Copywriting mistakes can hurt your reputation as a brand owner or freelance copywriter.
You wouldn’t want your audience to see avoidable errors like:
- writing while when you intended to write why
- in order to instead of to
- writing “that” all over your content
- writing long-winded sentences that are vague and poorly drafted, etc.
It’s not okay if you made these mistakes before.
But what’s worse is continuing to make these mistakes with several copywriting tools at your disposal.
“You can’t make the same mistake twice.
The second time you make it, it’s no longer a mistake. It’s a choice.” – Anonymous
As a brand owner or freelance copywriter, your words need to be convincing, backed by data, and free of errors and plagiarism.
Numerous copywriting tools can help you achieve all these and more.
These tools will save your time, improve your content quality, and scale your content marketing.
In this post, I will share copywriting tools you can use for:
- Editing and proofreading
- Checking plagiarism
- Analyzing the quality of your headlines
- Saving documents/portfolio
- Keyword research
- Improving readability
A worker is only as good as his tools. Your writing process gets easier when you use the best copywriting tools.
Copywriting Tools for Readability and Grammar Check
1. Grammarly
For the love of your customers, erotic and exotic have different meanings.
In 1988, Yellow pages printed an ad for a Californian travel agency offering exotic travel packages.
Instead of writing exotic travels, Yellow pages wrote erotic travels.
This one-letter typographical error was enough to cost Gloria Quinan’s company 80% of its customers.
😆 Trust the lawyers. They had big meat to fry and they succeeded. Yellow pages had to pay an insane amount for its mistake – $18 million.
Poor grammar is an eyesore, especially when the errors are preventable.
This problem still rocks the online sales industry and the stats aren’t pretty.
Poor spelling is costing the UK millions of pounds in lost revenue for internet businesses.
An analysis of website figures shows a single spelling mistake can cut online sales in half. – Charles Duncombe (UK online entrepreneur)
Grammarly can save you from many awful writing mistakes.
This copywriting tool doesn’t equal a professional editor.
But, from my experience, it comes close. A 392 persons survey by Grammarly had the following results.
- 70% of student respondents report that Grammarly increased the level of confidence in their writing ability
- 93% of all respondents say Grammarly helped them save time on their writing
- 99% of student respondents report that Grammarly improved their writing grades
- 84% of student respondents said Grammarly improved their grades in general
Out of over 18,600 products reviewed by TrustRadius, Grammarly was one of 50 offerings most loved by customers in 2021.
Source: TrustRadius.com
The best part of Grammarly is its offering of a free version. The premium plan starts at $11.66/month.
2. Read-able
I’ll feel bad if I had to use a dictionary every time I read a piece of online copy. Won’t you?
Read-able gives a clue when your copy has lots of words that cause your audience to reach for a dictionary.
This copywriting tool helps you ensure your audience can comprehend what you write. The more readable your copy is, the more time customers spend on them.
As more people consume your content, search engines will notice and your organic ranking will keep getting better.
You can use the free WebFX readability tool to check your content readability. Test the readability by pasting the URL of your content or input the text directly.
As a general rule, 12 and 13 years old kids shouldn’t have trouble reading and understanding what you write.
3. Hemingway App
The Hemingway app is an excellent copywriting tool that:
- Remove jargons from your copy
- Identifies unnecessary adverbs to delete
- Show hard to read sentences
- Find phrases with simpler alternatives
This tool is less sophisticated compared to Grammarly.
When using the Hemingway app, watch out for adverbs that the app suggests you delete. You might not want to delete them because this tool has a limited semantic understanding of text.
You can use this copywriting tool for free by visiting hemingwayapp.com and pasting your content.
Or, you can buy the desktop app for a one-time fee of $19.99.
