Storehouse for iPhone

Download Storehouse for Android

Yubl

Yubl is a start-up based out of the United Kingdom which promises to be the “next-generation social networking and messaging platform.” Just 10 weeks after launch, Yubl became the fourth most downloaded free app in the U.K., surpassing Skype, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Periscope.

Yubl’s success can be attributed to not only the highly detailed interface, but the three main areas of the user experience. “Private” is for one-on-one or invite-only group, ‘Public’ is an open forum across the entire social network (including brands and celebrities), and ‘Explore’ is for searching and finding other users such as brands and celebrities.

Download Yubl for iPhone

Download Yubl for Android

Rex

With at least 84 percent of consumers taking advice from the recommendations of family, friends, and online users, the power of word-of-mouth marketing is obvious. Rex is an app that takes this idea in order to “be the easiest way to connect with friends to share your favorite movies, music, books, TV shows, videos, restaurants, bars, travel destinations, and anything else you like.” You can read and share recommendations with your network, save recommendations, look at what’s trending in your network, look at recommendations on a map view, and much more.  

Download Rex for iPhone

Firef.ly

One of the most popular genres of content shared on social media is that of travel and exploration. While not primarily a social media app, Firef.ly rests on the belief that travel “experiences should be recommended, captured, and shared.”  The app helps you plan your trips, acts as a guide, encourages you to capture moments along the way, and then ‘relive’ your experiences. If you’re travel-mad, an aspirational planner, or a business in the travel and tourism industry, Firef.ly is definitely an app you’ll want to check out.

Download Firef.ly for iPhone

Venmo

Is there anything more social than four people sitting around a restaurant table trying to frantically calculate how much money each person owes for the bill? To make this social interaction much more bearable, the Venmo app allows users to send and receive money free of charge, transfer to your bank, and checkout on other apps with just one touch. Forbes has called Venmo “the crown jewel of all finance apps,” so if this isn’t one of the apps you’re currently using it might be time to get rid of that cheque book and see the Venmo light.

Download Venmo for iPhone

Download Venmo for Android

Interact

If you’re overwhelmed by the number of contacts you have on your phone, or just need an easier way to manage them, the app Interact can help you out. According to their site, Interact lets you:

• Create, delete, and manage contact groups for easy, quick communication with teams, friends, and family.
• Edit, delete, and manage contacts much faster than with built-in iOS tools.
• Arrange the default ordering of email, phone, and other details to fit your needs.
• Use your contacts with a growing list of third-party apps for messaging, mapping, and other tasks previously not possible on iOS.
• Interact supports contacts local on your device or synced with iCloud, Google, and other services.

Download Interact for iPhone

Quik

2016 is the year of video, and GoPro has developed two apps to make integrating video into your content strategy as easy as possible. While GoPro’s Splice app has highly detailed controls and video editing processes, Quik allows users to create stylized videos with just a few taps on their mobile devices. You can select from multiple videos on your camera roll in your phone, pick music, and then the app will automatically edit the video to the beat of the music. It also intuitively uses algorithms to find the best moments in each video and then adds effects over that.

Once your video is done, you can post directly to your social media accounts through Quik. The Verge highlights another innovative feature of the app, saying, “If that stillsounds like too much work, Quik also scans your phone’s videos and presents you with an automatically edited highlight video every week.”

Download Quik for iPhone

Download Quik for Android

Pushbullet

A big part of staying ahead of your social media and general social interactions is being able to access them from anywhere. While mobile is obviously great for this, there are moments where you can’t be on your phone (cough, meetings, cough). This is where Pushbullet comes in.

The app bridges the gap between your phone and computer, and, as Gizmodo explains, “automatically sends all your phone notifications over to your computer in the form of little windows. Not only that, you can take actions on them with a click. Snooze alarms, archive emails, dismiss Facebook alerts, or just mute certain types of notifications so you never see them on your computer again.”

While not a brand new app, Pushbullet has consistently been introducing new features that have established it as a must-have for most smartphone users.

