Necessary Tools to Use When Creating Local Content Strategies

Marketers who prioritize their blogging efforts are 13 times more likely to see a positive return on investment. 

After all, informative blog posts offer more value to potential customers. 

Consequently, you’ll earn the audience’s trust, generate high-quality leads, boost your SEO efforts, and ultimately establish yourself as an expert within your industry.

In other words, content creation should be the focal point of your marketing strategy. 

This especially rings true for local businesses, as establishing a strong relationship with the target audience and increasing brand awareness are all the more important. 

But a local content strategy isn’t all about publishing random content from time to time, as it needs to cater to your target audience and your location.

You’ll also have to do a lot of research, planning, and experimenting. Without the right set of tools, you’ll most likely have a hard time making the most out of your strategy. 

That said, let’s take a look at some of the tools you’ll need for creating a local content strategy. 

1. Finteza 

Finteza reveals everything you need to know about your audience. 

Its advanced analytics features will give you an insight into how visitors found your website, what type of devices they use, their geographical location, and even their spoken language.

This tool also enables you to segment your traffic based on certain criteria. Consequently, you’ll get to create more specific reports faster. 

For instance, you could set Finteza to display information about mobile visitors who found your website through the Google Ads campaign and clicked on the Sign-Up button. 

Furthermore, this tool evaluates traffic quality from any advertising channel by analyzing user behavior. You can use this information to determine which channels are worth paying for. 

However, note that all of this data isn’t readily available. You’ll have to run Finteza for a few weeks until it gathers the necessary information. 

Pricing varies based on the number of unique visitors that visit your website. The minimum fee is $25 per 100,000 visitors. 

There’s also a 30-day free trial available. 

2. Claritas Zip Code Lookup

Claritas Zip Code Lookup is another handy tool for local audience research. 

Simply submit the residential ZIP code of a specific area. After that, you’ll see demographics regarding the average household income, composition, and the average population age, race, and ethnicity within that area. 

In other words, this tool allows you to pinpoint potential customers more efficiently. 

It’s also free, so make sure to give it a shot. 

3. Buzzsumo

Coming up with great content ideas is sometimes easier said than done. 

You’ve got to find original topics that will hold up over time and are relevant to your target audience. Not to mention that you have to keep track of how your current content performs and also your competitors. 

Well, Buzzsumo’s got your back. 

This tool analyzes data covering various topics and determines which ones generate the highest levels of engagement. Then, that data is used to provide you with relevant content ideas based on your audience’s interests. 

All you need to do is to type in a specific domain or keyword. 

You can also set additional filters, like languages and the age of a web page, to narrow down your search. 

Upon delivering the results, Buzzsumo will display data for each topic, like its evergreen score, the number of backlinks it generates, social media engagement statistics, and more. 

This tool offers a free version, but you’ll be limited to 10 searches per month. For unlimited searches, pricing starts from $99/month. 

4. Text Optimizer 

Text Optimizer works much like Buzzsumo.

What sets it apart, though, is that it’s also a writing assistant tool. It helps you create concise, targeted content that’s optimized for SEO. 

Furthermore, Text Optimizer offers a geo-location feature that will help you make sure that your text is optimized for the audience within a specific region. 

Other features include keyword suggestions, sentence optimization, demographic data, text analysis, and much more.

The free version is limited to text analysis. If you’d like to have access to more features, you’ll need to opt for the pro version, which will set you back $60/month. 

5. KW Finder 

Speaking of keywords, you need to take them seriously. After all, they are one of the factors that make your content visible on the search engine results page (SERP). 

In terms of your local content strategy, trying to rank for generic keywords is a matter of biting more than you can chew. 

That’s because they are usually highly competitive. Consequently, you’ll have a harder time moving up in the rankings.

And given that you’re targeting an audience within your local area, there’s no point in trying to go against competitors that might not even operate in it.

That said, local keywords are your ticket. And that’s what KW Finder is for. 

This tool offers more than 50,000 locations and multiple languages to ensure that you’ll find the most effective keywords for your area. 

You can filter your keyword searches by counties, states, cities, regions, and countries. 

KW Finder provides you with data regarding search volume, the estimated cost-per-click you would pay for that keyword to appear in paid search, and a difficulty index indicating the level of competition in Google Ads and organic search results. 

Other features include bulk uploads of keywords to analyze, domain lookups, keyword list creation, and more.

Pricing starts at $29.90/month. 

6. Dibz

Another factor that influences your position in the SERPs is backlinks. The better the quality of your backlinks, the more relevant your content will appear in Google’s eyes. 

Backlinks are also a handy way to drive qualified traffic to your website. 

That said, you’ll need to find reputable local websites, and Dibz can help you with just that. 

This automated tool lets you apply a range of advanced search operators to find relevant local searchers. 

It also comes with a SPAM filter. In other words, upon setting the auditing criteria, Dibz will leave irrelevant results aside. 

Furthermore, this tool allows you to import potential prospects to PitchBox, a popular outreach platform. Consequently, you’ll get to save a bit of time during the outreach campaigns. 

7. Similar Web 

Another crucial part of establishing a local content strategy is knowing what your competitors are up to. We talked with a few experts from a web design agency in Florida, and we saw that Similar Web is their preferred tool. 

In terms of SEO, this tool gives you an insight into the keywords your competitors try to rank for, their top-performing pages, and where their traffic comes from. 

Furthermore, you’ll also get to find out what sites send traffic to you or your competitors. 

But you can also use Similar Web to reveal your competitors’ search, display, and video ads, benchmark their paid traffic and see what ad networks they use and which ones perform the best. 

All you need to do is to type in the URL. 

You can either opt for a free version or one of their paid plans, which start at $249/month. 

8. Buffer 

Social media should play a significant role in your content strategy. 

That’s because social platforms allow businesses to grow their audiences, connect with them, build credibility, increase brand awareness and ultimately establish themselves as an authority.  

But to make your social media content strategy effective, you’ll need to post at the right time, in the right place. In other words, you have to post when most of your target audience is active on their preferred platforms.

You can do it manually, but it may take quite a bit of time and maybe give you some headaches as well. 

If only there were a tool that automates the process, right? 

Well, there’s Buffer! 

This social media management tool allows you to plan, schedule, and post content across most major social platforms. 

The best thing about it is that you can do it all from a single dashboard for free! 

It also has a paid plan that costs $5/month, paid annually. 

This plan gives you access to social media analytics and engagement tools to monitor and reply to comments from any social platform directly.

9. MailChimp 

Like social media, email marketing is a great way to promote content. It mostly brings the same advantages as social media. But the difference is that emails feel more personal. If done right, that is. 

Consequently, you’ll get to establish a better connection with individual customers and drive more conversions as a result. 

Again, automating the process will save you from some headaches. 

That’s where MailChimp comes in. 

Alongside email automation, the free version includes a series of pre-made templates and a subject line helper with an A/B testing feature. It also provides you with customizable pop-up forms for capturing leads. 

If you’d like access to more features, like audience segmentation and more automation options, you’ll have to go for one of their paid plans, starting at $9.99/month. 

Final Words 

All in all, creating an effective content strategy is not as easy as it may seem, and you need to think everything through and do a lot of research. 

Without the right tools, getting the strategy right is more of a hit-or-miss situation. 

That said, the tools listed above will not help you with the research, but they will also save up your time by automating repetitive tasks. 

Author bio

Travis Dillard is a business consultant and an organizational psychologist based in Arlington, Texas. 

Passionate about marketing, social networks, and business in general. In his spare time, he writes a lot about new business strategies and digital marketing for DigitalStrategyOne.