18 Tools for Writing Compelling Content, to Attract Customers

Writing compelling content — whether it’s for your website or social media campaign — is an excellent way to attract and engage customers. Unfortunately, there’s no automated tool to write great content for you. But there are a variety of tools to help you write, edit, and produce content more easily.

Here is a list of tools for writing content. There are tools for idea generation, writing spaces, style guides, grammar checks, readability tests, and creating sharable content. Most of these tools offer free plans.

For more on planning content, read “5 Tools to Plan and Post Social Media Content.”

Tools for Writing Content

Evernote. Evernote is a tool to generate content, from inspiration to completion. Write, collect information, find what you need, and present your ideas. Communicate and collaborate in real-time without leaving Evernote. Present your work as it evolves with just one click, transforming notes into screen-friendly images. Price: Basic is free. Premium plans start at $24.99 per year.

Evernote.

Google Docs. Google Docs let you access, create, and edit documents wherever you go, from your phone, tablet, or computer. Google Docs is an ideal tool for collaboration. See real-time edits from others, watching their cursor as they make changes or highlight text. Chat with others inside any document, or add a comment with an email address to notify someone. Even research topics in a sidebar as your write. Price: Free.

Portent’s Content Idea Generator. This tool is an idea generator. Enter a keyword and quickly generate a compelling title, along with helpful tips. Use it for inspirational ideas and helpful title strategies. Price: Free.

HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator. Here is another idea generator for content topics. Enter up to three nouns, and receive a week’s worth of relevant titles in seconds. Price: Free.

AP Stylebook. The AP Stylebook is a writing style guide for journalists. It is published and updated annually to reflect changes in style. It provides fundamental guidelines for spelling, language, punctuation, usage, and journalistic style. Price: $26 for 1-year online access; $20.95 for printed book.

AP Stylebook.

Guardian Style Guide. This is the free style guide from The Guardian, the international newspaper and media company, for The Guardian and Observer newspapers. The guide gives proper style on modern terms and proper names. You can also follow the style guide on Twitter @guardianstyle. Price: Free.

Zen Pen. Zen Pen is a clean and simple writing zone, freeing you from distraction so that you can just focus on the writing. Zen Pen is an open-source project on Github. Price: Free.

Ilys. Ilys is a writing tool to spur your writing and restrict your inner editor. Just tell Ilys how many words you want to write. Once you begin writing, you can’t go back, delete or edit anything until you have completed your word count goal. Once you’ve reached your goal, you can edit your text. Price: Free.

Grammarly. Grammarly is an online grammar and spell checking application. Instantly find and correct over 250 types of grammatical mistakes. Improve word choice with context-optimized vocabulary suggestions. Detect plagiarism by checking your text against over 8 billion web pages. Price: $139.95 per year.

Grammarly.

Correctica. Correctica is an automated service that scans your entire website for errors that grammar checkers often don’t catch. Receive a complete report each month of the errors on your site, covering all new pages and new errors on existing pages. Price: Plans start at $9 per month.

Byword. Byword is a writing app for iOS that gives you just the tools you need to write Markdown and rich text with little friction. Publish to WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, Scriptogr.am blogs, and Evernote notebooks directly from Byword. Price: $11.99.

Quabel. Quabel is a streamlined writing app to focus on your writing. Quabel has a clean, straightforward user interface that lets you concentrate on writing content. Set goals and increase your performance. Format your text with simple commands. Quabel supports markdown. Price: Basic is free. Premium is 3€ per month.

Quabel.

Hemingway App. Hemingway App is an online tool to make your writing bold and clear. Hemingway highlights long, complex sentences and common errors. If you see a yellow highlight, shorten the sentence or split it. If you see a red highlight, your sentence is so dense that readers will get lost trying to follow it. Passive phrases are in green, long words are in purple, unnecessary adverbs are in blue. Price: Free.

After the Deadline. After the Deadline is a Chrome extension to check spelling and grammar. Use it to check full articles or short content like tweets. Just click the ABC icon in the lower-right corner of an editable area to proofread your writing. Price: Free.

The Readability Test Tool. The Readability Test Tool provides a quick and easy way to test the readability of your work. Test all or part of a web page, or just type in your text. Link directly from your page, and it will compute the results for the referring page. Price: Free.

The Readability Test Tool.

Headline Analyzer. This free headline analyzer from CoSchedule will score your overall headline quality and rate its ability to result in social shares, increased traffic, and search-engine-optimization value. Price: Free.

SavePublishing. SavePublishing is a bookmarklet that looks at your text and decides which statements are tweetable. If you want to share content, but your sentences seem too long, SavePublishing can help you find the right lengths to share. Price: Free.

InboundWriter. InboundWriter is a tool to remove the guesswork from content creation. Get insights on how your content will perform before you write it. Discover which topics will work and which won’t. Follow content optimization best practices through an easy-to-use tool and tips for word choices, content structure, and other criteria. Get real-time analytical data on the effectiveness of your content. Price: Contact on pricing.

InboundWriter.