Download Pushbullet for iPhone

Download Pushbullet for Android

While just a handful of the helpful apps available to make your life easier, the above tools are ones that you definitely won’t regret adding to your roster

How to Increase Your Twitter Follower Count

Ah, Twitter: Everyone’s favorite character-count taskmaster. If you’ve been using this most confining of social networks for any length of time, you’ve likely mastered some tricks to fit powerful messages into 140 characters or less.

With all that mental energy going into trimming your Tweets to acceptable size, you may be neglecting another part of your Twitter presence that requires some linguistic gymnastics: your Twitter bio. If you haven’t spent much time thinking up Twitter bio ideas, consider that your bio is indexed by search engines, making it a highly visible first point of contact for potential new followers both within and outside of the social network.

The good news is that you get more than 140 characters to craft your Twitter bio. The bad new is that you only get 160. With that in mind, let’s look at some key Twitter bio ideas to maximize the impact of that short burst of information all about you.

Bonus: Download the free strategy guide that reveals how Hootsuite grew our Twitter following to over 7 million users and learn how you can put the tactics to work for your business.

What’s included in your Twitter profile

Fortunately, your Twitter profile includes a few additional bits of information that don’t count towards the 160 characters of your bio.

Name

This is pretty straightforward—your name or the name of your business. Make it easy for potential followers to find you by using the name you’re most commonly known by and keep it consistent across your social channels.

Character count: 20

Username

Also known as your Twitter handle, this is your identity on Twitter. For a business account, you’ll likely want to stick with your business name, but you can get a little more creative with a personal account. This is your primary identity on Twitter, so choose carefully!

Character count: 15

Location

If you’re based in a single physical location, this is where you can show your neighborhood pride and give potential followers some context for your Tweets. Keep in mind, though, that you’re not limited to a real-life location in this field. You could use a location like “Worldwide,” or even include your phone number in the location field, like JetBlue does in the example below.

Character count: 30

Image via JetBlue Airways on Twitter.

Website                                                                                                                

Where do you want to send Twitter followers to learn more? This can be your homepage, but you might want to consider a landing page specifically for Twitter followers or a link to a specific campaign. Try using a URL shortener with a tracking code to get real-time statistics on visitors from Twitter.

Character count: 100

How to write a good Twitter bio: ideas and inspiration

Now that you’ve got the other elements of your Twitter profile sorted out, let’s dig into those 160 precious characters of the bio itself.

Showcase who you are and what you do

Sure, you’ve probably seen plenty of cute and clever celebrity bios.

Image via Jimmy Kimmel on Twitter.

But the truth is, you’re not Jimmy Kimmel. While the language in your Twitter bio can certainly be playful if that fits with your brand personality, it’s important that a potential follower who reads your Twitter bio comes away with a clear understanding of what your brand is all about.

Even if you’ve never heard of Blinkist, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what the company does after reading their Twitter bio.

Image via Blinkist on Twitter.

Like Blinkist, you should include a short description of your business—a micro-version of your elevator pitch. With the remainder of your 160-character allotment, you can include your brand slogan, and even add a branded hashtag that encourages followers to share brand experiences and allows you to collect user-generated content that further highlights what your brand is all about.

Convey personality

Social media should be just that: social. A dry, boring Twitter bio is not going to create the kinds of social relationships that allow a brand to thrive in the social sphere. You can get especially creative here if you have a well-known slogan that sums up your brand, like Frank’s RedHot.

Image via Frank’s RedHot on Twitter.

The slogan encapsulates the brand image and will instantly bring to mind ads that potential followers have seen on other media channels, creating immediate interest and recognition.

Target your ideal audience with keywords

You already know that your Twitter bio shows up in search engine results, which is reason enough to think about the best keywords to include. Keep in mind that your bio is also searchable within the platform itself, so the keywords in your bio will help determine when you show up in Twitter searches.

Image via Hootsuite on Twitter.

You can use tools like SEMRush and Google’s keyword tool to determine what keywords might be a good fit for your business on Twitter.

