Researching valuable content ideas and creating epic and shareable content on a regular basis can be exhausting and stressful. But take heart as there are a lot of content marketing tools available out there, which can help us generate creative ideas for a thoroughly researched content for our audience.

Here are 15 of the best content research tools in existence. Choose the one that best fits your marketing campaign needs and use accordingly.

1. Google Keyword Planner

Part of the Google AdWords programme, this free, simple tool is used to create a PPC strategy and to analyse and brainstorm keywords that can boost your content amplification strategy.

2. Social Crawlytics

Social Crawlytics is a totally free platform you can use to analyse a website’s popular URLs and trending contents within a specific industry.

3. Buzzsumo

With pro plans starting at $99 per month, this research tool can be used when needing to find content from a specific industry using broad keywords. It also comes with helpful filters like infographics, videos, guest posts, and articles amongst others

4. Topsy

Use Topsy if you need to find articles, pictures, and influencers in a specific niche on Twitter. Simply put the keywords and the desired filter

5. Google site: search

Use “site:domian.tld”, a Google search function which will provide results limited to a specific domain only

6. Keyword Tool Denominator

You can use this if needing to launch a search for sites like YouTube, eBay, Etsy, Amazon, Bing and other search engines. This helps you find long tail keywords that your target audience is searching for.

You can take advantage of the free plan which will allow you three searches per day.

7. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is another keyword brainstorming tool you can use to get keyword ideas by just entering a stem keyword, setting your filters according to your needs, then hitting the “Suggest” button.

8. Ahrefs Content Explorer

Sister tool to Ahrefs Site Explorer, this research tool allows you to find the most shared content for any topic on the web around a specific keyword.

9. IFTTT

Short form of “If This Then That”. Through this automation tool, you can create your own “recipes” by first signing up for an account and adding a trigger. Then you can decide how often you want this trigger to fire whenever there’s a new entry on the website. Lastly, you have to enter the URL of the website’s feed then click on “Create Action”.

10. SEMRush

Not your ordinary SEO tool, SEMRush helps you spy on the keywords other websites within the same niche as yours are ranking for.

11. Quora

This online Q&A community is a great place to find people’s stories, which you can take inspiration from when writing your content. Most contributors use their real name and provide quality topics and answers in discussions.

12. Slideshare

Slideshare is a great place to find case studies you can learn from for your website. It also allows you to upload and share presentations created through MS PowerPoint.

13. Pinterest

As an image sharing and social networking site, Pinterest is becoming more popular due to a high number of quality infographics most industries nowadays are searching for.

14. Growth Hackers

If you belong to the digital marketing and the B2B industry, this online community can be beneficial to you. This is where you can find trending articles regarding mobile app marketing and other related topics.

15. Reddit

Reddit is an online community where you can find all types of news from all kinds of industries, collected and contributed by its Redditors (Reddit users). It is further subdivided to “subreddits”, which are smaller communities focused on a specific topic.

Content marketing is easy and totally stress-free for as long as you utilise the right tools. So use the content research tools discussed above to your advantage and expect your marketing campaign to be successful.

About Johnny Huntington

Johnny has 20+ years in the advertising & communications industries under his belt. A 1st graduate in art history & commercial design and hailing from the United Kingdom, he moved into online communications early on, and now lives and works out of Dubai.

A lateral thinking innovative online communications specialist with experience of commercial research for multi-platform service projects, including design for all user interaction and delivery. He has