3 Simple Writing Tools that will blow your mind
Want to take your writing from good to great? This blog post is for you!
Good writing skills matter. Want proof? Head over to Facebook and type up a grammatically incorrect status update and then sit and wait for the grammar nazis to swarm in to point out your obvious error. OUCH.
Good writing also matters when it comes to your blog posts. While it’s true that blog-style writing tends to be more conversational and loose, the traditional rules of grammar, spelling and readability are still as in important in your blog posts as they are if you were writing your Master’s dissertation.
I use a set of 3 writing tools on almost all of my blog posts (unless I’m being incredibly lazy..which happens) to ensure that my writing is legible, the grammar is correct and my blog post is actually readable to my audience. Below I’m sharing these free tools that you can take advantage of to become a better writer.
Headline Analyzer
I personally always start off with a headline. Even before I write a single word of my blog post, I like to start off with a compelling headline to give me some inspiration. The first tool that I put all of my writing through is the Headline Analyzer by CoSchedule. Headlines matter. In my opinion, they sometimes matter more than the actual article itself, because the headline is your article’s “first impression”. So you need to make sure it catches the attention of your audience!
Headline Analyzer is a FREE tool and it has a very simple interface that allows you to enter the headline you are thinking about using and then assigns it a grade based on a variety of factors: SEO, Sharability & Increased Traffic.
How Headline Analyzer Works
The first thing you do is enter your potential headline into the interface & click on Analyze Now. It will then spit out a grade (out of 100) for your headline. As you can see below, my first attempt at a headline “3 Tools every blogger needs to take your Writing from Good to Great!” received a grade of 65, a B+, which is good..but it could be better.
The Headline Analyzer tool also gives you suggestions on how to can improve your headline. Some of the reasons that this headline didn’t score higher were because the headline was too wordy and did not include any emotional words.
Armed with that information, I tried again with the headline, “Take your Writing from Good to Great: 3 Tools You Need Right Now”
This time, I scored a 71 which is progress, however, my character count was still too long for a headline. So I decided to take one last crack at it with a shorter headline with more power words.
“3 Simple Writing Tools that will blow your mind”
Ding! Ding! Ding! Winner, winner chicken dinner! I scored in the high eighties and that was good enough for me. So as you can probably tell, by looking at the title of this article, I went with the headline that received the highest score.
Hemmingway
Did you know the average person likes to read at a 10th-grade level? So it’s very possible that your writing may be too advanced for the typical blog reader which could cause them to bounce off your website quickly or worse yet…never connect with your writing. Luckily, the Hemmingway app is about to be your new best friend.
Whenever I’m done writing a blog post I like to pass it through the Hemmingway app to make sure that my writing is actually readable. To use the Hemmingway app, all you have to do is copy & paste your blog post into the interface and it will immediately give you lots of great information about your blog post.
For example, I plugged in this current blog post and as you can see in the screenshot above, my readability is good at an 8th-grade level, but there are a few suggested corrections I need to make to increase the readability. Once I make those corrections, my score will increase and I know I’ve got a readable blog post for my audience.
Grammarly
Grammarly is one tool I could NOT live without, it’s like having a built in writing editor for your work. The best part about Grammarly is that it is dead simple to use, if you can copy & paste, you can use Grammarly…and your grammar nerd readers will thank you for it!
Grammarly has a Chrome plugin that you can download and use for FREE. Once you’ve downloaded it, it automatically checks your work when you are writing in WordPress, Facebook, Gmail and just about anywhere you write on the web.
As you can see in the screenshot above, Grammarly finds errors in real-time as you type and indicates the error in a little bubble on the right-hand bottom of your screen. So far, Grammarly has already found 3 grammatical errors in this blog post! In order to see the errors, all you have to do is click on the little icon and it will pop-up a new screen with your revisions.
As you can see in the screenshot above, I apparently have trouble with my commas! All I have to do to make the corrections is click on the revisions and it automatically corrects my grammar. Pretty cool right? 🙂
*Full disclosure, affiliate links were used in this post, which means if you make a purchase from my link, I will make enough money to fill up my coffee cup and for that I thank you!
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As always, I love your helpful posts. I need to try the Headliner one for sure! Thanks for sharing!
I had no idea about Headline Analyzer, what a great tool. I’m going to share this info with my blogging tribe!
I’ve never heard of any of these! As always, you’ve posted another very helpful article. Thank you!
Hey Chrystie,
These are all great tools. As a freelance writer, I especially like Grammarly to catch any errors I might have.
Sometimes I like to use blog topic generators if I’m feeling stuck!
Thanks!
So helpful! I’ll have to check these out, especially the Headline Analyzer – those are the hardest for me.
Yet again, amazing advice! I never would have even thought to look for tools like this!
Great tips! The Headline Analyzer seems to be super useful. I’ve never heard of that. Thanks for sharing!
So many great tools. I ALWAYS overuse commas so I’m definitely going to have to check out Grammarly. Thanks for sharing your wonderful insights!
So useful! Thanks for sharing!
I need the Headline Analyzer! So helpful. Thanks, mama.
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Chrystie,
These tools and your ideas are awesome! You’ve listed almost all of my favorite services but missed OmmWriter – a wonderful online writing environment and Unplag – an online plagiarism detector for professionals and newbies. Enjoy your day!
I hadn’t heard of any of these and they are all seriously fantastic! Just used them to improve my latest blog post scheduled for Monday. Thank you!
Thanks Chrystie this is really informative.
I love these tools. I’ve never heard of them before, and instantly from now on I’ll be using Headline Anylizer, and I’ll look more into the Hemmingway app as well. Thank you!
Like some of your other readers, I did not know of these tools. I will probably try all three of them to see how they work and if they help me enough to go through all those motions. I was extremely alarmed, however, when I purchased the Hemmingway app that they do not have a verified signature or whatever you call it. All kinds of alarm notices came up on my computer. I assume you are marketing this under an affiliate arrangement and I hope you will tell them this needs to be FIXED!
Hi Linda!
I do not have an affiliate arrangement with Hemingway, but thank you for letting me know!
An angel came my way today and led me to your site! You have helpful and valuable info. Thank you!
Hi Crystie!
This post was so helpful! I love the idea of the Headline Analyzer and can’t wait to use it! Brilliant! I’m going to try all three for my new blog. Thanks so much!
-Tesse
I lovveeeee this! Thank you so much for this post! I never knew about Headline Analyzer
and I am definitely going to utilize it. I too love Grammarly and cannot live without it.