Include a call to action

Your Twitter bio is more than pure information—it’s a marketing communications tool. And like any good marketing piece, it should include a call to action (CTA). When brainstorming Twitter bio ideas, think about what you want visitors to your Twitter profile to do: Visit your website? Create user-generated content showcasing their brand experiences? Simply follow your account? Let them know by including a clear, short CTA in your Twitter bio.

Visit Britain closes with a simple CTA that includes a motivation for visitors to follow through: “Share your Great British stories and pics using #LoveGreatBritain and we’ll RT!”

Image via VisitBritain on Twitter.

Get creative

Twitter doesn’t allow for any formatting like line breaks, bolded text, or centering in your bio, but there are a few tricks to giving those 160 characters a little more punch.

Add an extra link

You saw above that your Twitter profile has a specific spot for your website that doesn’t count against the 160 characters of your Twitter bio. But what if one link isn’t enough? Say, for example, you want to link to both your main website and the landing page for a specific campaign or offer. Fortunately, you can include a second link within the body of your Twitter bio—and the bonus is that is that it makes your bio visually pop since the link appears in a different color.

Virgin America, for example, includes links to their blog and customer support pages within their Twitter bio.

Image via Virgin America on Twitter.

To create a functional link outside of Twitter, make sure you include the http://.

Include other Twitter accounts or hashtags

You can also link to another Twitter account or a Twitter hashtag. Twitter handles and hashtags included in your bio are automatically clickable and appear in the link color. This is handy if, say, you have multiple Twitter accounts for brand messaging, customer service, and so on.

Image via Old Navy on Twitter.

Include an emoji (if appropriate)

Since the full range of emoji only recently became available for Twitter bios, the playful symbols have not (yet) taken over Twitter like they have some other social networks. Still, a strategic emoji may be an appropriate way to save characters in your bio or simply make it look more visually appealing. Use this strategy selectively, though, as emoji are not appropriate for all brands’ Twitter bios.

 Follow

Twitter Support 

✔@Support

ICYMI: You can now use the full range of emoji to spice up your name and bio on your Twitter profile!  

1:24 AM - 23 Aug 2016

 
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With all of these Twitter bio ideas in mind, you’re set to make the most of each of the 160 characters your Twitter bio has to offer. Then, you’re ready to take on the Twittersphere and start engaging new followers. For more strategies to improve your Twitter marketing, check out our full Twitter marketing guide.

Guide To Tracking Social Media In Google Analytics

Imagen de Blue Fountain Media bajo licencia CC BY 2.0

Your website is the cornerstone of your business’ online presence. Alongside your website is its helpful sister, social media. Your social media and website presence should be integrated with one another in order to continuously drive traffic to your online assets. And with social media driving traffic to your site, the next step is measuring your efforts so you can improve. As always, this is where Google Analytics comes handy.

Google Analytics provides you with data to see where your website visitors come from and understand your visitors’ behavior on your site. Additionally, when you setup your Google Analytics account to track and measure your social media initiatives, you’ll then be able to adequately prove the ROI of social media for your business.

To get you started, we’ve put together this guide to tracking social media in Google Analytics in 6 easy steps.
Step 1: Create social media objectives and goals for your website

Before you can begin tracking your social media initiatives in Google Analytics you need to create social media objectives and goals. These objectives and goals should be part of your overall social media marketing plan and should be aligned with your broader marketing and business strategy. If your objective is to use social media to increase website traffic, then create S.M.A.R.T. goals that will help you achieve that objective.



For example: To increase website traffic by 15% in Q2, 100 Tweets a month will be dedicated to driving traffic to the website.
Step 2: Sign up for Google Analytics

This step is extremely important if you want to track social media in Google Analytics. It’s important that you have a Google Analytics account to access your website traffic reports. Create a new Google Analytics account, if you don’t have one. Visit google.com/analytics, click Sign in to Google Analytics or Create an account button on the top right hand corner, and follow the on-screen instructions.


