I have to say, the best content marketing tools I’ve used this year are the same ones I’ve used consistently for several years. Most offered great updates for the year, but by and large, they have always been reliable—and essential—tools for any content marketer. Here are my top four content marketing tools.

1. Canva

Remember that content marketing is as much about creative, eye-catching visuals as it‘s about written content. This is what makes Canva such a critical part of your overall tool kit. Canva makes it easy for me to create accompanying visuals to my posts, or design social media graphics, or create great ads—even videos and audio content.

You’d be surprised how easy it is to create something using Canva’s numerous templates. A lot of them are also free to use. If you want more selection and access to better images, you can simply subscribe for the Pro version.

2. Grammarly

It’s hard to imagine a time when we would create our content without Grammarly to rely on. Grammarly has long been my choice to make sure all my content is grammatically correct, spell checked, and perfectly copy edited. It even helps clean my sentences up to ensure they aren’t too wordy and fit my desired writing tone and style.

Again, there’s a free version that gives you access to basic copy editing. If that’s all you need, the free version should work well enough for you. A full subscription is worth it—any content you publish will ultimately reflect on your business, so you really want to avoid typos and grammar errors.

3. Sharethrough

Sharethrough is a pretty straightforward tool that allows you to test and score your headlines. Remember that your headlines are the first thing that your audience sees. That means they have to be attention-grabbing, informative, and interesting.

Sharethrough scores your headlines and even offers clear suggestions to help you improve them. Whether you have to add more length or details, add emotion to incite more reactions, or simply sort out your punctuation. It’s an essential tool that you should definitely try.

4. Buffer

A big part of content marketing is social media. Buffer allows me to post regularly, consistently, and across multiple channels. It’s likely you’re present on more than just one social media platform. So, to make sure that you’re regularly updating your followers on all of them, you can use Buffer to automate the whole process. Simply upload your content, schedule your posts, and you can rest assured that your social media platforms will be updated in a timely, consistent manner.

There are definitely more tools, of course, and I’ll likely be trying a lot of them. However, these four I’ve mentioned above are definitely must-haves and should be standard additions to your content marketing tool kit.

Hope my answer helps! If you have any questions, feel free to comment below or join the conversation on our Twitter or LinkedIn.