The desktop app offers the following extra benefits:
- You can use it anywhere without an internet connection
- Export to Microsoft Word or other editors
- Direct publishing of your content to WordPress & Medium
- Send Hemingway highlights to colleagues as a PDF
4. Thesaurus and Power Thesaurus
When discussing the Hemingway app, I could have written this:
- Identifies jargons in your copy
- Identifies unnecessary adverbs to delete
- Identifies hard to read sentences
- Identifies phrases with simpler alternatives
It doesn’t sound good using identifies repeatedly. That’s where thesaurus.com can help. Thesaurus helps you find synonyms to prevent the repetition of words.
If you use Microsoft word for writing your content, you won’t need to go online to use Thesaurus.
- Click Review
- Click Thesaurus
- Now Thesaurus will remain open on the side of the document
You can use Power Thesaurus if you write in Google docs.
- Go to docs.google.com
- Open any of your Google document
- Click add-ons
- Search for Power Thesaurus for Google docs
- Click and install
5. Expresso (Hemingway App on Steroids)
Expresso is a free and excellent copywriting tool to have in your editing arsenal. It helps you find words that make your content less persuasive.
You can use this tool by visiting expresso-app.org and insert your text.
Once you hit analyze, the magic starts to unfold.
Click each metric to find the suggested words for editing.
But that’s not the best part.
This tool can also help you spy on your competitors by providing long-tail keywords in their content. Paste a competitor’s content and scroll down on the metrics area.
You’ll find the frequent bigrams and trigrams section. Now you have some keywords to consider inserting “naturally” in your blog post.
Copywriting tools for Keyword research
1. SEMrush
SEMrush is one of the popular keyword research tools.
When writing online copy to attract free traffic from search engines, you need to research.
SEMrush ensures you aren’t audience-blind as it provides valuable keywords.
Source: semrush.com
Aside from the keywords it provides, SEMrush has many other exciting features.
Here are extra things you can do with SEMrush:
- On-page SEO (Search engine optimization)
- Content marketing
- Local SEO
- Tracking your organic ranking
- Social media management
- Link building
- Competitor SEO analysis
- Creating and distributing content
- Content optimization
- Paid advertising
- Monitoring the online mentions of your competitor
- PPC keyword research
This is why more than 7 million online marketers and SEO copywriters subscribe to SEMrush.
Also, this multipurpose marketing tool has won 14 international awards as the best SEO software suite. SEMrush has a free plan that lasts for 7 days. The pro plan starts at $119.95 every month.
Source: semrush.com
2. Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is a handy tool for every new blogger.
Although this tool doesn’t have all the exciting features in SEMrush, it is decent for finding keywords.
Ubersuggest is free to use and its premium plan starts at $12 every month.
Here comes the juicy part – Neil is currently offering a lifetime plan (no monthly fees) that starts at $120.
3. Answer the Public
Answer the Public is an excellent tool for finding long-tail keywords for your copy.
Long-tail keywords are search terms that are more than three. For instance, “how to optimize blog posts” is a long-tail keyword.
Many people find information on the internet with long-tail keywords.
A keyword research tool like Answer the Public helps you aggregate long-tail keywords based on your search criteria.
This tool is free to use and its premium plan starts at $99 per month.
4. SpyFu
SpyFu is an A-list copywriting tool with plans starting from $39/month. This tool is vital for serious search engine marketers. It shows the entire search marketing formula of your successful competitors.
With lots of Google ads templates covering hundreds of industries, this tool promises to deliver value for every dollar spent.
Copywriting Tools for Improving Engagement
1. Videos
According to Visme, 92% of marketers say video plays a vital role in their marketing strategy.
As a writer or business owner, creating videos is super-easy.
You don’t need expensive video editing software or a videographer for making simple videos.
You can create videos with your phone or use Loom if you need to do an onscreen recording. Afterward, you can edit your videos with Descript.
Descript has features that make transcription and video editing easier than summing one plus one.
Once you download Descript, listen to the tutorial, and that’s it. You’re on your way to creating engaging videos for your audience.
2. Stock and Free Images
People don’t like to read a large amount of text with zero images. That’s why content with images attracts 94% more views.
Also, images improve your organic ranking once you optimize your Alt text and compress them for faster loading.