Step 3: Setup your Google Analytics tracking code

In order to gather website data from Google Analytics you need to first setup your tracking code. There are two ways to collect page tracking data: Google Tag Manageror by adding the tracking code directly to your site.

1) Google Tag Manager

This approach is recommended because using Google Tag Manager simplifies tag management on your site. It makes it easier to add other tags, such as AdWords Conversion Tracking and remarketing tags, to your site and configure Google Analytics tracking. Follow the steps in the video below to setup Google Tag Manager.



2) Adding the tracking code directly to your site

In order to do this you first must have access to your website’s source code and be comfortable editing HTML.

To set up the web tracking code:
Sign in to your Google Analytics account, select the Admin tab. From the Account and property columns, select the property you’re working with. Click Tracking Info > Tracking code.


Copy the snippet. It starts with <script> and ends with </script>. Make sure to not reuse the same tracking code snippet on multiple domains.
Paste your snippet into every webpage you want to track, and paste it before the closing </head> tag.
Check your setup to make sure the code shown in Google Analytics is the same that is on your website’s source code.
Step 4: Setup Google Analytics Goals

Tracking the true effectiveness of social media for your business goes beyond pageviews and visits. Finding out if social media actually helps your business is more important if you’re trying to prove the ROI of social media. Knowing important metrics like: product sign ups, leads, downloads, and newsletter signups, will help you solidify the importance of social media for your business.

To create Goals follow these steps by Google Analytics.
Step 5: Understanding Social Analytics Reports

There are 8 Social Analytics reports available in Google Analytics. These reports will help you understand the impact and effectiveness of your social media initiatives. You can find these reports under the Reporting tab > Acquisition > Social.



1) Overview report

This report allows you to see a glance into how much conversion value is generated from social channels. The social value graph compares the number and monetary value of all goal completions versus those that are from social referrals.



2) Network referrals

This report will provide you with engagement metrics for traffic from each social network. It will show you which social networks referred the highest quality traffic.

3) Data Hub Activity

The Data Hub Activity report shows you how people are talking about and engaging with your site content on social networks. You’ll be able to see the most recent URLs people shared, how they shared it, and what they said.



4) Landing pages

This report allows you to see engagement metrics for each URL. Each URL will show you the originating social networks for that URL.



5) Trackbacks

In this report you’ll be able to know which sites are linking to your content, and in which context. You can use this data to replicate successful content and build relationships with those who frequently link to your site.



6) Conversions

This report is the report where you can really quantify the value of social media for your business. The Conversions report will show the total number of conversions and the monetary value of conversions that occurred as a result of referrals from each network. Note: Step 4 must be completed in order for this report to be populated with data.



7) Plugins

If you have social share buttons on your site it’s important to understand which buttons are being clicked on and for which content. This report provides you with the data necessary to know which articles are most commonly shared, and from which social networks they’re being shared on.



8) Users flow

The Users Flow reports shows the initial paths that users from social networks took through your site. If you run campaigns that promote specific products, you can see whether users from each social network entered your site through a product page and whether or not they continued to other parts of your website.


Step 6: Reporting on the data from these reports

Now that you have the data that you need to showcase how your social media initiatives is driving traffic to your website; compile the necessary data and present it to your boss in either a PowerPoint or Google Presentation. Make sure to only include the data that aligns back to the goals you initially created in Step 1. Your presentation should include graphs and 2-3 sentences explaining what each graph means to your business.

For example, if you want to show how social media is doing in driving traffic to your website you can create a graph that compares it to other source channels, like the graph below, then talk about how owned and organic social channels are driving the most traffic to your website.



We hope this 6 step guide to tracking social media in Google Analytics helps gets you started on the right track to proving social media ROI. Just remember to always be: tracking, measuring, analyzing, and improving, in order to constantly improve your business’s online assets.

