Title writing tools
Title Case
Not sure which letters should be capitalized in your title? Simply copy and paste your headline into this tool and it will convert it into perfect title case.
Headline analyzer
CoSchedule’s headline analyzer breaks down your headline, segmenting different types of words, and giving you hints on how to improve it. It gives you a score each time so you can try various combinations and pick the winner.
Writing productivity tools
Focus Writer
This writing app focuses on an uncluttered interface and has a hidden menu that you access by moving your mouse to the edge of your screen. Over 20 languages are supported, and it features daily goals, timers, and alarms, customizable themes, spellcheck, and autosave.
Calmly Writer
Does too much clutter distract you? Maximize this writing tool and you are faced with a sea of white and a blinking cursor. Hidden in the menu is a nice feature that estimates reading time. Available as a browser extension or online.
StayFocusd
Sometimes it’s not the clutter that distracts you, but the lure of lolz on Twitter. This highly customizable browser extension increases your productivity by allowing you to limit the amount of time that you can spend on certain websites.
The Most Dangerous Writing App
Even its creators call this app sadistic. If you stop typing for more than about 3 seconds it deletes everything you have written up to that point. It could force you into completing your work before that looming deadline, or it might just make you destroy your laptop in a fit of rage.
Ilys
A unique take on a writing tool that will help anyone who is too precious over their first draft. You set a word limit at the start. When you start typing, the screen flashes up one letter at a time. You can only see what you have written, and edit that copy, once you have exceeded your set number of words.
Otranscribe
Anyone who has had to transcribe some audio will know how painful it can be, especially when you have to switch between an audio player and a word processor. This tool allows you to upload your audio or video file and features a word processor with controls for the audio on the same page.
Style and grammar tools
Hemingway editor
The Hemingway editor allows you to paste your content into the tool and it will analyze it sentence by sentence.
The point is to make your writing bold and clear. It’s like a spellchecker, but for your style. It makes sure that your reader will focus on your message, not struggle through your complex prose.
ProWritingAid
This writing tool features a large number of checks on your writing, from vague words to sentence length and overused words.
Grammar girl
Don’t know if you should be using effect or affect? Struggle with semicolons? Grammar girl has your back, with a library of clearly worded tips that will help clear things up.
UK vs US spelling
For anyone educated in the UK but writing for the US market, here is a comprehensive list of the variations between the two versions of the English language.
Wordcounter
This tool ranks the most frequently used words in any given body of text. You can use it to discover words you overuse or to extract the keywords from a great piece of content you’ve found.
Thesaurus.com
If Wordcounter has revealed you are overusing the same words, head over to Thesaurus.com to find alternatives.
Grammarly
Basically a very good spelling and grammar checker. Grammarly says it corrects over 250 types of grammatical mistakes. It also covers contextual spelling errors and poor vocabulary usage.
Cliche Finder
Enter a body of text and this tool will find a cliché faster than a speeding bullet.
SEO writing tools
Yoast WordPress Plugin
If you are writing content optimized for search engines, this WordPress plug-in will score your efforts based on several factors and ensure you don’t forget any vital components of SEO.
SERP title tool
Enter your title tag, meta description, and URL to see how they’ll appear in a Google search result.
Collaborative writing tools
Google Docs
You can choose who to share your documents with, both inside and outside your organization, and decide on their level of access to allow editing or comment-only input.
Bit.ai
Bit is a new-age cloud-based document collaboration tool that allows teams to create, store, share and track all of their documents easily.
You can invite your peers or fellow writers to the document to work together, gather feedback and make decisions. Your colleagues can collaborate in real-time, highlight changes, add comments, and can even chat with you, without leaving the document.
Research & Idea generation
Alchemy Text
If you want to extract the important topics from a great piece of content, this is the tool for you. AlchemyLanguage is a collection of APIs that offer text analysis through natural language processing. It can analyze text to help you understand its concepts, entities, keywords, sentiment, and more.
Google Trends
Discover trends and see if the subject you are thinking of writing about is taking off or fading into obscurity.
Portent’s Content Idea Generator
A writing tool for when you’re stuck staring at a blank page. Simply enter a topic and it will suggest a title and provide some resources for further reading.
HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator
Another tool to help when you’ve got writer’s block. Add three nouns to this tool and HubSpot will return 5 blog headline ideas.
Brandwatch
Excuse us for blowing our own trumpet, but Brandwatch has several useful functions for a content marketer. Discover relevant trending content, research your audience and what they are talking about, and unearth influencers to amplify your content. We’ve written a free SEO and content guide if you’d like to know more.
Miscellaneous writing tools
Read-O-Meter
Want to give your readers an estimated reading time? Simply copy and paste your text into this tool for an estimate.
A Soft Murmur
If you find the noise of the office too distracting and wish you were on a beach instead, this tool has a variety of ambient sounds out to help with distraction-free writing. You can mix your own sounds, so if you find a burning coffee shop relaxing, they’ve got you covered.
A proofreading tool
Natalie Meehan
Our blog editor, who reads everything before it is published. Having a second pair of human eyes is invaluable. You will probably have to get your own human, as Natalie is very busy and doesn’t have time to read your content as well.
Content marketing resources
Blogs
These five blogs are all leaders in the content marketing blogging world. Keep an eye on these for expert advice.
Content Marketing Institute
Convince and Convert
Marketing Insider Group
The Content Strategist
Copyblogger
With these writing tools in your arsenal, your content should receive that extra boost to help it stand out from the competition.
