45 Free Content Writing Tools to Love [for Writing, Editing & Content Creation]

Creating content material is not at all times a stroll within the park. (The truth is, it will probably generally really feel extra like making an attempt to swim towards the present.)

Whereas different components of enterprise and advertising have gotten more and more automated, content material creation continues to be a really guide job.

That being stated, there are many instruments on the market to make creating content material a lot simpler.

Beneath, you will discover a listing of 36 unbelievable instruments and sources that can assist you analysis, write, edit, and design content material extra simply. (You may discover there are a number of design instruments in right here — that is as a result of visible content material is usually the a part of the content material creation course of the place individuals get probably the most nervous and annoyed. So don’t be concerned, we have a ton in there for you.)

Let’s get began.

36 Free Instruments & Sources to Make Content material Creation Simpler

For Researchers

1) Google Drive Research Tool

Google lately added a instrument to Drive that means that you can conduct Google searches with out ever leaving your Drive window. All you must do is click on “Instruments” from the menu bar and select “Analysis” from the dropdown menu.

2) Site:search

This can be a useful Google hack I take advantage of every single day. Mainly, it means that you can do a Google search that is restricted to a specific web site.

For instance, if I wished to go looking HubSpot’s weblog for advertising sources so I can cite certainly one of our outdated weblog posts, I might do a web site:seek for weblog.hubspot.com with the search time period advertising sources. The components for web site search is web site:samplewebsite.com [search query]. So my instance could be web site:weblog.hubspot.com advertising sources.

3) Google Webmaster Tools

Doing web optimization and key phrase analysis? Your advertising software program ought to be capable of assist. But when it will probably’t (otherwise you’d like to reinforce your knowledge), Google’s Webmaster Instruments could be a nice assist. You may test issues just like the variety of listed pages in your web site, submit your web site to Google so that you’re getting crawled and listed, and even disavow unhealthy inbound hyperlinks. It additionally can provide you data on search queries which have a big quantity of impressions however low clickthrough fee.

Inside Google Webmaster Instruments, go to “Your web site on the net” and select “Search queries.” You may see a desk displaying a search question, impressions, clicks, and clickthrough fee (CTR). Evaluating this knowledge to your different analytics knowledge might help uncover some alternatives.

4) Percentage Change Calculator

I can not even start to let you know how helpful this little calculator is when on the lookout for and analyzing knowledge. Ever need to know the share change of two values with out having to recollect the components? Merely enter the 2 values into this calculator, and it will spit out the share change. Belief me, you will need to bookmark this one.

Listed below are a couple of different useful calculators:

• 3-Way Percentage Calculator – Calculates solutions to those questions: What’s X% of Y? X is what % of Y? X is Y% of what?
• Conversion Rate Calculator – Spits out a conversion fee once you enter the full customer depend throughout a particular time-frame and the variety of occasions throughout that time-frame these guests took a particular motion.
• A/B Test Calculator – Works for a fundamental situation with two teams of individuals (A & B) who get to see one model of your web site and for whom you observe the variety of conversions or targets (purchases, downloads, clickthroughs, and so on.).
• ROI Calculator – Analyzes your web site’s month-to-month gross sales and lead era efforts to find out methods by which advertising efforts could be optimized.

5) Atlas

Atlas is Quartz‘s knowledge middle, and it is chock-full of graphs, charts, and knowledge visualizations. You may seek for virtually any matter or key phrase, and Atlas may have a graphic based mostly on latest analysis knowledge for you. This can be a useful gizmo to get background data on a subject you are researching, or to search out recent knowledge to make use of in a challenge you are engaged on. This is a chart based mostly on knowledge from early 2016:

Supply: Atlas

6) Search in a Giphy

You understand that coworker who at all times appears to search out the right animated GIFs to your social posts or inner chat shopper? With the free Giphy Chrome extension, you’ll discover nice GIFs simply as shortly.

To make use of the instrument, all you must do is open the extension in Chrome, search, select a GIF, and drag and drop. Up to now, the instrument works in Gmail, Twitter, Fb, and extra — and so they’re continually increasing assist.

For Writers

7) Evernote

I take advantage of the free model of Evernote each single day. From to-do lists and analysis notes to writing complete chunks of articles, it is confirmed useful at each step of the writing and modifying course of.

One nice function? Its cell, desktop, and internet apps sync mechanically so long as you’ve got an web connection. (And when you work offline, it’s going to sync the following time you’ve got web.) Plus — and that is tremendous necessary for content material creators like us — it is continually saving and syncing your work mechanically, making it a secure place to put in writing and retailer concepts.