Like plagiarized content, using an image without permission can get you into hot water.
Here are some sites to get free images – Unsplash, Pixabay, Pexels, and Flickr.
Want premium pictures? Check Shutterstock. They have an exciting library containing millions of professional photos, vectors, and illustrations.
3. Canva
Canva is a design tool with endless possibilities. It allows you to design presentations, newsletters, posters, social media graphics, portfolio content, brochures, and many more.
If you suck at design but want to impress your audience, one out of the thousands of Canva templates will get the job done.
I use Canva for designing social media copy for my LinkedIn profile and the designs get lots of thumbs up.
With Canva, you can save your brand assets like logos, brand colors, and fonts. Like Google drive, you can share Canva designs with a link.
Canva’s free plan is decent to get you started. Its pro solution starts at $9.99 per month.
Copywriting Tools for Headline Analysis
1. Coschedule Headline Analyzer
It is crucial to have headlines that attract your target audience. Your copy may tick all the boxes. But, without a catchy headline, it could fall flat and fail to produce results.
The Coschedule Headline Analyzer assigns a headline score based on:
- Word Balance
- Word Count
- Character Count
- Headline Type
- Reading Grade Level
- Sentiment
- Clarity
It also assigns an SEO score by comparing the keywords in your headline to those on search engines.
You can access this copywriting tool at coschedule.com/headline-analyzer.
Copy and paste your headline into the field provided and click Analyze. It’s best if you can keep your headline score above 70.
2. Capitalize my Title
Capitalize my Title works like the Coschedule headline analyzer. According to the website, it uses over 50 different data points to evaluate headlines based on:
- Readability
- SEO
- Sentiment (emotion)
To use this tool, visit capitalizemytitle.com and enter your headline for analysis.
Copywriting Tools for Detecting Plagiarism
1. CopyScape
As a freelance copywriter, intentionally or unknowingly plagiarizing people’s content will cause distrust and make you lose clients.
And if you own a brand using plagiarized content, it only gets worse. This is why you should hire SEO content writers you can trust.
Any of the following could occur to business owners using plagiarized content:
- Google will reduce your organic ranking
- You’ll lose credibility before your customers
- You’ll lose revenue
- You could get sued
Spare yourself these troubles and use Copyscape. It’s doesn’t cost a fortune. It also has other exciting features you can explore.
2. Quetext
Quetext is another excellent copywriting tool for detecting plagiarism. However, I compared Quetext and CopyScape with spun content and CopyScape was better.
Copywriting Tools for Saving Documents & Creating Online Portfolio
1. Google Drive
Google drive is a giant online warehouse for your essential files. It provides you with 15GB of space to upload video, audio, images, text files, and others to Google Servers.
You can easily access it from your phone or computer.
This tool is essential for every freelance copywriter because you will always have documents that need safekeeping.
What’s more, with Google drive, you can edit your documents online. You can also collaborate with others by sharing a link to a file and save uploading time.
2. Clippings
Clippings.me is a free online writing portfolio maker with over 100,000 users.
This tool is suitable for freelance copywriters yet to create their website. Clippings.me allows you to:
- Create a custom domain name
- Add biography
- Customize your portfolio page
- Add online articles or PDFs and videos
- Integrate Google Analytics into your portfolio
- Set up a contact form
Conclusion
There you have it.
These tools will help you avoid costly copywriting mistakes.
Don’t lose content that should go into your portfolio – Google drive is free.
Before publishing any content, it helps to check the readability, correct grammar issues, and ensure the content is plagiarism-free.
Want me to add another copywriting tool? Let me know in the comments.
Do you need help with a copywriting project? Get in touch.
Precious Oboidhe is a B2B SaaS content strategist and writer for hire. If you need help with strategizing and creating assets for the different stages of your content marketing funnel, get in touch.
Great job here. Hemingway isn’t my favourite. I love Grammarly. I love Copyscape because of its payment plan.
Thank you👍. Yes, CopyScape is very affordable. There is no reason not to use it, especially for blog owners.