Top 31 Content Creation Tools for Freelancers and Marketers

Which content creation tools should you use? Explore popular tools that help content producers and marketers create media: email marketing, video, music, motion graphics, presentations, blogs, infographics, podcasts, webinars, and social media.

When ClearVoice surveyed more than 1,000 marketers on their biggest challenges with content, 27 percent cited the actual production of content as their biggest challenge. Not strategy. Not getting traffic. But the actual execution. That number jumps to more than 42 percent if you include the process behind generating content.

Yes, creating content takes time, effort, and resources. And with thousands of different content tools available to marketers, you can spend just as much time, if not more, evaluating and experimenting with different tools.Content marketing takes time, effort, and resources... and great tools to get the job done! In our list of 30+ tools, we highlight the best for creating videos, webinars, podcasts, music, blogs... and so much more. #contentcreation #contentmarketing Click To Tweet

In an effort to help marketers with one of the key content strategy questions: “What tools should I use?” we have put together a list of the top creation tools that are easy to adopt, implement, and learn. These tools are also relatively cost-efficient solutions, and when used correctly and consistently, they can make a huge difference in your business — and your bottom line.

Content creation tools for email marketing:

1. Movable ink

2. BEE

3. GetResponse

4. ZenPen

5. Sender

Content creation tools for videos, motions graphics, music, and slideshows:

6. RawShorts

7. Magisto

8. SlideShare

9. Vidyard

10. YouTube Music

11. Spotify

Content creation tools for blogs:

12. WordPress

13. Sumo

14. Playbuzz

Content creation tools for infographics:

15. easel.ly

16. Animaker

17. Visme

18. Infogram

19. ThingLink

Content creation tools for producing podcasts:

20. Audacity

21. PodBean

22. Ecamm

23. SpeakPipe

24. Acast

Tools for hosting webinars:

25. GoToWebinar

26. Zoom

27. StealthSeminar

Content creation tools for social media:

28. Pablo

29. Qzzr

30. Piktochart

31. Pixabay

Content creation tools for email marketing:

1. Movable Ink

Movable Ink is a unique platform that allows brands to create and build compelling visual experiences for individual users. Movable Ink is designed with functionalities that provide unique visual experiences based on a user’s individual preferences to ensure a truly personalized experience.

For example, Movable Ink helps target creative based on a user’s real-time location, weather, time, and device. This is interactive content at work!

1. Cost: Movable Ink offers a free demo and a free trial, but does not currently offer a free subscription

2. Skill Level: Beginner to advanced users

3. Time/Effort Needed: 2-3 hours for a demo, set up, and learning the tool

4. Best For: Small to medium-sized businesses

2. BEE

BEE is your solution for creating beautiful, engaging emails. You can design a gorgeous, compelling email swiftly, thanks to the free email builder with drag-and-drop features. All you need is a message and a little creativity. The BEE plugin works seamlessly with your company’s mobile app.

1. Cost: In addition to offering free plans, BEE also offers pro plans for freelancers and small agencies at different price points. The BEE Pro plan for freelancers is $15/month and the BEE Pro plan for agencies is $25/month; BEE Pro (Agency) is $45/month. BEE also offers free trials for every plan.

2. Skill Level: Beginner to Intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: Less than an hour to design and compose an email

4. Best For: Freelancers and small- to medium-sized businesses

3. GetResponse

GetResponse gives you the tools you need to build powerful emails that look fantastic on mobile devices, tablets, laptops, or desktop computers. You can design landing pages to go with your email marketing campaigns, drawing potential clients closer and increasing conversion rates. Create automated features that coincide with your customers’ behavior, and craft webinars that offer value to your clients.

1. Cost: The Basic plan starts at $15/month; The PLUS plan starts at $49/month; and the Professional plan starts at $99/month

2. Skill Level: Beginner

3. Time/Effort Needed: Less than an hour to design and compose an email

4. Best For: Small- to medium-sized businesses

4. ZenPen

ZenPen is a simple, streamlined text editor, dubbed a “minimalist writing zone” by its makers. Its purpose is to give you an easy way to create your written email content that can then easily be ported over to an HTML-friendly format. Once you have the copy just right, you can quickly and easily copy the email-ready HTML content and paste it right into your email sending platform of choice.