Use it to maintain a working listing of concepts, take notes, retailer inspiring articles or ebooks, or plan your editorial and social media publishing calendars.

8) Word2CleanHTML

If you happen to like drafting weblog posts in applications like Microsoft Phrase, Evernote, or Google Drive as a substitute of your content material administration system (CMS), then this straightforward instrument could be your finest good friend. Why? As a result of once you copy a doc from Microsoft Workplace and paste it into your CMS, a number of little, bizarre formatting points can crop up in your HTML.

Word2CleanHTML applies filters to repair all these issues added into the HTML, leading to well-formatted HTML you possibly can paste straight into an internet web page CMS. Merely paste in your draft, click on one button, after which copy the ensuing HTML straight from the instrument. While you paste that into your CMS (most may have buttons studying “HTML” or “</>” of their instrument bar above your draft), it can seem good and clear. No hair-pulling or swimming via code required.

9) WordCounter

There isn’t any “proper reply” for how long a blog post should be. So long as it serves its goal — whether or not that is thought management, driving leads, explaining a brand new idea, or one thing else — size would not matter. However though we do not advocate writing weblog posts with a phrase depend in thoughts, generally phrase depend can come in useful. WordCounter works precisely the best way you assume it does: Paste in your content material and it will spit out precisely what number of phrases you’ve got.

10) Cofftivity

In line with a study out of the University of Chicago, “A reasonable stage of ambient noise is conducive to inventive cognition.” In different phrases, being the tiniest bit distracted really helps you be extra inventive. That is why for many individuals, myself included, white noise helps promote focus.

There are a number of white noise turbines on the market, however my favourite is Cofftivity. This explicit one provides continuous café background sounds at various intensities, from “Morning Murmur” and “College Undertones” to “Lunchtime Lounge” and “Brazil Bistro.” It is obtainable on the net and as an app on iOS and Android.

11) & 12) Zerys & eLance

Want to begin creating content material however do not have the bandwidth? We hear about this roadblock rather a lot. One strategy to get round it’s by hiring freelancers from respected marketplaces like Zerys or eLance. These sources offer you entry to expert freelance writers who can write weblog posts, ebooks, whitepapers, and different items of written content material for you.

13) HTML Hacks for Marketers

Whereas this is not strictly a writing useful resource, fundamental coding information is shortly becoming a must-have skill for the trendy marketer — bloggers and written content material creators included. However studying from scratch could be daunting. The place on earth do you begin?

If you happen to’re a complete newbie, begin with HTML Hacks for Marketers, which my colleagues at HubSpot created with Codeacademy. It’s going to train you fast however helpful hacks anybody — no matter coding information — can use of their advertising. For instance, you will learn to make small modifications to HTML like altering headers and spacing, creating textual content in block-quote type, and inserting social share hyperlinks. My private favourite is the hack to vary font colours.

As soon as you’ve got mastered these fundamental HTML expertise, transfer on to Codeacademy’s free interactive courses. They discovered a strategy to make studying HTML and CSS really enjoyable — and you may undergo every lesson at your personal tempo.

14) Blog Topic Generator

If you have to get to writing weblog posts however aren’t certain of an angle or title to get your creativity shifting, HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator can do the be just right for you. Merely enter a couple of key phrases that your weblog focuses on, and the Weblog Matter Generator will produce per week’s price of titles and matter concepts for you. It may not produce the ultimate title of your weblog publish, however it helps get you excited about inventive new angles for matters you’ve got written about earlier than.

Listed below are the weblog publish titles I obtained once I entered “content material,” “inbound advertising,” and “running a blog”:

15) Blog Post Templates

All weblog posts aren’t created equal, however we have discovered that there are steps you possibly can take to make your posts complete and shareable. With these blog post templates, we’ll stroll you thru an overview to put in writing profitable how-to, listicle, newsjack, and curation weblog posts. As a substitute of ranging from scratch, you will save time and, hopefully, nail your weblog targets.

For Content material Editors

16) Editorial Calendar Template

Making a balanced editorial calendar could be powerful, particularly if you do not have one centralized calendar that you just and your group can confer with. To avoid wasting you time and headache, we have created editorial calendar templates for Google Calendar, Google Sheets, and Excel you can fill in and share along with your group to begin the following month or yr off on the correct foot.

