94 helpful, handy content marketing resources

If you’re looking for a trove of fresh ideas or useful tools, you’ve come to the right place. Read on for a hearty helping of creative inspiration.

By Katy French
Dec. 23, 2019

Content creation is one of the biggest challenges marketers face today.

According to the 2019 Content Marketing Institute Content Management & Strategy Survey, 45% of marketers cited content production workflow as one of their biggest strategic challenges, and 44% bemoaned lack of budget.

[RELATED: 50+ ways to prove your digital comms savvy]

Of course, cash is crucial, but there’s plenty you can do to elevate your content production—even with a tiny team or a barebones budget. Try this slew of handy tools (separated by category, for your convenience) to get more bang from your content marketing bucks.

Copywriting

AP Stylebook: AP’s Twitter feed, which provides style and usage tips.
Capitalize My Title: A useful guide to capitalization (for multiple styles).
Chicago Manual of Style: An easily searchable style guide.
Common Errors in English Usage: A comprehensive list of common writing mistakes and misunderstandings.
Copyscape: A tool to check writing for plagiarism.
Grammar Girl: Helpful grammar and writing tips.
Grammarist: Another handy guide to grammar and colloquialisms.
Grammarly: A tool to catch grammar and spelling mistakes.
Headline Analyzer: A tool to write compelling headlines for SEO.
Hemingway Editor: A tool to cut copy and spot errors.
Lousy Writer: A helpful resource to become a better writer.
Merriam-Webster: The online dictionary.
Paradigm Online Writing Assistant: Information on everything about the writing process, from structure to editing.
Punctuation Made Simple: A simple guide to master punctuation.
Ragan and PR Daily: Helpful guidance, advice and support for communicators and PR pros.
Time to Write: Great tips to break through writer’s block.

For more terrific tools, check out 101 resources for writing great copy.

Data sources and data visualization

104 Free Data Sources: An extensive great roundup of public data sources.
CDC.gov: Tremendous stats about public health concerns.
CIA World Factbook: Comprehensive facts on every country in the world.
The Data Visualisation Catalogue: A great way to learn about data visualization.
Data Visualization 101: A guide to designing charts and graphs.
Data.gov: A comprehensive collection of U.S. government data.
Data360: A roundup of data-driven news stories.
Data Catalogs: Open data catalogs, curated by open-data experts.
Gallup: A top source for public opinion polls.
Google Charts: A handy tool to visualize data.
Google Scholar: A roundup of academic research.
Library of Congress: A huge, rich archive of American history and information.
Pew Research: Public opinion polls, demographic research, social media studies and more.
RefDesk: A handy fact-checker.
U.S. Census Bureau: A massive trove of data about U.S. population trends, demographics and more.

Design

Adobe Creative Cloud: Pro tools for making everything from infographics to animated videos.
Adobe Spark: An easier tool to transform your ideas into stunning visual stories.
Visage: A design tool that makes branded content creation simple.
Adobe Capture CC: Useful way to turn photos into color palettes.
Colorhexa: Resource to find information about any color.
Colorhunt.co: A curation of hand-picked color palettes.
Flipping Typical: A tool to let you review multiple fonts at a time.
Font Pair: Lets you experiment with fonts to see what blends well together.
Font Squirrel: A roundup of free fonts.
Palettable: A tool to help non-designers generate attractive color palettes.
Pantone Color Finder: A library of splashy colors.

E-books

FlipHTML5: An e-book tool to design images, links, buttons, videos, slideshows and more.
Kotobee: For designing and publishing e-books.
My eCover Maker: A simple way to create e-book covers.

Here are 101 more tools and resources for e-book design, writing and production.

Email marketing

Bee: Software that creates beautiful emails—quickly.
GetResponse: Helps you craft emails, automate marketing, design landing pages and more.
Hubspot: The all-inclusive marketing platform for email marketing, CRM, social media management and more.
Mailchimp: Elegant, easy-to-use design tools for marketing automation.
PoliteMail: The “internal communication platform that plugs into Outlook.”
Sender: A free email marketing tool to create attractive newsletters.

Iconography

Icons8: A comprehensive design resource and library of icons.
Iconmonstr: A database of simple icons.
The Noun Project: A vast icon library.
Streamline: The world’s largest collection of premium icons.

Infographics

Daily Infographic: A great resource for infographic inspiration.
Infogram: Helps you create engaging infographics and reports.
Piktochart: A tool to create infographics, presentations and flyers.
Ultimate Guide to Infographics: A roundup of tips for every stage of the infographic production process.
Venngage: Free infographic maker—and loads of design tips and tactics.
Visage: A handy DIY infographic tool.
Visme: A free infographic maker.

Inspiration and ideas

Alltop: A roundup of the internet’s most popular stories.
Answer the Public: Offers content ideas around specific keywords.
Feedly: A tool to aggregate all your favorite publications, blogs and keywords.
Google Trends: A data-rich resource to explore what people are searching on Google.
Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator: A tool that brainstorms and generates topics for you.

Interactive content

How to Create Interactives in 4 Steps: A convenient guide to get you started.
101 Visually Stunning Interactive Infographics: A roundup of interactives to inspire you.
Apester: Lets you blend visual stories into your content.
Ceros: An experiential content creation platform.
Playbuzz: Enables you to write, distribute and monetize interactive stories.
ThingLink: A platform to create unique experiences with interactive images, videos and 360° media.
Quizmaker: A simple app that helps you craft quizzes.

Photography

All The Free Stock: Free stock images, including video, music and icons.
Death to Stock: A unique stock photo resource for creative pros looking to stand out.
Depositphotos: A library of vectors and images.
Fotor: A simple photo design tool.
GIFMaker: Enables you to create animated GIFs, slideshows and video animations.
Giphy: A fast and easy way to create GIFs.
Raw Pixel: A free image library with PSD mockups and vectors.
Pexels: A collection of free stock photos.
Pikwizard: A roundup of high-quality, people-centric photos.
Pixabay: Stunning free and royalty-free stock images.
Unsplash: Adds 10 new photos every 10 days.