The planning that goes into your content marketing strategy may ultimately determine whether or not you are successful. All too many times, brands and businesses rush through this part of the marketing process and find themselves without true direction when the going gets tough. Unfortunately, more than one brand has failed to gain traction in search engines, social media and beyond due to a lack of proper planning. There are many tools available that can help make the task of content marketing and creation much easier, but you have to know what they are first. We’ll discuss a few content marketing resources today that can make your efforts easier in the future.

Google AdWords

Not many people may think of the popular Google AdWords platform when considering their content marketing strategies, but one tool in particular within it can be helpful. The Keyword Planner feature within AdWords not only helps ensure that you’re pinging links via PPC campaigns to the right audiences, but it can also be very helpful in generating a variety of new content ideas and topics in no time at all. You simply need to enter one or more keywords, proceed to search for all ideas, and see what the Keyword Planner gives you. You may find one or two new ideas, or you may find dozens. This can be used for virtually any content marketing strategy regardless of niche, so be sure to take advantage of it.

Reddit, Quora, Etc.

Popular online communities can often be a source for inspiration even when we feel all out of ideas. Popular sites such as Reddit, Quora, Yahoo Answers and others all have the ability to provide you with a wide variety of content ideas and inspiration. Many people use these question and answer sites as a way to formulate the basis for a how-to article or tutorial. Simply enter in some relevant keywords and see what people are talking about. The great thing about sites like Reddit is that there is a pre-existing niche for virtually every topic imaginable. You’ll be able to find what potential members of your community are thinking about and what they want to know. This makes it much easier to devise content marketing and creation strategies that target them effectively.

Autocomplete Features

Whether you are using Yahoo, Google, Bing or another search engine, the Autocomplete feature is a staple of most. You have often begun typing, only to find your idea pop up. This is a great way to figure out who is asking what and how much demand there is potentially for content in a category. Autocomplete can likewise be used to ensure you’re pinging links to search engines on relevant topics. You can play around with this feature by typing in various formulations of keyword phrases and questions. What are the most common things people are asking search engines to find? You’ll be able to use this information as a way to quickly and effortlessly determine which topics are currently popular and therefore might do best in a content marketing effort.

What other elements have you considered incorporating into your content marketing strategy? Has anything thus far failed or succeeded? Let us know below about your experiences and how each effort panned out.