1. Cost: Free

2. Skill Level: Anyone

3. Time/Effort Needed: 5 to 10 minutes to learn the HTML export function

4. Best For: Small business owners and other users

5. Sender

Sender is one of the few free email marketing tools available today. (And, yes, we really do mean free.) Sender is designed with all the tools you need to create and build email newsletters. It is easy to add copy, images, and videos. You can build emails from a template or from scratch. Sender also has a number of features that help track and improve email deliverability.

1. Cost: FREE (There are also paid plans available, which start at approximately $10/month)

2. Skill Level: Beginners to experienced content creators

3. Time/Effort Needed: Less than an hour to set up an email template

4. Best For: Freelancers and small agenciesNew to our list of #contentmarketing and content creation tools is @SenderNet, an up and coming contender in the free #emailmarketing space. We think it's great enough to put it on our list of 31 content creation tools, and think you'll like it too! Click To Tweet

Content creation tools for videos, motions graphics, music, and slideshows:

1. RawShorts

With RawShorts, making explainer videos to illustrate processes and products is swift and easy. The program features a broad variety of video templates, plus a simple drag-and-drop video builder where you can insert text, transitions, effects, images, and much more.

Once you’re finished creating the video, RawShorts makes it easy to share via social media, on a landing page, or other mediums.

1. Cost: Free limited version; packages available up to $59/month; RawShorts also offers free trials.

2. Skill Level: Beginner

3. Time/Effort Needed: 1-2 hours to create a video

4. Best For: Small- to medium-sized businesses

2. Magisto

When you need professional-quality videos at an affordable price, go to Magisto. Using normal, everyday photos and videos, you can create movies that support your message and products. Magisto offers captions, themes, special effects, custom branding, editing tools, commercially licensed music, and much more.

1. Cost: Premium version at $4.99/month; Professional version at $9.99/month; Business version at $34.99/month with an annual plan

2. Skill Level: Beginner to Intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: 1-2 hours to create a video

4. Best For: Small, medium, and large businesses

3. SlideShare

While SlideShare isn’t the most versatile tool on the market, it has the advantage of ownership by Microsoft and LinkedIn. This means that you can create PowerPoint presentations or slide decks, show infographics, documents, and other content with this tool and easily share it on LinkedIn as well as other channels.

1. Cost: Free

2. Skill Level: Beginner to Intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: 1-3 hours to build a presentation

4. Best For: Small, medium, or large businesses

4. Vidyard

Vidyard is a popular video creation tool that makes creating, recording, and sharing videos a snap. You can also see who watched your videos, for how long, and also build a little personalization into your videos for viewers. You can also easily integrate Vidyard with other marketing suites, platforms, and tools, such as HubSpot, Marketo, and LinkedIn.

1. Cost: Completely free to sign up (and it’s free forever)! There are also paid plans available, which include a Pro plan starting at $15/month, a Starter plan at $150/month, a Plus plan at $850/month, all billed annually.

2. Skill Level: Beginner to Intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: Less than 1 hour to record and share a video

4. Best For: Freelancers and Small, medium, or large businesses

5. YouTube Music

If you are looking for a tool to create and share music, YouTube Music is a great place to start. In fact, people watch one billion hours of video content every day on YouTube. So, by sharing your content on YouTube, you are already tapping into a giant audience. Not only is YouTube the go-to platform for music and video content, but it is also free to set up and use (with ads). Users can also sign up and listen to music for free, but they can also purchase an ad-free subscription.

1. Cost: Completely free to sign up; Premium subscription is $10/month

2. Skill Level: Beginner to Intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: Less than 1 hour to record and share a video

4. Best For: Freelancers and Small, medium, or large businesses

6. Spotify

Spotify is another popular application that you can use to share your music or podcasts. You can set up a Spotify for Artists account to share music, or also upload podcasts to Spotify.

