Every writer has their favorite tools that make the process of sharing our thoughts with the world easier and more appealing. No doubt, you have your own list and have read through countless others. This list of 18 tools every writer can use highlights simple tools that practically anyone can use. Beginners and up can find valuable help to boost their writing game right from the start, with little to no training or study.
So, if you’re new to the game and wondering where to begin using tools, and what tools to begin with, this handy list is your starting point. Examine each tool and see how it can help you. Everyone looks for certain preferences, and some value certain features more highly than others. Try each tool and use what fits for you.
Brainstorming Tools
These content writing tools help you generate, brainstorm, and organize your ideas.
Ideaflip
Have you ever tried writing down every idea that pops into your head, and then organizing them into some sort of categories for writing? Sounds kinda stupid, huh? Instead of creating a list of jumbled thoughts and creating content around it, you can use Ideaflip. This tool provides a visual, interactive environment that enables you to record, manage, and develop your ideas. The user interface allows you to do anything that will help your ideas spring to life.
HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator
Instead of using random ideas that may appeal to no one, HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator allows you to use up to three keywords to generate ideas more focused around topics that are important to your audience. The tool takes your keywords and generates a long list of subjects you use right away or that can further help direct your research.
Portent’s Content Idea Generator
This headline generator can inspire you to change the way you initially intended to deliver your ideas. To create a topic, enter any word related to your keyword or idea into the search field. You can update search results as many times as necessary until the topic and title is a perfect match for your idea.
Editing and Writing Tools
Every writer needs editing and style correcting tools. Writing tools should free you from clutter, help with writer’s block, and help us catch most of the typos and grammar mistakes we regularly make.
Scrivener
Scrivener is a typewriter, ring binder, scrapbook, research assistant, and publishing tool all rolled into one exceptional package. It is a desktop program that combines word processor and project management into one all-inclusive package. Write your material, your way, and keep tabs on all your ideas as they come. Available for Mac and Windows users.
Grammarly
Grammarly is arguably the best spelling and grammar checker available. It will easily spot errors other apps can’t, and will also help you optimize your text and make it more readable. Plugins are available for Microsoft Word and internet browsers as well. Grammarly keeps all those troublesome grammar rules in its head so you can write with freedom and make accurate corrections later.
Hemingway
Writing for a particular audience or reading level? Hemingway highlights sentences and phrases that are too complex, suggests eliminating excessive adverbs, and turning passive voice constructions into active voice. It even shows a text’s readability score. The counter feature shows the total number of words, characters, paragraphs, and sentences so you can tweak a text’s structure or word count. This tool is available for both PC and Mac.
Copyscape
Copyscape provides the most powerful and popular online plagiarism detection solutions, ranked #1 by independent tests. Copyscape is trusted by millions of writers and website owners to check the originality of their new content, prevent duplicate content, and search for copies of existing content online.
Power Thesaurus
Power Thesaurus is a free thesaurus app which is crowdsourced, eliminating any ads. Its user interface is streamlined and elegant, and the app itself is always keeping up with all the latest developments in linguistics. Boost your language usage with Power Thesaurus.
Multimedia Tools
Simple text is bleah. You need images, infographics, and videos to make your content pop. Start out with these media content tools.
Canva
Content that resonates with an audience is aesthetically pleasing while also being useful and informative. Even beginners can create pleasing eye-candy for their content with Canva. It allows you to create visual content and cover images for all your social media accounts, thanks to a wide variety of easy-to-use templates.
Unsplash
Unsplash is your go-to source for free high-resolution images for practically any project. Search for your subject and get a collection of images from which to choose. Budding artists contribute their images to the database daily, making an already fabulous collection of images grow even faster. They even have tools that allow you to give credit to the artist for the image you use, and all for free.
Infographic Video Maker
Infographics are hugely popular because they offer easily digestible information in a visually pleasing form. Feature some on your website or blog to give a quick, catchy overview of the page content. And, if a picture is worth a thousand words, how about video? Now you can easily create animated infographics with the Infographic Video Maker.
Snappa
Snappa has hundreds of templates for creating graphics to fit social media, newsletters and blog posts, and adds more high-resolution photos to its database daily. Store the graphics you create and go back to your custom designs whenever you need to edit or re-use their design elements. Upload your own images for a Snappa tune-up or choose from their stock.
Planning Tools
Keep your writing process on track with to-do lists, calendars, workflow organizing, file sharing, and more.
Wunderlist
Wunderlist is a digital organizer that can keep your ideas well-structured and remind you of other necessary tasks. It can also transform your emails into to-do lists, move them between folders, and add notices. Share your lists with others, or print them out with a single click.
Google Calendar
Almost everyone uses Gmail, and many use Google Calendar for planning. Why not turn it into a daily planner for your writing and publishing tasks, too? Schedule posts for exact times and dates, and write down topic ideas for upcoming posts. The calendar allows you to make to-do lists and schedule events. In addition, sync your calendar on your mobile device for on-the-go organization.
Dropbox
What can be better than online file storage accessible from any device? Drobox allows you to store your files and share them with others as well. Plus, Dropbox is ideal for exchanging large files like videos and working jointly on the same projects.
Social Media Management Tools
When you finish writing, it’s time to get the word out. Here are some tools for sharing and promoting your creations.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a platform for social media management that simplifies and automates scheduling and publishing posts. Use the different options for scheduling your posts in advance. Once you have prepared your posts, move on to dealing with other tasks. When the publishing time comes, Hootsuite will send you a notification or post your content automatically. It is important to post content on a regular basis, and this tool will help you keep up with the schedule.
CoSchedule
For those of you who make extensive use of Twitter as a content promotion channel and have a blog on WordPress, CoSchedule can be a great help. This plugin turns some of your post passages into tweetable content to be then shared by your followers. It is simple and extremely useful.
Buffer
After creating awesome content, you also need to be smart regarding the timing of your posts. Buffer is an app which enables you to manage and schedule your posts across all social media accounts. In addition, you can keep track of various stats to determine which day of the week or time of day is the most effective for posting new content.
These simple tools can become your reliable assistants and provide considerable help with new topics, designing images, creating content, and every other conceivable project. You save lots of time, which means you can focus on the quality of your content. What are your favorite writing tools? Share them with us in the comments below.