Title Case
Not sure which letters should be capitalized in your title? Simply copy and paste your headline into this tool and it will convert it into perfect title case.
Headline analyzer
CoSchedule’s headline analyzer breaks down your headline, segmenting different types of words, and giving you hints on how to improve it. It gives you a score each time so you can try various combinations and pick the winner.
Writing productivity tools
Focus Writer
This writing app focuses on an uncluttered interface and has a hidden menu that you access by moving your mouse to the edge of your screen. Over 20 languages are supported, and it features daily goals, timers, and alarms, customizable themes, spellcheck, and autosave.
Calmly Writer
Does too much clutter distract you? Maximize this writing tool and you are faced with a sea of white and a blinking cursor. Hidden in the menu is a nice feature that estimates reading time. Available as a browser extension or online.
StayFocusd
Sometimes it’s not the clutter that distracts you, but the lure of lolz on Twitter. This highly customizable browser extension increases your productivity by allowing you to limit the amount of time that you can spend on certain websites.
The Most Dangerous Writing App
Even its creators call this app sadistic. If you stop typing for more than about 3 seconds it deletes everything you have written up to that point. It could force you into completing your work before that looming deadline, or it might just make you destroy your laptop in a fit of rage.
Ilys
A unique take on a writing tool that will help anyone who is too precious over their first draft. You set a word limit at the start. When you start typing, the screen flashes up one letter at a time. You can only see what you have written, and edit that copy, once you have exceeded your set number of words.
Otranscribe
Anyone who has had to transcribe some audio will know how painful it can be, especially when you have to switch between an audio player and a word processor. This tool allows you to upload your audio or video file and features a word processor with controls for the audio on the same page.
Style and grammar tools
Hemingway editor
The Hemingway editor allows you to paste your content into the tool and it will analyze it sentence by sentence.
The point is to make your writing bold and clear. It’s like a spellchecker, but for your style. It makes sure that your reader will focus on your message, not struggle through your complex prose.
ProWritingAid
This writing tool features a large number of checks on your writing, from vague words to sentence length and overused words.
Grammar girl
Don’t know if you should be using effect or affect? Struggle with semicolons? Grammar girl has your back, with a library of clearly worded tips that will help clear things up.
UK vs US spelling
For anyone educated in the UK but writing for the US market, here is a comprehensive list of the variations between the two versions of the English language.
Wordcounter
This tool ranks the most frequently used words in any given body of text. You can use it to discover words you overuse or to extract the keywords from a great piece of content you’ve found.
Thesaurus.com
If Wordcounter has revealed you are overusing the same words, head over to Thesaurus.com to find alternatives.
Grammarly
Basically a very good spelling and grammar checker. Grammarly says it corrects over 250 types of grammatical mistakes. It also covers contextual spelling errors and poor vocabulary usage.
Cliche Finder
Enter a body of text and this tool will find a cliché faster than a speeding bullet.
SEO writing tools
Yoast WordPress Plugin
If you are writing content optimized for search engines, this WordPress plug-in will score your efforts based on several factors and ensure you don’t forget any vital components of SEO.
SERP title tool
Enter your title tag, meta description, and URL to see how they’ll appear in a Google search result.
Collaborative writing tools
Google Docs
You can choose who to share your documents with, both inside and outside your organization, and decide on their level of access to allow editing or comment-only input.
Bit.ai
Bit is a new-age cloud-based document collaboration tool that allows teams to create, store, share and track all of their documents easily.
You can invite your peers or fellow writers to the document to work together, gather feedback and make decisions. Your colleagues can collaborate in real-time, highlight changes, add comments, and can even chat with you, without leaving the document.
Research & Idea generation
Alchemy Text
If you want to extract the important topics from a great piece of content, this is the tool for you. AlchemyLanguage is a collection of APIs that offer text analysis through natural language processing. It can analyze text to help you understand its concepts, entities, keywords, sentiment, and more.
Google Trends
Discover trends and see if the subject you are thinking of writing about is taking off or fading into obscurity.
Portent’s Content Idea Generator
A writing tool for when you’re stuck staring at a blank page. Simply enter a topic and it will suggest a title and provide some resources for further reading.
HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator
Another tool to help when you’ve got writer’s block. Add three nouns to this tool and HubSpot will return 5 blog headline ideas.
Brandwatch
Excuse us for blowing our own trumpet, but Brandwatch has several useful functions for a content marketer. Discover relevant trending content, research your audience and what they are talking about, and unearth influencers to amplify your content. We’ve written a free SEO and content guide if you’d like to know more.
Miscellaneous writing tools
Read-O-Meter
Want to give your readers an estimated reading time? Simply copy and paste your text into this tool for an estimate.
A Soft Murmur
If you find the noise of the office too distracting and wish you were on a beach instead, this tool has a variety of ambient sounds out to help with distraction-free writing. You can mix your own sounds, so if you find a burning coffee shop relaxing, they’ve got you covered.
A proofreading tool
Natalie Meehan
Our blog editor, who reads everything before it is published. Having a second pair of human eyes is invaluable. You will probably have to get your own human, as Natalie is very busy and doesn’t have time to read your content as well.
Content marketing resources
Blogs
These five blogs are all leaders in the content marketing blogging world. Keep an eye on these for expert advice.
Content Marketing Institute
Convince and Convert
Marketing Insider Group
The Content Strategist
Copyblogger
With these writing tools in your arsenal, your content should receive that extra boost to help it stand out from the competition.
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