Are you struggling to find things to write about, taking days over a simple blog post? Or are you grappling with strategy, wondering how to make the most of the content you’ve worked so hard to write?
Luckily for you, there is a huge range of tools you can use to make creating content easy and effective. In this article, you’ll find something useful for every stage of the writing process:
- Thinking of new ideas
- Writing your content
- Editing and proofreading
- Graphics and video production
- Scheduling content to be published
- Insights into trends, rankings, and your competition
Whether you’re a solo freelancer or part of a huge organization, you’ll find these tools save you time, give purpose, and improve the overall quality of your content.
Using Tools to Generate Ideas
Feeling like everyone’s said it before? Struggling to get inspired or just running out of ideas? Take the guesswork out of planning content. Use a tool to discover new trends and suggest a range of titles you can use for future blogs.HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator
HubSpot makes it easy to think of ideas with a free blog topic generator tool. Start by adding keyword nouns and it quickly generates a week’s worth of blog topic suggestions.
Sign up for a free account to receive an entire year’s worth of suggestions you can download as a CSV file. Whilst some will inevitably be terrible, you’ll find plenty of brilliant suggestions for blog posts centered around your target topics.AnswerThePublic
If you’re trying to get inside the head of your ideal client, AnswerThePublic helps you work out the questions they’re asking. It takes autocomplete data from Google and other search engines to give you a vast range of questions about keywords. Each one is a potential new piece of content.
The results are arranged visually in circles using sentence stems. You can also view alphabetically and download the information as a CSV file. Complete several free searches each day or invest in the paid version with the benefit of search alerts to stay ahead of the curve.Google Trends
Using Google Trends lets you monitor a keyword over time displayed on a line graph. The handy comparison tool lets you compare different search terms simultaneously to find the most popular one to use for new content.
Be specific by focusing on particular countries and check out a range of related search terms. With Google Trends, you can spot a hot topic on the rise and generate lots of relevant content around it.Writing Tools for Creating Content
Feel like it’s time to move on from Microsoft Word? There is a range of tools available that let you write effectively and work collaboratively within a team or with your clients.Scrivener
If you write long-form, Scrivener is a popular choice. You can break longer writing into smaller sections, perfect for banishing the ‘blank page’ feeling. The split-screen lets you decide if you want to plan an outline first, write the text, or use a mixture of both. Just use drag and drop to reorder sections or even entire chapters in one simple move.Slite
Slite is made for working in a team. You keep all your content in one place, sensibly organized into channels, so everyone can find it. Collaborative features let everyone work together on projects. The helpful ‘catch up’ keeps you updated with tasks so you can monitor the progress of the team.Google Docs
Attaching documents to emails risks you getting blocked by an over-zealous security system. Instead, Google Docs lets you share a link to your content. You choose if the receiver can view, comment, or edit your writing. It’s a useful cloud-based location for storing content.
Using Editing Software
No one creates a brilliant draft straight away. You spend a huge chunk of writing time editing and checking work before publishing. Spelling mistakes and poorly organized content are hugely damaging to your reputation, and it’s embarrassing when you miss them. Using a tool to help with editing takes the pressure off catching every mistake yourself.ProWritingAid
If you’re looking for a tool that’s as much editor as grammar and spell-checker, ProWritingAid is a fantastic choice. It easily integrates with MS Word, Google Docs, and Scrivener, or use the desktop version.
ProWritingAid makes suggestions in real-time to catch typos, suggest improvements, and help you find better word choices. It contains twenty in-depth writing reports including:
1. Repetitiveness
2. Vague wording
3. Grammar
4. Sentence length
5. Passive voice
With ProWritingAid, you learn how to be a better writer with an enormous range of resources including in-app suggestions, explanations, videos, and quizzes. It stops you from making the same mistakes, so you get quicker and produce better content.Hemingway Editor
It’s hard to pitch your writing at the correct level. You don’t want to put your reader off. Hemingway App is a simple tool to make everything clear and readable. It uses highlighted colors to show which sentences are hard to read, along with an overall reading grade level. It’s useful for finding sections that are too dense or might confuse readers.Capitalize My Title
This handy free tool helps you get those important H1 and H2 headings in the correct case. Use Capitalize My Title to check a range of style guides including APA, Chicago, and AP guidelines. It’s useful if you write for multiple clients, all with preferred styles of formatting.
Often writers stumble over putting headings into title case. Whilst it’s easy to remember to capitalize important words, it’s hard to work out just what counts as important. Copy and paste your titles into this tool to check they’re correct.Adding Graphics and Video to Content
You’re a content creator, not a graphic designer. But to get your content seen, liked, and shared, it needs to look good. Using a graphic or video tool lets you produce professional-looking content made for viral shares.ProDesign
You’ve probably heard of ProDesign for their stylish logos, but did you realize they also create WordPress and social media themes? Combining your words with beautiful visuals means more people will read them.
If you’re looking to create a professional impression online, browse their many free and premium themes. After social media visuals? Simply choose your package and let their talented team of designers do the rest.Lumen5
To make the most out of your content, Lumen5 is a simple way to make engaging videos in just a few minutes. It offers a vast range of customisation, including video format, branding choice, and a searchable media library. Lumen5 makes repurposing content easy so you can make those blog posts work harder for your business.
Using Scheduling Tools
You’re far too busy to spend all your time uploading posts to social media. Using a scheduling tool lets you streamline the process and upload content to lots of sites simultaneously. That leaves you free to focus on creating more content.Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a great option if you’re looking for a tool a team can use. You can plan, create, and schedule all your posts with a handy library of assets available. With Hootsuite, you don’t have to flick between different social media accounts. Instead, it keeps track of all your social engagement and private messages in one place with analytics to measure impact.Buffer
Buffer separates scheduling from analytics, making it an affordable option if you’re working alone. The scheduling tool is easy to use. It lets you quickly draft posts and set the times you’d like them published.
The analytics plan offers valuable strategy recommendations and in-depth reports to help you improve social media use. Perfect if you’re creating content for a larger business.Social Bee
You’ll love the clear layout of Social Bee, which makes it easy to see all your social media accounts at a glance. Put your content into different categories so you can mix the types of posts you schedule. Choose top-performing content and bookmark it to republish regularly.Insight into Your Content
Don’t create content in a vacuum. To be successful, you need an eye on the competition to see what’s ranking on Google and shared on social media. Use these tools to take the effort out of tracking how your content performs.Ahrefs
If you’re trying to figure out what content will rank in the search engine results pages (SERPs), Ahrefs has a great Keyword Explorer tool. Use it to find top-performing posts in your niche. It gives great insight into search engine traffic numbers and social media shares. Track what is gaining or losing traffic over time and spot ideal low competition opportunities.Ubersuggest
Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest is an essential tool for figuring out the keywords you will try to rank for in Google. It gives you hundreds of ideas, shows the volume of searches, and explains how hard it will be to rank for them. You can see how your main competitors are doing and find top-ranking posts in your niche.
In Summary
Each section here could be a blog post, or even a book, in its own right. There are a huge number of tools to choose from, and more are created every day. What’s key is that you stop trying to do everything yourself. Let these tools do the heavy lifting for you to make content creation easier and more effective.
With the right tools in place, you plan content rather than leaping in, because you know the current trends and search results. You monitor how well each piece performs to improve the writing you publish in the future. Your content looks professional because it’s well written and thoroughly edited, with striking visuals. These tools make effective content creation easy to achieve.
