Some might say that creating amazing content isn’t an exact science. That it just “takes talent” to write something that will catch the eye of netizens.
Squirrly respectfully disagrees with that statement. The tools we’ll present today will drive our point home. And improve your writing, no doubt.
Without further ado, here are 8 tools that will supercharge your writing skills.
You could, in theory, optimize your content for SEO without the help of a plugin. We even have a handy guide on how to do so.
But why waste so much time reading guides when you could be doing all of that with the help of Squirrly’s live assistant? By using Squirrly’s SEO plugin, you can write your articles on WordPress and have the green lights tell you whenever you do something right:
These features are just at the base of the app. There are over 108 features in Squirrly, including:
Now, this helps you optimize your content for search engines and humans. But what about going into the finer details? Sometimes authors forget about the outside world and just type out everything that comes to mind.
That is no way to engage your readers – especially if your writing is hard to follow. For that purpose, we present the Hemingway App.
What a great name to choose for an app. If you’ve read any of Hemingway’s work, you know a few aspects that make his writing great.
Namely, that his writing is terse. That he writes short, punchy sentences. That he doesn’t use verbosity and complex language to achieve something you can do with simpler words.
He even said so himself. Here is a quote from a piece about him, in a 1950 edition of The New Yorker:
I know the ten-dollar words. There are older and better words which if you arrange then in the proper combination you make it stick. Remember, anybody who pulls his erudition or education on you hasn’t any.
I’ve already broken those rules, but no matter. What matters is that Hemingway App can help your writing in a way no English professor can. Here’s how:
The app is by no means perfect. Nothing is, really. But using it on a constant basis allows you to form invaluable writing habits.
Soon enough, you won’t even need to use the tool to get the effect you want. It will just come to you naturally.
What might not change is the fact that we all make grammatical mistakes once in a while. That’s why you have tools such as Grammarly to help you out.
What is the use in creating amazing content if it has dreaded spelling or grammatical mistakes? If you want to write for a living, or at least at a higher level than it just being a hobby, that is simply unacceptable.
It shows your writing is sloppy, or that you simply don’t care enough about your work or readers. In the end, it shows unprofessionalism, which will only hurt you in the long run.
At the moment, there isn’t a better grammar checking software out there. Microsoft Word’s algorithms have fallen far behind the requirements of current-day writers. Other alternatives (such as Ginger Grammar Checker) don’t have as many features.
Here’s what you can do with this useful software:
Now, if the Grammarly site is to be believed, we have this statement to go by:
“Grammarly’s powerful grammar checking algorithms are developed by the world’s leading authorities on linguistic technology.”
This makes it an excellent tool to use by anyone from students to bloggers – from business people to book writers. No matter what your profession is, Grammarly is there to assist you.
It has a premium model subscription, but luckily you can try it out for free before making a financial decision. That should be the mark of any trustworthy software.
Now for the bad parts. As with anything, there are also some mistakes to be fixed within the software itself.
One thing I should mention is that sometimes the synonyms for a particular word could be limited. Or, the software doesn’t recognize that the context in which the word is used changes its meaning.
That makes for some often humorous situations, such as Grammarly suggesting “childbirth” as a synonym for “delivery.” Unfortunately, the context itself was about delivery teams, not the former.
In any case, you will not be disappointed by the features it offers.
Now that I go over what I’ve written so far I notice that something is missing. I’ve talked at length about tools that help your writing process. With the thought in mind that you’re full of ideas for great content.
But what if you run out of ideas? What if you don’t know what your readers would be interested in next? BuzzSumo is great for such occasions.
BuzzSumo is a content research app. As the name suggests, it helps you get an idea of what the buzz is about at the moment.
For example, let’s say your keyword is “powerful content.” By inserting the keyword into the tool, you would get a list of articles related to that subject.
It also shows how many shares it has across social media platforms. That helps you create a social media strategy around your content, and lets you know what is shareable.
Of course, that’s not the only thing the app can do. By using the “Influencers” option, you can find out what industry thought leaders are saying regarding your subject.
If you’ve gotten to a point where your content is shared a lot, you might like the “Monitoring” option. As the site describes, you can:
“Track your brand mentions, the impact of your competitors’ content, who is linking to you and monitor your progress over time with beautiful charts.”