17) & 18) Grammarly & Correctica

Whereas human editors will be capable of catch most grammatical errors, modifying instruments like Grammarly and Correctica are nice instruments for triple-checking earlier than you press “publish” or “ship.” Each free instruments test for grammatical errors — and Grammarly even checks for plagiarism.

19) Hemingway App

Ernest Hemingway, admired for his succinct writing type, is the namesake for this useful modifying app. Wish to make your written content material simpler to learn? Paste your content material into this free internet app, and it will assess your writing and determine alternatives to make it easier.

My favourite options embrace figuring out passive voice and hard-to-read sentences. Take a look at the right-hand aspect of the screenshot under, the place the instrument has summed up how readable my writing is with a grade. (Some room for enchancment right here.) Their suggestion to enhance readability general? Shoot for decrease than a tenth grade studying stage.

20) Headline Analyzer

This is a scary stat for you: Only 60% of people that click on into an article find yourself studying previous the headline. That makes your headline each the primary and probably the one likelihood so that you can compel readers to maintain studying — so it’s very price it to spend the additional jiffy arising with a extremely good one.

What does a extremely good headline seem like? The free instrument Headline Analyzer by CoSchedule can let you know. It scores your headline high quality and charges its potential to drive social shares, visitors, and web optimization worth. In my expertise, its energy helps you strengthen particular elements of your title. For instance, it studies on perceived sentiment and commonality of phrase sorts. It’s going to even present you the way it will seem in search outcomes.

So though you need to take these scores and grades with a grain of salt, you need to use this to provide your headlines a “once-over.” (And read this blog post to learn more about writing awesome headlines.)

For Designers

21) Nimbus Screenshot

That is one other instrument I take advantage of every single day. Certain, you possibly can seize a screenshot of your complete display screen or a part of your display screen utilizing the outdated keyboard shortcut method. However what if you’d like your screenshot to incorporate stuff that is not seen in your display screen?

Nimbus Screenshot enables you to seize the seen a part of an internet web page, a particular space, a particular scroll (my private favourite), the complete web page, or the complete browser window — together with every part under the fold.

As soon as you’ve got taken the screenshot, you possibly can crop, edit (like including notes and callouts), and select to print or save to your desktop or Google Drive.

22) Canva

If you happen to like creating lovely visual content in a extremely brief period of time, you will love Canva. The time and sources it takes to be taught design, pay for design belongings, and/or get impressed to create magnificence from scratch could be actually tough once you’re looking at a protracted listing of to-dos — however Canva provides an enormous library of pre-made templates and belongings you can manipulate whereas additionally including your personal imagery.

Better of all, they’ve so many belongings and graphics obtainable without cost that you just will not need to pay a cent when you do not need to. If you wish to use extra “premium” belongings and graphics discovered via their picture search, they’re going to cost you $1 for every. However there’s loads of worth without cost.

This is an instance of one thing you could possibly make:

23) ThingLink

Ever wished to make a picture (or infographic) clickable? ThingLink enables you to add a picture and add little icons to it that seem when an individual hovers their cursor over the picture. These icons permit customers to go to hyperlinks, watch movies, or learn messages you’ve got written. Plus, it is simple to share: Customers can simply embed ThingLink photographs. (Click here for step-by-step instructions.)

Beneath is a part of a a clickable infographic from Thinglink my colleague Ginny Mineo created for another post:

 

24) Skitch

Skitch is a free app by Evernote that helps you talk extra visually. It enables you to mark up photographs, digital belongings, PDFs, and different recordsdata with arrows, callout containers, textual content, and extra multi functional place.

Within the instance under, I opened this system on my desktop and used the “Display screen Snap” button to take a screenshot of an internet web page — which then opened proper in Skitch for modifying and exporting.

Though it is free, it does require you to open an Evernote account — however that is additionally free (see above).

25) Infogram

Whereas much like Canva, Infogram is a visible content material instrument that focuses on serving to you create infographics, charts, and knowledge visualization. If you happen to prefer to create charts utilizing Microsoft Excel, you are in luck — it additionally provides compatibility with Excel via Infogram Charts. Additionally, their infographics are responsive with cell units.

26) Infographic Templates

As a content material marketer, you would possibly really feel extra snug creating written content material than visible content material, however that is no excuse to exclude infographics out of your technique. Visual content is rising in demand out of your viewers, and infographics are notably shareable. We have created the backbones of 15 completely different templates you can simply mess around with to customise to your content material and viewers — here is a sneak peek of 1 template, and you may grab the rest here. 

