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Being a content creator on YouTube is more than just filming and uploading videos. Behind the 10-minute video that we see is hours of brainstorming, searching for the perfect music editing, and creating the perfect thumbnail. Thankfully, there’s a surplus of amazing websites and platforms out there to help every creator out there with some of the more mundane tasks that come with being a content creator. We’re here to share our favorites with you, to help you start building your very own creator toolbox!
Oftentimes, the hardest part of content creation is coming up with an idea. How can I know for sure what topics and ideas are trending? BuzzSumos’ social search feature can help you out. With this feature, you’ll be able to see what’s trending on YouTube, allowing you to jump on the trends before they’re old news.
It’s hard to stay on top of all the holidays, special events, monthly celebrations, movie premieres and big events. How am I supposed to know that June 21is National Se Day, or that April is National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day? Well, Forekast lets you see into the future and know all of the coolest events happening around the world. With all these cool events, it might help you come up with some amazing content ideas! You could spend the day reading for National Book Day, or splurge on your siblings for National Sibling Day.
Canva is the ultimate free online design tool. It’s packed with an endless amount of amazing features that will make any amateur feel like a top-tier graphic designer. With Canva, you can make social media posts for any platform, thumbnails for videos, YouTube banners, presentations, marketing materials, planners, videos, and so much more. You have thousands of templates to get inspiration from, or you can start with a blank canvas and see where it leads you.
As a platform that is so heavily used by many creators, it seems only natural that Canva would find success with influencer marketing. In fact, Canva has sponsored over 150 YouTubers, including Brandon Butch, who provides in-depth and accurate videos on apple products and software.
We love Canva so much that we even took a closer look at their marketing strategy - not sponsored, of course.
Making sure that your content is accessible to everybody is very important, and 3Play Media helps out with that by providing high-quality captioning and transcription, translations and subtitling, and audio description assistance. Additionally, adding transcripts actually boosts your SEO!
Are you wanting to add screen recordings to your current project, but don’t really know how it works? Camtasia is the perfect solution. Recording your screen is quick and easy, and afterward, you can even make edits and add effects. There’s even a voice narration feature that allows you to record yourself during the screen recording, or after you screen record. If you prefer the screen recording to be without audio, you can add notes and other annotations like highlights, arrows, and captions, so that your video will still be easy to follow.
Knowing what your strengths and weaknesses are is incredibly important as a content creator. With Fiverr, you can continue doing the things you’re good at, and find help for the things you’re less good at. Fiverr is a global freelancing platform and you’ll be able to find creators that will help you edit your videos, create amazing thumbnails, record voiceovers, and so much more.
Peter McKinnon is one of the YouTuber creators that Fiverr has worked with a couple of times (4 times, in fact). Peter most often creates teaching videos about photography and cinematography, and in his video collaborations with Fiverr, he’s showcased the talent that you can find on the website for photo and video editing, as well as video creation.
Premium Beat offers top-quality audio tracks that will help enhance your YouTube videos. The service allows you to browse their royalty-free library full of hundreds of tracks from different genres and moods. Looking for some upbeat music for a cheerful vlog? Some more classical tunes for a studying montage? Premium Beat will provide you with music for any kind of video you’re currently working on.
Epidemic Sound is another great tool to get access to an extensive royalty-free music library. The library has over 100,000 tracks that you can start using right away, which you can filter based on mood, album, and genre. Another amazing feature is the sound effects library that Epidemic Sound also has (who knew there were so many different wave sounds!).
We recently introduced a free plan which enables YouTubers to get their hands on extremely interesting analytics and steer you towards the strongest SEO direction, which in turn can strengthen your YouTube strategy. With our new free plan, creators will have access to:
TubeBuddy is a browser extension designed to help you manage your YouTube channel and make sure you're enhancing your reach and engagement. The features on TubeBuddy include keyword research, tags, analytics, and video SEO, and that’s just the beginning. With TubeBuddy you also have some amazing channels and video analytics. With Videolytics, you can see data on your comments, ratings, total views, and social media engagement, and the feature even offers SEO insights and recommendations to help improve future videos. With Channelytics, you can see 30 days of data for views and subscribers, allowing you to view your growth on a larger scale.
Cathrin Manning is most often creating content in the lifestyle genre, but she also regularly makes videos about what it’s like being a full-time content creator on YouTube. She has partnered up with TubeBuddy a number of times and mentions them often in her videos about her YouTube strategies and how she optimizes her reach.
Ahrefs is one of the most recommended SEO tools on the market, with it being the second-fastest web crawler (the first being Google), and having the best user interface that is easy to use and comprehend. SEO experts depend on Ahrefs for backlink audits, competitive analysis, keyword search, and SEO analyzer that ensures your site is running optimally. As a YouTube creator, it’s important to understand the benefits of SEO and how to apply it to your own channel in order to reach wider audiences and grow organically on both Google and YouTube, and ultimately increase your video engagement.
Another great tool to monitor and track your YouTube audience analytics is the YouTube-certified tool, VidIQ. The website offers access to keyword and tag rankings based on search trends, a competitive comparison against other channels, as well as help with managing comments on your videos. VidIQ also has a browser extension that allows you to see top tags and keywords that other channels used on their videos.
The three content creators that make up the team at Think Media intend to share with you all their tips and tricks for finding success on YouTube, and one of the tips that they share most often is to use VidIQ. Think Media has partnered up with VidIQ over 10 times, but they also mention them in tons of videos, no sponsorship included!
Hootsuite is one of the biggest social media management tools - it's currently used by over 15 million people! The best thing about Hootsuite is that it’s an all-in-one platform, allowing users to create content, schedule content (at optimal engagement times), and get reports about the social posts that you created. Also, it’s incredibly easy to monitor multiple accounts, so you can make sure that you’re keeping up with posting regularly across all your platforms.
AgoraPulse is another incredible option for a social media management tool. Constant engagement with your audience is incredibly important for organic growth, and Agorapulse lets you engage with fans in real-time, and also lets you save YouTube replies that you use on the regular, so that you can quickly and easily respond to comments. With Agorapulse’s help, you can also find and deal with those pesky trolls on the internet.
We all know that YouTube URLs can get quite lengthy, but Bit.ly will help you with that by condensing your URL to something short and sweet. Bit.ly also offers analytics to help you track how many times your links were clicked, as well as the browsers, platforms, and locations that accessed it.
Creative Juice is a new digital banking app, designed for creators. The service helps creators manage multiple revenue streams from various apps and sponsorships, and, most recently, also provides capital infusions of up to half a million dollars for other creators, for a share of their revenue. These infusions are known as Juice Funds that any creator can apply for, and the company evaluates if it would be mutually beneficial to invest. If so, they agree on a revenue percentage that the creator will share with Creative Juice for the duration of a designated time period (usually between six months to three years).
ThoughtLeaders has accumulated its vast experience in the creator economy, and has not only created a pretty helpful platform, but has a number of experts that are here to help you nail your influencer marketing strategy (both for creators and brands). From helping you land brand partnerships, making sure you get paid for the work you do, helping you understand sponsorship rates, and even amplifying your YouTube content for better results, ThoughtLeaders is there for you, every step of the way.
Unfortunately, there’s no all-in-one tool (yet!), but starting out with the ones mentioned above will definitely help enhance your content creation. If you have any questions about content creation, get in touch today to find out how can we help you out!
