There has been a lot of talk about robots taking over us in our respective jobs in the near future. A recent article published on the Guardian even predicted that 2029 would be the year when robots finally have the power to outsmart their makers i.e. us.
While I have no doubt that robots will be able to help us automate a lot of tasks, I believe that content creators have little to worry about. There is (I hope), at the base of it, an art form to creating compelling content that not robot can possibly replicate.
What robots – or more specifically, tools – can do is to help us make the process of content creation easier. Here are the best tools on the web that can help you to artfully craft great content on a regular basis with far more efficiency.
For putting all your research together: Feedly + Pocket
Feedly is the perfect solution for getting the latest news and content for your industry. All you need to do is to subscribe to their respective RSS feeds, and Feedly will make sure that you are constantly updated with fresh ideas for your own platform.
With so much content arriving at your doorstep, you need some way to store and tag them all for future reference. For this, Pocket will do the trick. Whenever you view something on Feedly that you find interesting, one click will send it into your Pocket app. What’s more, this list of content is visible on any device on which you install the application on – your phone, tablet, or computer.
This killer combination will ensure that you have an active storage of content ideas on the go.
For putting together a beautiful featured image or infographic: Canva or Easel.ly
When we say that “content is king”, we do mean the entire piece of content – including the featured image. The graphic at the top of the article is often neglected in favor of the words below, and we more than often simply slap on any related image we can find on Google search.
If so, we’re really missing out: research shows that 94% more total views on average are attracted by content containing compelling images than content without images. In other words, a lovely featured image could easily double your views.
If design isn’t quite your thing, no worries – Canva makes it so easy to create a beautiful image, even my grandmother could do it. Canva is a web-based drag-and-drop tool that allows you to make use of a massive repository of templates, backgrounds, and text options to create the graphic you need in an instant. Here’s an example that Jay Acunzo from Hubspot created in 60 seconds:
Looking specifically to make an infographic? Well, Easl.ly is almost literally the infographic-making version of Canva. It is also a drag-and-drop editor with a wealth of options. The best part: it has a variety of vhemes (their word for visual themes) you can make use of to whip up a quick infographic if you’re short on time.
For finding what everyone is talking about: Buzzsumo
Do you constantly find yourself being the last to know about trending topics – and by then, every other publisher in the world has already written an article about them? As content creators, it is crucial that we stay on top of the hottest topics that people are talking about on the interweb.
Unless you have an army of helpers to monitor every social media channel and blog on the planet, you’ll need a tool that helps pull all that information together and tell you what people are talking about at that moment. Buzzsumo is that tool.
I’ve talked about Buzzsumo before, and I’ll say it again: What it does is that it allows you to search for highly shared content across major social media networks related to the keywords of your choice.
