How I Successfully Use These 4 Content Tools Without Spending a Penny

You don’t need to be a fancy Nancy in order to be a success

Every day, I hear about a new strategy or an app that promises the ability to churn out a billion words or transform you into a lean mean social media whiz.

Writing is a hobby for me and that means it is something that helps me relax. So, I have always kept things simple and minimalistic with regard to writing.

Also, I have never felt motivated to spend a single penny out of pocket other than the $5 monthly fee I pay for my Medium subscription fees. Whatever I need to learn, I do so through keen observation and networking with other writers who know what they’re talking about.

Considering the minimal expenses, the returns on both the platforms I write on plus the growth on my social media accounts have been more than satisfactory.

I am not saying strategies, courses, and apps are not helpful. On the contrary, they can work for different people depending on their goals. I’m just saying, I personally have never felt the need or the urge to veer from what has been working for me over the past 2 years.

4 Staples in my content writing tool kit

🎈Google Docs

Thank goodness for Google Docs! It is free, easy to use, and convenient which makes it my absolute fav for writing drafts.

In case you aren’t using it, here are some of its pros: “It autosaves your document to Google Drive after nearly every word you type — ensuring you never lose part of your draft — and it backs up everything you write to the cloud automatically.”

Not only is it my go-to not for writing and archiving but also sharing my drafts in progress with other writers, clients, etc.

🎈The Yanalyzer

“On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” — David Ogilvy in “Confessions of an Advertising Man”

In other words, the headline (to a large extent) determines whether your article is worth a click or not. While there are several headline-analyzing tools out there that may or may not result in an article-clicking frenzy, I personally prefer what I cheekily refer to as the Yanalyzer.

The idea behind the Yanalyzer is simple — to write emotionally impactful titles with the audience in mind by successfully using these 2 simple hacks (in lieu of a headline analyzer) that you can read below👇

🎈Canva

“As a content creator, if you don’t have a strategy for baking visual content into your pieces, your content will fall flat” — Brandon B. Keith

If you are not yet aware of the importance of visuals in content marketing, then you must be living under a rock. Over the years, visuals in the content have been gaining momentum in marketing efforts as demonstrated by a survey conducted by Venngage. A whopping 51% of their respondents said 91–100% of their content contained visuals.

The most frequently used visuals were original graphics closely followed by stock photos.

Canva is a tool that can aid a writer in creating high-quality graphics not only for social media but also in lieu of the used to death stock photos in their articles.

I use Canva for creating images for my Instagram as well as Medium articles.

🎈Grammarly

This editing tool needs no intro. I use the free version for a quick run-through before I submit a draft for publishing. It is amazing how many typos I catch with this tool both as a writer and editor. I highly recommend new writers download Grammarly prior to publishing as personally speaking, there is something distinctly off-putting about a haphazardly submitted article filled with typos and grammatical errors.

🎈Bonus Tip: The next one is not necessarily a content tool but is just as important in my opinion. And that is to stay focused.

If writing is your jam, then you know that being consistent, learning, improving, as well as dealing with toxic comments and lack of inspiration is all part and parcel of the game. It is easy to lose focus and let things slide, putting writing off for the next day, week, or month. So I would say being able to stay focused despite the ups and downs in writing life is an essential part of a writer’s toolkit.

I’m curious, what are the staples in your writing toolkit? Do share in the comments!

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