Supply: 15 Free Infographic Templates in PowerPoint

27) Google Fonts

Wish to spruce up your web site pages, shows, ebooks, and different content material with cool and completely different new fonts? Little-known truth: Google has a listing of 600 free fonts prepared so that you can obtain and use.

Merely discover and choose the fonts you want from their directory, then click on “Use” to get the HTML code you possibly can copy and paste onto your web site. Alternatively, you possibly can obtain the fonts to your desktop and use them when making new advertising content material by clicking “Add to Assortment.” (Click here for step-by-step instructions for doing this in the HubSpot software.)

28) Image Color Picker

Keep in mind that time you wished to match your call-to-action design to that colour you had been utilizing on all of your occasion swag … however the one one who would know what that colour was did not work at your organization anymore? Subsequent time that occurs, snag an image of that swag and add it to ImageColorPicker.com, or use any picture URL to do the identical factor. Choose any level of the image, and instantly see its corresponding HEX, RGB, and HSV values.

29) PowerPoint Templates

Is there something extra boring than a PowerPoint presentation that includes black textual content on a white background? With the assistance of those templates, you’ll put collectively compelling, visually interesting shows. Whether or not you are driving lead era or reporting in your weblog’s development to your group, preserve your viewers’s consideration with these eye-catching shows.

30) SlideShare Templates

SlideShare would not have to be daunting. You may simply create shareable, embeddable SlideShare presentations in PowerPoint with the assistance of those templates — no want to begin from scratch or rent a freelancer. As soon as you’ve got created your first presentation, take a look at our information to marketing SlideShares successfully.

31) Haiku Deck

If you happen to’ve ever needed to create a PowerPoint or SlideShare presentation in a pinch, you will want you knew about Haiku Deck. This instrument helps you shortly discover easy layouts, lovely photographs, and nice fonts. It is obtainable for the online and for iPad.

Wish to see what one seems like? Beneath’s an instance I pulled from their list of featured decks. Observe the simplicity of the design — if you wish to create tremendous detailed slides, this will not be the correct instrument for you.

Snowed In? – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software program that conjures up

32) HubSpot’s Free Stock Photos

Trying to find and shopping for inventory imagery could be a ache within the you-know-what — particularly with regards to deciphering legalese for various use instances. I’ve a liberal arts diploma, and Nietzsche was simpler to learn than no matter legalese inventory imagery corporations tended to provide me. All I wished to know is whether or not to quote or not cite a inventory picture of a laptop computer. Why was it so laborious?

That is why our group determined to create a library of 550+ free and royalty-free stock photos. Whether or not it is a distinctive picture wanted for an e-book or that good photograph you need to add to a weblog publish, that assortment ought to have you ever coated. This is certainly one of our “across the kitchen” inventory images — yum.

Supply: The Free Stock Photos You’ve Been Searching For

33) PlaceIt

PlaceIt serves a really particular goal: It means that you can add photographs of your web site or product into real-world environments of individuals holding telephones, tablets, and laptops. PlaceIt will mechanically alter the picture to make it seem pure with the angle of the cellphone’s display screen — which is able to prevent time studying and/or modifying in additional superior software program to get the angle proper.

You may need to pay per picture to get actually massive or high-resolution variations, although I’ve discovered free photographs work simply high-quality for weblog posts and product web page content material. The paid downloads additionally take away that PlaceIt watermark from the underside proper.

34) LICEcap

On the lookout for the right GIF to incorporate in your weblog publish? If it would not exist already on Giphy, you can also make one your self utilizing LICEcap. Movie a screenshot and switch it right into a GIF utilizing this useful, free instrument — we use LICEcap for our blog posts, too. 

35) & 36) The Noun Project & HubSpot’s Resizable Icons Collection

Like with inventory images, one other problem content material creators face is discovering elegant icons that resize with out getting all fuzzy. There are a couple of sources on the market for excellent, resizable icons.

The Noun Project is an in depth library of 1000’s of icons uploaded by contributors. With a free account, you need to use icons so long as you both give credit score to the creator or buy them royalty-free for $1.99 apiece.

HubSpot has a library of resizeable icons, too, which you’ll obtain without cost and with none licensing or attribution. The equipment comes with a free information for find out how to change the colour of the icons utilizing PowerPoint, Photoshop, and Illustrator.

To that, we are saying …

(From HubSpot’s Free Icon Collection.)