All in all, BuzzSumo is a very competitive app, to say the least. If you want to stay trendy and get your content out there, give it a try.
One qualm you might have with it is that you only get 14 free tries per day. Unless you go Pro. So make use of them wisely!
And while we’re on the subject of shareability, I feel I should mention something. What makes a headline catchy like the ones you’ve seen on BuzzSumo? CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer might have the answer.
Here’s another tool that is worth your time. Some would say that automatic headline analyzers shouldn’t be trusted.
Well, this one is different from the rest. Just a disclaimer: That doesn’t mean you won’t have to put any work into your headlines – far from it.
But the tool offers you valuable insight into what works and what doesn’t work in a headline.
For example, the tool offers something called the Word Balance Chart. It tells you whether your headline contains enough:
What do those mean? Well, according to CoSchedule themselves:
Using a mix of these “ingredients” as I’ve called them, you can create great headlines that command attention.
Some nice additions to the software are the character and word counters. Nobody reads lengthy headlines anymore.
The solution is simple. The lower the word and character count, the higher the chance your title will be read.
The lower the word and character count, the better the #headline. #CoSchedule Click To TweetYou also have a (in my opinion) fairly inaccurate “Sentiment” feature. This ascribes what sort of feeling your headline stirs in the reader. But without a proper contextualizing algorithm, that is left up to you to decide whether it’s accurate or not.
In the end, CoSchedule’s tool is more of a guideline through which you can tweak your own titles – a very good one, at that.
We’re assuming that by “creating amazing content” you mean “crushing the competition.” And that’s exactly what SEMRush was built for.
It’s a site audit tool that also helps out with your SEO techniques by doing all of the following:
I almost forgot about the Site Audit component. When your website is not fully optimized, SEMRush warns you with some helpful tips.
It’s shown as a sort of “health bar” for the overall performance of your website. Use it to its fullest extent!
Just like the following tool.
BuzzSumo was great at offering you what the latest buzz was regarding your chosen subject. The problem arises when you need to actually write something yourself.
What sits on the minds of your readers? What are they searching for, regarding a chosen subject?
AtP’s tool can assist you with the above questions:
You get a schematic including all the possible combinations of searches related to your keyword. They’re taken straight from Google’s suggestions algorithms.
If you don’t like the format of the “word cloud” AtP puts forward, you can also view the results as a list.
I personally prefer the list variant. Trying to read the “cloud” as it is would have you sitting in some very weird positions on your desk chair.
You can also download a .png image of the schematic, but that’s up to you to decide.
Now you have some semblance of an idea about what your readers might be thinking. If you need even more details or ideas for blog posts, you might want to check out the next tool.
You need to master the art of social media management. If you have a handful of social profiles, one of a few things could happen:
To avoid a headache or twelve, consider a platform such as Squirrly Social to manage all of your accounts in one place. It supports all the big ones (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn).
But we did mention a handful. So by using the Squirrly Social connections, you can use a free Buffer account that allows you to extend your control to other platforms, including:
If you’ve set up a content calendar, you’re going to have a lot of work on your hands, scheduling posts on social media.
Squirrly Social allows you to schedule everything from one place. You can even create categories and repeat each post several times.
On the other hand, you can also let Squirrly Social help you write the best posts for you. It can even automatically add hashtags and emojis to your posts.
#SquirrlySocial can automatically find the best hashtags for your posts. Click To TweetYou can even use their Social Media Assistant feature to find a list of posts according to what you are searching for, that you can share with your followers. Or you can set it to post things from your RSS feeds as soon as they’re published.
That is very useful if you’re publishing very often and would like your audience to know as soon as you have something fresh out.
If you don’t feel like doing it yourself, you can delegate some social media tasks to your team. You didn’t think you were in this alone, did you? The tool has some excellent team management options.
All in all, Squirrly Social seems like a lifesaver to anyone that focuses on creating amazing content.
Using the above eight tools should definitely change the way you see, feel, and write content. Now you’re able to:
That’s quite the bullet list of new talents. But hey, you wanted powerful content, didn’t you? If you want to go into more detail, you can always check out the rest of our blog.
Let me know down in the comments what tools you use for content creation.
