Bonnie McEwan
Here is a list of free or low cost tools that I find very helpful for content marketing. These are especially useful for beginners because they are both effective and simple.
TalkWalker is a free listening tool that's a good alternative to Google Alerts. I find that it sometimes returns mentions that Google Alerts miss. More important, though, is that I try to diversify the tools I use so I don't rely too much on one corporation. This lets me be a bit less reliant on Google.
Buffer is my favorite scheduling tool. It's easy to use and has very good analytics for a free app. There is a Buffer applet that you can instal on the bookmarks toolbar of your browser. Then, when you happen across something you'd like to share on social media, just click on the applet to put it in your Buffer queue.
This app says it helps you "discover, curate and publish great content to get visibility online." It's true. Just choose your subject and let Scoop, it search recent articles on that topic. Select the ones you like best and feature them on one of the four subject boards you get for free. You'll also find good people to follow on Scoop.it and attract your own followers who like what you curate.
TweetReach is a free analytics application that measures the impact (aka 'reach') of your tweets on Twitter. Of course, there is a Pro package that gives you more robust metrics, but the free version is fine to start off with.
This is another nifty, and free, tool that helps assess the impact of your Twitter activity. The thing that makes Social Crawlytics different is that it compares your tweets with those of your competitors. This gives good clues to the kind of tweets that generate the most impact for your type of business.
Compare website traffic with SimilarWeb.com's advanced traffic estimator tool. See any website's traffic sources & uncover their online marketing strategies. (This means you can assess your site and then compare it against an assessment of your competitors' sites.) Very cool -- and it's free!
One thing, though, your site must have enough traffic for SimilarWeb to have enough data to analyze. If your site is new, wait until you build up visitors before trying SimilarWeb.