Useful and Free Windows 10 Applications

Windows 10 is bundled with useful applications and utilities that many users are not aware of. Below are 10 useful applications that you can launch from the Windows main menu. To launch an application, click the Windows Key / Logo (located on both sides of the spacebar near the Alt key) and start typing the application name. When the application name appears, click on its icon. If you would like to create a shortcut on your desktop for future access, click on the icon and hold the click, and drag the icon with your mouse to your desktop.

Sticky Notes

Sticky Notes allows you to make notes using Post-it note-like windows on your desktop. It is a very simple program. You can type text, change colors of the note, add a new note and delete the note. Until you delete the note (trash can on right corner of note), it will remain on your desktop / taskbar including the next time you restart your computer.

Notepad

Notepad is a basic text editor that you can use to create simple documents. The most common use for Notepad is to view or edit text (.txt) files. Because Notepad supports only very basic formatting, you cannot accidentally save special formatting in documents that need to remain pure text. I personally use notepad to prepare short texts that I copy and paste into social network postings and comments. You can also create useful lists, save them and then create a convenient shortcut on your desktop to access them.

Wordpad

WordPad allows you to create more complex documents, giving you most of the capability of a word processor. You can change the font for the entire document or just a word within it. With the click of a button, you can insert bullets into text or align a paragraph to the right or left. All of this formatting is saved with your document, so no matter who opens it, it will appear as you created it. Wordpad can open plain text files (.txt), Word (.doc, .docx), Office Open (.xml) and Rich Text Format (.rtf) documents. If you need to create short documents and you do not need the functionality of a full word processor (like Micosoft Word or DavkaWriter) Wordpad will do the job. Wordpad launches much faster and is easier to use than Word. If you need to send a formatted document to other users (including non-Windows users), I recommend that you save the document as a Rich Text File (choose the .rtf save as option). If you pasted images into your document, save them as RTF files.

Character Map

Character Map is a utility to view the characters in any installed font, and to copy characters to the clipboard in lieu of typing them. After you copy the character to the clipboard, you can paste them (ctrl + V) into Wordpad or any wordprocessor. The program is very useful for reviewing all the unique characters in the Wingding fonts (Wingdings, Wingdings 2, Wingdings 3).

MS PAINT

Microsoft Paint is a graphics program that enables you to create and edit picture files. Paint creates files using the Bitmap format, which uses the BMP file extension. This format uses a range of colors and bits. In contrast, draw programs use vector graphics (object-oriented images), which scale better. MS Paint can also open and save files in the GIF, TIFF and JPEG formats. The various drawing tools in the program include: the paint bucket, pencil, spray can, eraser, line and curved line tools, multiple shape tools, text tool, cutout tool. Many digital artists or editors prefer programs like Photoshop, but many on a tighter budget or with less time on their hands, use Paint. I use Paint for creating drawings, flyers, and for adding text, lines and shapes to my photos. There are many free Youtube tutorials to learn about the many features of MS Paint

Snipping Tool

Snipping Tool is a screenshot utility. It can take screenshots of an open window, rectangular areas, a free-form area, or the entire screen. There is a "delay" function, which allows for timed capture of screenshots. The Snipping Tool editor allows you to edit and annotate the screenshot. You can draw on the image using the "Pen" or "highlighter" tools (including different colors). The images can be saved as PNG, GIF, JPG or MHT files. You can select and copy the image to the Windows clipboard (ctrl + C) and paste it (ctrl + V) into your Word processor and even the free Wordpad program listed above.

Calculator

Calculator is a simple yet powerful calculator that includes standard, scientific, and programmer modes, as well as a unit converter. You can add up a bill, convert measurements in a recipe, complete complex math, algebra, or geometry problems. There is a history function that makes it easy to confirm if you've entered all you numbers correctly.

Alarms and Clock

The alarm program is similar to alarm/time applications on your smart phone. In addition to alarms, the application has a world clock, timer and stopwatch functions.