1. Cost: Free

2. Skill Level: Beginner to Expert

3. Time/Effort Needed: 1-2 hours to set up and verify accounts

4. Best For: Freelancers and Small, medium, or large businesses

Content creation tools for blogs:

1. WordPress

No, you don’t have to be a coder or developer to build or post a blog with WordPress. WordPress has come a long way in terms of user-friendliness and intuitiveness, making it an easy-to-use platform to build, post, and share blog content. WordPress also offers a number of blog templates, making it super easy to get started with your blog.

Once you become a WordPress expert, you can also experiment with the many robust WordPress plug-ins that make crafting and sharing content even easier. Some plug-ins that are useful to content creators include Yoast SEO, Smush It, Easy Social Sharing, and Jetpack, just to name a few.

1. Cost: Both free and paid versions available for personal and business uses; the Personal plan begins at $4/month, billed annually; the Premium plan begins at $8/month, billed annually; and the Business plan starts at $25/month, billed annually.

2. Skill Level: Beginner to Expert

3. Time/Effort Needed: 1-2 hours to set up a blog; less than an hour to post a blog

4. Best For: Freelancers and Small, medium, or large businesses

2. Sumo

Sumo is another great tool for bloggers. It allows bloggers to add social sharing buttons, forms, and analytics to blogs. There is also a Sumo plugin available for WordPress blogs. It’s free to sign up with Sumo, but there are also paid plans available for bloggers who are looking for more robust features, such as A/B testing or more advanced templates.

1. Cost: Free; Paid plan available at $39/mth

2. Skill Level: Beginner to Intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: 1 hour for set up time

4. Best For: Freelancers and small- to medium-sized businesses

3. Playbuzz

With a little help from Playbuzz, you can create a variety of high-interest, engaging pieces of content for your blog. Predictions, tests, quizzes, games and stories can be crafted using the Playbuzz platform and then shared via its extensive social channels. Playbuzz has an audience of over three million people.

1. Cost: Free

2. Skill Level: Beginner to Intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: Under an hour to create a quiz or piece of content

4. Best For: Small- to medium-sized businesses

Content creation tools for infographics:

1. easel.ly

Sometimes, you need an image to get your point across to your customers. Simply select an attractive template from easel.ly‘s template collection, enter your data and other information, and you’ll have a fantastic, professional-looking infographic ready in just a few minutes.

1. Cost: A free version is available as well as paid versions. Easel.ly offers paid plans for students ($2/month), individuals ($4/month), and businesses ($5/month)

2. Skill Level: Beginner

3. Time/Effort Needed: Under an hour

4. Best For: Freelancers, and small- to medium-sized businesses

2. Animaker

For infographics in motion, check out Animaker, an amazing tool that provides over 100 charts, 1,000 icons, 3,000 maps, and much more to help you jump-start your video infographic.

Use Animaker to tell stories with your data, catch customers’ attention on social media, and achieve powerful marketing on a slim budget.

1. Cost: Free 2-minute video with 5 exports per month in SD and limited options, additional packages range from $19/month to $39/month (billed annually)

2. Skill Level: Beginner to Intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: Under an hour

4. Best For: Small- to medium-sized businesses

3. Visme

Visme stands out from the crowd of visual storytelling tools with its unique user-influenced style. Thanks to Visme, you can create graphics that move when the viewer scrolls down or mouses over them. Use the available widgets, beautifully crafted templates, icons and other tools to create professional-level motion graphics that engage and inform your customers.

1. Cost: The basic, individual package is free; the standard individual package is $14/month; and the individual Complete package at starts at $25/month. There are also plans available for businesses.

2. Skill Level: Beginner to intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: Under an hour

4. Best For: Small- to medium-sized businesses

4. Infogram

With Infogram’s wide range of templates and customization options, including interactive maps, you’ll be well on your way to publishing noteworthy infographics as part of your content marketing strategy. Infogram is being used by well-known organizations like Symantec, NerdWallet, Goodyear, LinkedIn, and EuroNews.

