There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but marketers still have some free tools at their disposal for content promotion.

Here are four of the best:

MailChimp – MailChimp isn’t just great for composing, designing and sending out emails; it can also manage a database of your readers and track the success of each campaign you create.

WordPress – SquareSpace and Drupal may be slicker content management systems, but WordPress has the virtue of popularity. The veritable tonne of themes and plug-ins developed by third parties mean that the basic WordPress delivers a great amount of flexibility. Want to add SEO optimisation to your blog? WordPress. A quiz plug-in? WordPress. Spam filters for comments? You get the picture.

Buffer – Buffer isn’t a social platform in itself, but it does let you post to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+ simultaneously. The genius part of Buffer is that it can tell what types of links you find interesting, and use this as a basis for you to suggest more. The rest is just a matter of clicking a button.

Reddit – Reddit has had some bad press recently after hackers used the site to place links to some stolen and very “personal” pictures and videos of several celebrities. But don’t let that put you off (Reddit has tried to ban those linking to stolen material). The site is, however, full of interest groups from fly fishing to fitness, meaning that whatever your business sector, you can post links to your content and reasonably expect to receive some readers.