Calendar

The Windows 10 calendar application can connect to Outlook.com calendars and Exchange calendars, Google and Apple iCloud calendars. There are day, work week, week, month, and today views for viewing your events. It also works with live tiles, giving you a quick view of your upcoming events. You can also use the calendar independently and you do not need a Microsoft account (even if you are prompted for one). The application lets you switch to alternate calendars including Lunar and Hebrew options. To access these two options, click on the calendar settings, enable alternate calendars, and choose Hebrew Lunar and/or Hebrew text.

Microsoft Solitaire Collection

With Windows 10, the Microsoft Solitaire Collection is now installed by default. It is free but with ads. There is a fee if you want to remove the ads. The card games are nice but I prefer online word games like Mattel Scrabble and Lexulous. If you play Lexulous via Facebook and your stats are close to mine, I am always open to a good game.

Say Think You Can’t Write: Writing Resources for Non-Writers

Can you draw? When asked this question, most people scoff and answer a definitive “no.” However, take a pencil, connect it to paper, and leave a mark. You have drawn. Writing is a skill much like drawing in this sense. Many believe that they simply cannot write, or that they aren’t a “writer,” when the truth is that they really just believe they are not a good writer.

For content marketers, writing is obviously an integral component to most, if not all, aspects of the job. Everything from drafting blog posts to crafting the perfect video script requires the ability to write. While of course the act of stringing words together to form sentences can satisfy the basic requirements, writing is a skill that with time, dedication, and a desire to improve, can be mastered to an exceptional level. Just like the perfect set of graphite pencils helps with  drawing, there are numerous tools available to help you improve your chances of writing success. The following resources will help those of you who don’t consider yourselves writers (yet!) create enviable content that just begs to be shared.

Book it

An integral part of the writing process is inspiration, and the top source of inspiration for any writer is reading. As Stephen King said, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” Just as you schedule yourself time for other career development and education purposes, make room in your calendar for the time to read. As content strategist Mike Hanski shares in his Huffington Post article,reading can help you become a better writer. When you read you:

• Find inspiration
• Gain new knowledge
• Learn your genre better
• Expand your vocabulary for your own works
• Understand language better
• Learn from real gurus of writing
• Reveal the secrets of this job in practice

Two books that I have personally found not only to help the technical aspects of my writing, but which have breathed new life into my passion for the craft, are:

Everybody Writes

If you are in content marketing, Ann Handley’s Everybody Writes is a must-read. With every sentence in this writing guide worthy of repetition and consideration, Handley provides a thorough and approachable guide that proves that yes, everybody can write. She nails it on the head for content marketers who insist they can’t write with thefollowing passage:

“Good writing can be learned—the way trigonometry or algebra or balancing a balance sheet is a skill most of us can master. In an essay at the Neiman Journalism Lab, ‘How I Faced My Fears and Learned to Be Good at Math,’ Matt Waite writes: ‘The difference between good at math and bad at math is hard work. It’s trying. It’s trying hard. It’s trying harder than you’ve ever tried before. That’s it.’”

Bird by Bird

Whether writing a blog post on social media strategy, or the great american novel, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird provides a narrative on the writing process from beginning to end. One of the biggest assets of any content marketer is creativity, and Lamott offers insight into ways anybody, natural born writer or not, can foster this into their writing.Lamott declares that “writing is nothing more nor less than a sensemaking mechanism for life,” which most likely relates to the core principles of your content marketing strategy. You aim for clear, easily digestible, but memorable writing, and Bird by Birdwill help guide you along this path.

Blog busters

It’s safe to say that one of the key parts of your content marketing strategy is most likely a blog. As Social Media Examiner declares, “Blogs are your home base; they are the center of your content marketing system. Whether you’re a small business or a Fortune 100 company, blogs should be at the heart of your content marketing because blogsfuel social media, search optimization, and the sales process.”

However, blogging obviously requires a certain level of writing prowess, so if you consider yourself a non-writer you might feel like you need some help in creating quality content. Thankfully, the following resources are available to guide you through the blog writing process painlessly.