1. Cost: Infogram offers a wide range of packages and pricing options, from a free plan and up to $149/month for businesses. Enterprise package options are also available.

2. Skill Level: Beginner to intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: Under an hour

4. Best For: Small- to medium-sized businesses

5. ThingLink

With ThingLink technology and tools, you can craft creative and professional designer-level graphics that show extra content or text when your customers hover over the icons. ThingLink is a quick, easy one-stop-shop if you’re interested in clickable or hoverable graphics — and as an exciting bonus, this provider can enable interactive 360-degree or virtual reality (VR) content as well.

1. Cost: Basic package free, Pro package $25/month; Premium package $125/month. There are also different pricing plans available for businesses, educational institutions, and nonprofits.

2. Skill Level: Beginner to intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: Under an hour

4. Best For: Small- to medium-sized businesses, educational institutions, and nonprofits

See more top tools for visual storytelling.

Content creation tools for producing podcasts:

1. Audacity

According to the Audacity team, their product is “free, open source, cross-platform audio software for multi-track recording and editing.” This is a favorite tool for any expertise level, whether you are just learning to create a podcast or have been at it for some time. Thanks to the hard work of the Audacity team, the software continues to improve, with support for the most current browsers and operating systems.

1. Cost: Free

2. Skill Level: Beginner

3. Time/Effort Needed: Under an hour to publish a podcast

4. Best For: Small, medium, or large businesses

2. PodBean

PodBean isn’t just about creating and editing your podcasts — it provides hosting services as well. The prices are very low, and the service is good. With PodBean, you’ll receive access to podcast themes, your own podcast site and domain, custom designs, ample bandwidth, priority support, and other coveted features.

1. Cost: Basic plan is free; Unlimited Audio at $9/month, Unlimited Video at $29/month, Business version at $99/month

2. Skill Level: Beginner to Intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: Under an hour to publish a podcast

4. Best For: Small- to medium-sized businesses

3. Ecamm

Are you planning to do an interview or an important call over Skype, Facebook, or a similar calling service? With Ecamm, you can record that session directly to your Mac computer and use it as a podcast later. This platform is designed specifically for Apple computers and related devices like iGlasses.

1. Cost: Call recorders and other products priced separately

2. Skill Level: Beginner to intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: Depends on the product purchased and length of the call recorded

4. Best For: Small- to medium-sized businesses

4. SpeakPipe

Thanks to SpeakPipe, your podcast listeners can leave voice messages for you through your website. Testimonials, questions, feedback — it all becomes easier to collect and review when you’re using SpeakPipe. Your service includes a SpeakPipe button or custom button, plus a separate hosted voicemail page.

1. Cost: Bronze version at $8/month, Gold version at $12/month, Premium version at $36/month (if paid annually)

2. Skill Level: Beginner to intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: Setup takes 1-2 hours for widget customization and installation

4. Best For: Small- to medium-sized businesses

5. Acast

Acast, formerly known as Pippa, is an incredibly easy podcast tool to use, especially if you are brand new to podcasts or have never recorded one before. Simply record your podcast, create a “show,” upload your file, and share. Acast also offers free transcription services.

1. Cost: Basic plan is free; The Influencer plan is $14.99/month; and the Ace plan is $29.99/month, billed annually.

2. Skill Level: Beginner to intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: Less than one 1 hour to set up and upload your first podcast

4. Best For: Independent content creators, solopreneurs, and small businesses

Tools for hosting webinars:

1. GoToWebinar

Part of the popular GoToMeeting family of services, GoToWebinar is the most widely used webinar platform currently available. From practice settings and email automation to custom branding and mobile support, GoToWebinar provides everything you need for your webinar and more.

1. Cost: Packages and pricing varies between $49/month up to $399/month for enterprises, billed annually. Each subscription now includes a GoToMeeting subscription.

