Have you ever visited a website and wondered how the content creation process was done? Who helped the website owner create that piece of content? What’s their secret? You’re not alone. The truth is, there are various tools available that can help you become an online content producer. This has led me to creating my own list of go-to online content creation tools.
While there are many tools that can help us create content faster and better, here’re useful online tools that you could use.
Grammarly
Write, write, write… Sound like an average workday? But as any content creator knows, editing is just as important as the writing process. This content creation tool also made HubSpot’s Ultimate List of Free Content Creation Tools & Resources. Grammarly is an automated proofreading platform. It corrects over 250 types of spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors.
Copy and paste content directly into a Grammarly document to check for grammar and spelling mistakes. It helps to check sections of content as you write. For example, upload answers to an RFP before handing it over to the review team. Or check sections of training courses before handing them over to be designed.
Hemingway Editor
Affect the editorial skills of Ernest Hemingway with this content creation tool. The Hemingway Editor is a proofreading tool for readers. It details the revisions you can’t see in Grammarly without upgrading to Grammarly Pro. Copy your content into Hemingway Editor and it will highlight style suggestions.
Sentences highlighted in yellow or red will flag where writing is too dense. One of its strongest features is its capability to highlight uses of passive voice. Avoid using passive voice in all content — including training materials, marketing collateral, and sales literature. Active voice is critical in creating compelling copy and in winning proposals.
Microsoft’s Snipping Tool
This content creation tool is one of the most simple but is also maximizes the amount of time spent editing. Microsoft’s Snipping Tool is simple and straightforward: capture screenshots. But, it’s more than that. You can cross out content, highlight sections, insert arrows, and add your own suggestions in type.
Once you’ve created a snip, you can save or copy and paste into emails and chat windows. The Snipping Tool comes in handy when providing feedback for web pages and layout design in addition to longer content like business proposals or training materials.
Trello
Content creators have a lot of content. Trello makes it easy to share, collaborate, set reviews and approvals, and create an editorial calendar for whole teams. Devote one project or one team to a virtual Trello board. Use Trello to organize entire projects and filter for specific team members to check the status of project updates.
Trello saves a lot of time and a lot of emails. Instead of sending status updates, simply move a project’s Trello card to the appropriate user or status.
Google Trends
Google Trends helps to keep you in the loop. Google Trends reveals insight into today’s relevant content. Not yesterday’s. Google Trends is ideal for those who frequently create content. This includes those who blog, have a heavy social presence, develop content for specific groups of people, or work in marketing.
The Content Marketing Institute recommends using Google Trends to research keywords, discover content ideas, and monitor your brand.
Simply enter in a topic or explore trending stories and featured insights. Google Trends displays the frequency of search terms in consideration of its total volume across geographic regions. Additionally, Google Trends shows search interest over time. Depending on the flux of query volumes, you may choose one topic over another to discuss in whatever content you create.
Moz Keyword Explorer
You wouldn’t want to create awesome content and not get noticed. Easily check what keyword to use for blog posts and site pages with Moz’s Keyword Explorer. You can enter terms or phrases into Moz Keyword Explorer. Moz will provide you with keyword suggestions and a SERP analysis reflective of the keyword’s search volume, difficulty, opportunity, and potential.
Once you start exploring, you can export CSV files and save them for later. This includes the top ranking sites containing your keyword or phrase. Moz Keyword Explorer allows for two free searches a day. If you require more searching, you can upgrade to a paid subscription starting at $50 a month.
Sigstr
Sigstr is an email signature banner. Email banners are added and changed from one admin console with changes immediately reflected in employees’ email signatures. Sigstr banners are a great way to intertwine visual content and compelling copy.
You can create unique signatures for departments, teams, executives, and customer service. Swap out Sigstr signatures to engage email recipients with company news, upcoming events, and relevant content.
Giphy
If you blog or even just read a lot of blogs, you know how easy it is to get lost in a sea of words. GIFs are a really easy way to grab the audience’s attention. Sometimes animation shows more than just still images. But where is everyone finding GIFs? Giphy is a free visual content creation tool. You can contextually search for GIFs, or you can create your own.
Have one team member who can answer your chats and emails at lightning speed with an animated GIF suited for the context? In addition to sparring in chat messages, use Giphy in blog posts.
Grammarly
Grammarly is my go-to grammar and spelling checker tool. If you want to rank on search engines and provide a better user experience for your readers, your content should be error-proof.
This tool checks your content for grammatical errors, misspelling, plagiarism, as well as the tone of your content. It also has a Chrome extension, which comes in very handy when typing something on almost all web platforms.
Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $29.95/mo.
CoSchedule Headline Studio
This one is another one of my favorite content creation tools. CoSchedule’s Headline Studio analyzes your content’s headline and gives a score to it based on different factors like SEO, emotional words, uncommon words, word count, clarity, and more.
You can use it to optimize your headlines and craft the best-performing ones to rank higher on search engines and drive organic traffic to your site. In short, it is a simple yet powerful tool for your content creation process.
Headline Studio has a Chrome extension as well.
Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $9/mo.
Copy.ai
This one is for lazy content creators (guilty as charged 😬) or whenever you feel lazy to write everything from scratch. Copy.ai leverages artificial intelligence to reduce the time and effort you spend on copywriting. Essentially, this tool writes your copy for you.
It makes sure the copy it generates sounds as authentic as possible. You can tweak the content you like among the choices it provides. What can Copy.ai write for you?
- Product descriptions
- Blog posts
- Social ads
- Startup copies: brand voice, motto, value proposition, etc.
- Email copy
- Sales Copy
- Social media captions
Pricing: Free trial available. Premium plans start at $35 per month.
If you haven’t tried this tool yet, I suggest you go and test it out on its free trial. An alternative to this tool that is also worth mentioning is Ryter. It is relatively cheaper for $29/m with a yearly plan. But copy.ai excels in many ways compared to Ryter.
Canva
Need to develop striking visual content? Don’t have a lot of time? Check out Canva. Canva is an easy-to-use tool to create graphics and documents ready to print or to publish online. Features include photos, photo filters, icons, shapes, and hundreds of fonts. Outbrain listed Canva as an awesome digital content creation tool because of its drag and drop design feature.
New users can sign up for a free Canva account and start designing with ready to use design layouts. Canva comes ready with pre-sized social media templates in addition to templates for flyers, posters, and email headers.
Mimeo uses Canva for our Instagram account (@_mimeo). Canva’s capability to share designs and templates makes it easy for our content creators to collaborate together.
Pixlr
Pixlr delivers the capabilities of PhotoShop for free. There’s tons of value in the free version. For those requiring more editing capabilities, Pixlr Pro comes with more design tools and features at a price of $14.99 a year.
Pixlr comes in handy when creating graphics for presentations and social media. Use Pixlr to resize images, apply quick fixes, and remove the image background.
Conclusion
There are so many content creation tools on the market and they are so easy to use that anyone can create professional quality content around any subject. Start with your topic. Do a little research and create a list of words and phrases that are related to your content. Add one or more of these words and phrases to your title, description, key words and tags. This strategy will improve your rank on search engines. You can also publish articles on websites that allow you to post for free.