From Creation to Publication: Best Tools For Content Creators

The right tools can help creators improve the quality of their content, whether it's videos, streams, or graphics. Using professional-grade tools can help creators make their content look more polished and increase its appeal to viewers.

This article dives into why content creation tools are important, the best content creation tools, the key skills needed to create great content, and the main elements every tool should include.

Why Should You Embrace Content Creation Tools?

Let us start off by outlining why content creation tools might be useful for you, both short and long term. There are numerous reasons but these should get the point across.

• Save hours creating graphics
  
  • Whether we're talking about video thumbnails, article cover images, or otherwise needed graphics, a good tool will make your life significantly easier. Instead of creating your YouTube thumbnail every day from scratch, you can use graphic design tools that will allow you to create a custom template with which any future thumbnails are made much faster. 
• Plan ahead
  • If you hate ad hoc work, you'll want to schedule all your content ahead - be it days, weeks, or even months in advance. While pen and paper could be used, there are content planning tools that will make your schedule more editable, adaptable, and graphically more pleasant to look at. It's also going to be more user-friendly if you want to share it with a third party - contrary to your hand-scribbled notes
• Learn from successful content with engagement data
  • Thanks to the tools that gather data like google trends, you can use a data-driven approach to what you create, answering the questions that you know people are curious about and searching for.
• Find inspiration when you're feeling stuck
  
  • There are multiple sites and tools that provide inspiration to what you can do and accomplish. You'll see what others do in different industries or games that can inform your own content. You don't have to copy someone's content or ideas - but identifying what they do and why is invaluable insight.

10 Best Content Creation Tools

In order to make this piece as actionable for you as I can, let me list off a couple of specific tools that you'll find useful, whatever the type of content you produce. I've divided them into a couple of groups: Language, Graphics, Video, and Planning.

Language

• Grammarly
  • Making sure that the message you convey gets across exactly as you mean it is super important. On top of that, avoiding spelling mistakes and grammar errors helps maintain professionality which is frequently desired. Whether you're an English native speaker or not, Grammarly has your back!

Graphics

Whether these are thumbnails or profile pics, using professional tools will make it both easier but also visually much better!

• Canva
  • Canva is an online graphic design platform that allows users to create various visual content like social media graphics, presentations, and posters through an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface. It offers a vast library of customizable templates, images, fonts, and illustrations to help users design professional-looking projects quickly.
• Figma
  
  • Figma is a popular tool for graphic design, but it's more focused on creating interfaces for e.g. web development. Still, it offers a variety of free tools to create thumbnails, crop out picture backgrounds and numerous other use cases.

Video

Whether you stream live content, create longer form for YouTube, or short form for TikTok - you'll need proper tools to make it happen.

• OBS
  • OBS is arguably the most popular tool for video creation. You can input your Twitch stream key and go live - it also allows you to stream on someone else's Twitch channel if you put in their stream key. On top of that, it enables local recording for YouTube or TikTok use.
• DaVinci Resolve
  • Once recorded, video content definitely needs editing. There is arguably no better free software than DaVinci Resolve. Whether it's cutting the video up, putting in an intro and outro, or adding cool transitions - DaVinci does it all.
• Audacity
  • If you're more into audio content and podcasts, Audacity is a great tool to manage it. It allows you to get separate audio tracks from you and other call/podcast/stream participants, giving you all the freedom to play around with it.

Planning

Scheduling is a big part of content creation and the below tools make it a breeze.

• Notion
  • Notion does way more than it seems - sometimes it's even referred to as your second brain. You can use calendars, create scripts, manage ideas, monitor statuses of individual tasks. Notion does it all.
• Miro
  • Miro provides a more visual view of your plans in the form of graphic timelines. It makes it more shareable and easier to understand. You can also organize workshop sessions here using sticker notes.
• Trello
  • Trello is a dedicated process management tool, tracking the statuses and progress of everything you need to do. You can invite other contributors to the space, allowing you to see the big picture.
• Google Trends
  • In order to create content that aligns perfectly with the audience needs, you can use Google Trends and search most popular topics and queries.

What should a tool have?

There are a couple of characteristics a great tool should have. While ultimately it comes down to whether you find it useful and affordable, let's take a look at a couple of key traits.

• User-friendly
  • The ease of use it a key element of any tool you use. You'd ideally be able to jump straight in and take advantage of its basic features. If you find yourself stuck in an endless onboarding, something might be up - the tool might be mis-architected or it's way too complex for your needs.
• Pricing model
  • There are free but also paid tools. Depending on their specific pricing models, you might or might not find it good for you. You might prefer a yearly subscription, a one-time payment for lifetime access, or maybe pay per content you create.
• Versatility
  • A tool that does more than one thing will allow you to branch out nicely. Notion helps you plan out content but also create scripts and cross link it. Miro is a workshop space that also allows you to create timelines. Figma is a tool to design your webpage but on a micro level you can create day-to-day thumbnails for your videos.

Concluding Thoughts

As you can see, adding tools to your content creation repertoire can truly boost your productivity and efficiency. Thankfully, there are more tools available than one could count and they are of super high quality. If you want to start putting these tools into use today, join our Metafy community and start creating today!