2. Skill Level: Beginner to intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: 1-3 hours of planning and setup, plus webinar running time

4. Best For: Small, medium or large businesses

2. Zoom

If the GoToWebinar prices are out of your reach, investigate Zoom instead. A Zoom webinar can handle up to 100 participants and an unlimited audience size. A broad range of packages are available depending on your needs, and you’ll have access to cutting-edge features like one-click HD screen sharing, dual-screen support, post-webinar reports, and integration with CRM and marketing automation systems.

1. Cost: Basic plan is free, Pro plan at $14.99/month; Business plan at $19.99/month; Enterprise plan at $19.99/month per host with a minimum of 100 hosts

2. Skill Level: Beginner, intermediate, or expert

3. Time/Effort Needed: 1-3 hours of planning and setup, plus webinar running time

4. Best For: Small, medium or large businesses

3. StealthSeminar

StealthSeminar provides a “free webinar school” to help new webinar creators learn the basics of webinars and discover how to plan a high conversation webinar for their business. StealthSeminar offers both automated and live webinars, with such seamless automation features that viewers may never know you’re not conducting a live event.

1. Cost: Plans start at $69.95/month and up to $135/month. Annual plans are also available at a discounted rate.

2. Skill Level: Beginner

3. Time/Effort Needed: 1-3 hours of planning and setup, plus webinar running time

4. Best For: Small- to medium-sized businesses

Content creation tools for social media:

1. Pablo

With Pablo, an extension for Buffer, you can overlay your message, quotation, or snippet of content onto a beautiful photo or a positive image. After installing the Pablo buffer app in your browser, you can highlight a catchy phrase or pithy quote from a blog or article. Just right-click, send the phrase to Pablo, and pair it with an appropriate image. In just minutes, you’ll have an attractive bit of content for your social media channels.

1. Cost: Small Business at $99/month, Medium Business at $199/month, Large Business at $399/month

2. Skill Level: Beginner to intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: Depends on the number of social accounts and posts

4. Best For: Small, medium, or large businesses

2. Qzzr

Who doesn’t love a fun quiz? Okay, that might sound a little crazy if you’re still in school and the term “quiz” haunts you in the night. That said, quizzes, if done right, can be an excellent way to engage your audience online. According to the Qzzr team, you can “create, embed, and share your own quizzes” with their easy-to-use tool. Not only does a quiz earn you more traffic, clicks and shares, it can also give you valuable insight into your target market if you design it well.

1. Cost: Basic level is $24.99/month; Pro level is $199/month; Team level is $999/month

2. Skill Level: Beginner to intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: Under an hour to create a quiz

4. Best For: Small- to medium-sized businesses

3. Piktochart

Piktochart helps you out when you don’t have the funds to hire a professional designer. By using the templates and functions of Piktochart, you can quickly create spot-on graphics to use on social media. Grab a pre-sized template that appeals to you and your audience; customize it with your data, fonts, and colors; and then make it part of your social media output for the day. It’s fast, economical, and effective.

1. Cost: Basic level free; paid packages start at $24.17 per month and range up to $82.50 per month, billed annually. Month-to-month plans also available.

2. Skill Level: Beginner to intermediate

3. Time/Effort Needed: Just minutes to create a graphic

4. Best For: Small- to medium-sized businesses

4. Pixabay

At Pixabay, you can access over 1.2 million free stock photos, illustrations and vectors. When you need an image or two to spice up your social media content, just stop by Pixabay and do a quick search for videos, photos, or illustrations related to your topic. All the images and videos on Pixabay are totally royalty-free, and you are allowed to use them without attribution for commercial purposes.

1. Cost: Free, donations accepted

2. Skill Level: Beginner

3. Time/Effort Needed: Just minutes to find a photo or illustration

4. Best For: Small- to medium-sized businesses

Please note: All described features, plans, and prices were accurate as of the publishing of this article, and are subject to change.

#Creating #Freelancing #Marketing #MarketingTech