If the holidays have you plumped full with turkey tasting and Christmas carols, then chances are your marketing is getting an overdose of the jollies, too. It’s time to put your marketing plan on a diet, trim up those marketing writing skills, and refocus for the New Year. Along the lines of the giving season, here are three time saving lollipops that will put your online marketing efforts back on the right track.
Help Me Write
If you have trouble figuring out what you want to write about, or you over-think topics worrying whether readers will want to read about them, Help Me Write is right up your alley. This free site works as an app, but it does require a Twitter handle in order to use it:
- Once you’re in you get to add topics you are interested in, and people that like your idea give you a virtual thumb’s up.
- You can also check out the topics other people have suggested to see what’s popular, as you brainstorm ideas for marketing posts.
- Another way to use Help Me Write is to ask readers to submit topic ideas that they’d like you to cover.
After you have published your content on your website or blog, or a guest blog, you can also share it on Help Me Write as a way to spread your message and attract like-minded readers.
Blog Topic Generator
Sometimes you just can’t think of a new topic to write about for your marketing campaign. You are burned out or too busy to come up with something fresh. Enter the world of Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator. This cupcake lets you enter three nouns that it spins into a viable topic using an algorithm. Sure, sometimes you’ll come up with a bust, but with five blog topic suggestions at a time chances are in your favor that you’ll be able to use something. For illustration, I entered the nouns “marketing,” “writers” and “blog posts” and these are the topics the Blog Topic Generator spun together:
- 5 Tools Everyone in the Marketing Writers Industry Should be Using *now take a look at the headline of this article
- How to Solve the Biggest Problems with Blog Posts
- 7 Things About Topics Your Boss Wants to Know
- The History of Marketing Writers
- Think You’re Cut Out for Doing Blog Posts? Take This Quiz
So much fun! Plus this generator is free, as well, and there is no limit to the number of topic suggestions you can spin.
Listly
Notice how there were a few listicle topic ideas in that last section? If you are into list making, check out Listly. You will need to set up an account for this free tool. Once you’re in you are taken to a page where you set up your list formatted article. Enter the headline, and then choose from one of five layouts; note that three of the layouts require a Pro plan, which is $9.99 a month or $99 a year. For the free version you can generate:
- 1 free list a week with 10 items per day, and you get 3 free lists to start out with
- WordPress plugins are included
Setting up a list on your own can be a bugger, especially when you want to use social media sharing capabilities with each photo or listed item. Listly takes care of the tedious chores for you, and the free version should work for most marketing campaigns, as you don’t want to overload your content with spammy listicles.
Miranda B loves scoring new tools for online marketing; they make her job as a marketing writer so much more fun.