Portent’s Content Idea Generator

The first step in writing a blog post is, of course, coming up with a topic to write about. While reading, brainstorms, and other organization’s content can act as great inspiration for your ideas, if you feel that your genius well has temporarily dried up, Portent’s Content Idea Generator can be a saviour. Simply enter the subject you want to write about (such as “social media”) and click the arrow submit button. This will generate ideas for blog topics, and even if none of the suggestions are exactly what you are looking for, they will offer a solid jumping off point for your writing.

Copyblogger

Called “the bible of content marketing” by VentureBeat, Copyblogger is a high-quality site that all content marketers should have bookmarked. The Copyblogger blog provides advice and guidance from top experts in the field of content marketing, which has helped them gain the title as “the most popular content marketing and writing blog on the planet.” The editors lay it out by sharing what their readers can expect from Copyblogger by understanding that:

• It’s not (just) about SEO.
• It’s not (just) about social media.
• It’s not (just) about blogging or email marketing or conversion.

“Today, it’s always a bigger picture. You need to understand all the facets of effective content marketing, and we cover the gamut, daily… for free.”

Some of our favourite posts from Copyblogger, which will help non-writers master the craft, include:

• How to immediately become a more productive (and better) writer
• Why you should always write your headline first
• The #1 conversion killer in your copy (and how to beat it)
• 10 ways to build authority as an online writer
• The amazingly simple anatomy of a meaningful marketing story
• The prepared writer’s process for creating excellent content everyday
• Master this copywriting formula to dominate any social media platform

Content Marketing Institute

The Content Marketing Institute is a comprehensive resource for all social media specialists and content marketers. The site offers tons of resources such as: career advice, research areas, event listings, training resources, a magazine, podcast, and consulting services. Looking under the “content creation” tag, you’ll find numerous articles and posts from content marketing experts offering guides on writing and general content creation. Here are a few of our favorite posts from this section of the site, but you’ll easily find countless other resources by exploring the site yourself:

• 8+ tips to create a great script for successful videos
• Improve your email content with a 7 minute workout routine
• 7 things world-class bloggers do to improve their content marketing efforts
• Why strong writing is a skill to prioritize in 2016
• Content creation: 3 steps to great marketing writing

Crew

Crew matches creatives, designers, and developers with high quality companies that require their services. As a destination for so many within the realm of content marketing, the Crew blog offers a wealth of information for such professionals. The post that solidified Crew’s position on this list is one of their most famous, entitled Write ugly: How to write 20 posts in 2 days.

This post is especially groundbreaking for those who don’t consider themselves writers, as it emphasizes the practice of writing fast, and with mistakes. Author Jory Mackay focuses on the free-writing approach as a way for writers and “non-writers” to crack through whatever is holding them back from getting words down on paper. As Mackay explains, the key principles here are:

• Just start working (and don’t stop)
• Set out a block of time to work
• Write how you think
• Follow your thoughts

In addition to this key post, Crew has a number of posts in their repertoire that will undoubtedly contribute to your writing success:

• 4 daily habits that will boost creativity
• Write your way to a better life: Why writing is for everyone
• Beyond words: How to write for readability
• 7 tricks to help you work through a creative block

Hemingway App

Hemingway App is one that I’ve discussed before, but which deserves another mention. This free tool allows you to copy and paste in a block of text, which will be evaluated in its readability. As explained on the site, “Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear.It’s like a spellchecker, but for style. It makes sure that your reader will focus on your message, not your prose.” As all content marketers definitely aim for the focus to be on the message rather than the construction of said message, the Hemingway App is an invaluable tool.

CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer

One of the most significant components of any piece of writing is the title or headline. Unfortunately, it can also one of the most difficult parts of the writing process. While eight out of 10 people will read a headline, only two out of those 10 will continue reading the actual article. Due to this, you want to ensure your headline is working for you, rather than against you, and CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer can help you do just that. To find out if your headline makes the cut, you just need to enter it in the submission box and the Headline Analyzer will give you a score based on quality, SEO, social shareability, and increased traffic potential.

Now that you have all of these resources at your fingertips, it’s time to confidently put these fingers to keyboard and write on!