UK vs US spelling
For anyone educated in the UK but writing for the US market, here is a comprehensive list of the variations between the two versions of the English language.
Wordcounter
This tool ranks the most frequently used words in any given body of text. You can use it to discover words you overuse or to extract the keywords from a great piece of content you’ve found.
Thesaurus.com
If Wordcounter has revealed you are overusing the same words, head over to Thesaurus.com to find alternatives.
Grammarly
Basically a very good spelling and grammar checker. Grammarly says it corrects over 250 types of grammatical mistakes. It also covers contextual spelling errors and poor vocabulary usage.
Cliche Finder
Enter a body of text and this tool will find a cliché faster than a speeding bullet.
Yoast WordPress Plugin
If you are writing content optimized for search engines, this WordPress plug-in will score your efforts based on several factors and ensure you don’t forget any vital components of SEO.
Enter your title tag, meta description, and URL to see how they’ll appear in a Google search result.
Google Docs
You can choose who to share your documents with, both inside and outside your organization, and decide on their level of access to allow editing or comment only input.
Research & Idea generation
Alchemy Text
If you want to extract the important topics from a great piece of content, this is the tool for you. AlchemyLanguage is a collection of APIs that offer text analysis through natural language processing. It can analyze text to help you understand its concepts, entities, keywords, sentiment, and more.
Google Trends
Discover trends and see if the subject you are thinking of writing about is taking off or fading into obscurity.
Portent’s Content Idea Generator
A writing tool for when you’re stuck staring at a blank page. Simply enter a topic and it will suggest a title, and provide some resources for further reading.
HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator
Another tool to help when you’ve got writer’s block. Add three nouns to this tool and HubSpot will return 5 blog headline ideas.
Brandwatch
Excuse us for blowing our own trumpet, but Brandwatch has several useful functions for a content marketer. Discover relevant trending content, research your audience and what they are talking about and unearth influencers to amplify your content. We’ve written a free SEO and content guide if you’d like to know more.
Read-O-Meter
Want to give your readers an estimated reading time? Simply copy and paste your text into this tool for an estimate.
A Soft Murmur
If you find the noise of the office too distracting and wish you were on a beach instead, this tool has a variety of ambient sounds out to help with distraction free writing. You can mix your own sounds, so if you find a burning coffee shop relaxing, they’ve got you covered.
Natalie Meehan
Our blog editor, who reads everything before it is published. Having a second pair of human eyes is invaluable. You will probably have to get your own human, as Natalie is very busy and doesn’t have time to read your content as well.
Content marketing resources
To end this list in the most helpful way possible, we thought we’d leave you with some further reading to brush up your content marketing knowledge.
Beginner’s Guides
You can find all sorts of beginner’s guides to SEO and content across the web, but I’d recommend Moz as a great place to start. Their guides are thorough while being easy for anyone to understand.
Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO
Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing
Blogs
These five blogs are all leaders in the content marketing blogging world. Keep an eye on these for expert advice.
Content Marketing Institute
Convince and Convert
Marketing Insider Group
The Content Strategist
Copyblogger
With these writing tools in your arsenal, your content should receive that extra boost to help it stand out from the competition.