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7+ Productivity Tools to Conquer the Daily Content Crunch

Jamie Shanks
Jamie Shanks

Let’s face it: Even if content marketers were blessed with an extra set of arms, a bottomless bucket of motivation, and the power to freeze time, keeping up with the daily content crunch would probably still be a struggle.

Creating and executing a process for regularly publishing content that fills in your content gaps requires a lot of time and effort. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools out there that are designed to help content marketers GSD.

Here are a few that we’d recommend.

Trello

I’ll admit, it took me a while to get into Trello. But when I did, I felt a bit like Frodo and Sam and the end of The Lord of the Rings, when they’re lying amid chaos and destruction on Mount Doom and the Eagles come to save them. Trello was my Gwaihir.

Trello is a collaboration tool that allows teams to organize their projects into “boards”. In one glance, you can easily tell who’s working on what and streamline your processes.

For example, at Uberflip we have an Editing Board run by our Content Editor, Braveen, which allows us to easily see what’s in the editing pile and ensure that each piece of content goes through the same quality control process.

Slack

Slack’s slogan is “Be less busy,” and it couldn’t be more accurate.

Slack is a messaging tool that centralizes organization-wide communication. You can send private messages, create open channels (e.g. company announcements) or private groups (e.g. we have a “Content Brainstorm” group for content ideas). Slack also allows you to easily upload documents and—best of all—archives your old chats so you can easily search for old items or instructions.

Best of all? Slack integrates with over 50 tools and solutions you might already be using, like Google Drive, Trello and more.

Fun feature: Slack integrates with Giphy, which allows for extremely effective team communication.

Slack Giphy integration

Buffer

You know that feeling you get when you’re forced to use a tool that you hate using? You sit down in your workspace in the morning, turn on your computer, open all your tabs, and when you reach your least favorite tool, you feel a spark of anger as your finger hesitantly clicks on it.

I have the opposite feeling whenever I open Buffer every day. As soon as I sit down, I open Buffer and Pharrell’s Happy plays in my head.

Buffer is a social media scheduling and analytics tool. It allows you to schedule multiple messages at one time, collaborate with your team members, and automatically tags your URLs for accurate tracking in Google Analytics. Unlike a lot of other social tools, Buffer has a clean layout and is incredibly user-friendly — you could probably become a Buffer pro in 30 minutes or less.

Pocket

If content curation is part of your content marketing strategy (and if it isn’t, it should be), then you need to be using Pocket.

It’s happened to all of us: We come across an interesting blog post that we can’t wait to read, but are pulled into a meeting or have to write some last-minute landing page copy. Pocket allows you to save articles for later with one click of a browser extension. It aggregates all of your saved articles in your Pocket list, which you can then return to and read at your leisure.

Fun feature: Pocket also allows for easy social sharing, especially with Buffer.

IFTTT

IFTTT = If This, Then That. IFTTT gives you control over the products and apps in your personal stack (e.g. Dropbox, Instagram, your Weather App, etc.) and allows you to create “recipes” to automatically get stuff done. IFTTT is especially great if you have fairly repetitive processes.

Some cool use cases: Have your articles saved for later in Feedly sent automatically to Pocket, or have a daily weather report added to your calendar, or post a calendar reminder to a Slack channel.

Odds are, if you want to automate a productivity process, you can do it with IFTTT — The options are pretty much infinite.

Songza / 8tracks / Coffitivity

Sometimes, you gotta plug in and block out what’s going on around you to meet that deadline. If ear plugs aren’t your style, try one of these.

Songza: Songza is a free music streaming service. Whether you’re working, relaxing, or throwing a party, there’s a Songza playlist ready for you. You can choose a playlist based on your activity, desired music genre, your mood, or by decade — whatever motivates you!

8tracks: 8tracks allows you to listen to playlists created by other users that you can select based on how you feel. Simply plug in some tags that describe your desired music vibe, pick a playlist and go.

Coffitivity: Coffitivity brands itself as “The sounds of productivity”, which is super accurate. Coffitivity recreates the ambient sounds of a cafe for a “white noise” effect. You can even choose from a variety of cafe choices: Paris Paradise, Texas Teahouse and more.

Block site

If you have a BuzzFeed addiction procrastination problem, Block site is your knight in shining armor.

Block site is a browser extension that allows you to block sites that might deter you from the task at hand. You can select specific days and times to block sites, or turn on a blanket block to maintain your razor-sharp focus.

Time to GSD

Sure, these tools might not be as good as having the magic ability to add more hours to your day, but they’ll certainly help you make the most of the hours you do have.

Which productivity tools would you recommend? Tell us in the comments!

Now that you’ve mastered personal productivity, it’s time to 10x your content team’s productivity. Learn how in our free eBook.

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