As a blogger, you probably have your own method for writing content.
For some, working in the WordPress backend is the way to go. For others, third-party writing software or a simple Word document might be the go-to.
Whatever the case, it’s clear there isn’t a unanimous winner for how and where you should write your blog posts.
However, if you’re writing posts without any guidance, you’re probably working harder than you have to.
People have been blogging for more than two decades at this point. As a result, a lot of awesome blogging tools have come out over the years that help improve your content quality and make life easier.
So, if you’re looking to optimize and improve your writing, take a seat and get ready to read!
It’s time to examine some of the best writing tools for bloggers that can take your content to the next level.
The Best Writing Tools for Bloggers
When choosing writing tools for your blog, it’s important to focus on your weak points.
Some software is great for content planning and creating outlines. Alternatively, you might find grammatical software or SEO tools are more useful.
So, think about the blogging areas that give you the most trouble and pick a tool that will help you improve the areas you struggle with.
1. Dynalist
Dynalist is an outlining app that helps you plan content creation and delegate tasks while keeping you on track.
On the surface, Dynalist looks like a minimalist-friendly outline tool. In fact, it’s almost like Google Docs, just for creating outlines. While it’s true that Dynalist makes it easy to create outlines (and you know I'm a huge fan of outlines), there’s a host of other features that are useful for blogging.
With Dynalist, you can:
- Create visually appealing outlines that are easy to scan.
- Tag groups of ideas together for better organization.
- Create checklists and due-dates to fight off procrastination.
- Internally link anything in your Dynalist to connect outlines together.
- Easily share outlines with team members.
As a solo blogger, Dynalist is great for creating blog post outlines and tagging your main ideas so you don’t forget them when writing. If you work with other writers or an editor, Dynalist makes it easy to collaborate and leave comments as well.
Dynalist’s free version offers enough functionality to get started. The main thing you’ll miss is integration with Google calendar and attaching images or files. If you need to upgrade, it’s $7.99 per month when billed annually.
Ultimately, if you struggle with sticking to blog outlines, Dyalist is one of the best writing tools for bloggers around.
2. Grammarly
Hate typos? Then check out Grammarly.
There’s a good reason why more than 30 million people rely on Grammarly to write: Grammarly just makes you a better writer.
For starters, Grammarly ensures your writing is error free when it comes to grammar and spelling. WordPress doesn’t always catch these errors, so it’s nice to have a second pair of eyes. This is all done through AI, and Grammarly ultimately saves time by spotting errors before you begin proofreading.
You can also try Grammarly Premium to unlock the following features:
- Tone adjustments to sound more confident.
- Plagiarism checks.
- Formality and fluency level adjustments.
- Word choice suggestions.
In aggregate, these features help enhance your content writing, especially if writing is your weakness.
My favorite part of Grammarly is that it works wherever you write. It even checks your emails. No cutting and pasting into another software.
I personally use the free version and feel it has what I need. However, if it helps you write better blog content, you can always upgrade for $11.66 per month.
Related: How to Craft Amazing Headlines (Plus 7 Free Headline Tools)
3. ProWritingAid
If Grammarly isn’t for you, ProWritingAid is a more affordable blog writing tool that largely serves the same purpose.
Like Grammarly, ProWritingAid provides grammar, spelling, and readability suggestions in real-time as you write. There’s also a word explorer tool that’s essentially a suped-up thesaurus that’s useful for spicing up your writing.
However, ProWritingAid differs from Grammarly because of their reporting depth. There’s actually 20 writing reports that detail weaknesses in your writing like vagueness, repetitions, passive voice, and over-complicated sentences. A data visualization tool also provides insights on blog post quality and overall readability score.
If you take the time to dig into these, you’re going to become a better writer over time. In a way, ProWritingAid is both a writing tool for bloggers and a training tool to hone your craft.
The free plan gives you access to the grammar checker on their site – meaning you have to cut and paste your article into the software – and you can only check 500 words at a time. But it's worth trying if you want to check out the reports and see if you are willing to upgrade.
If you’re a strong writer, Grammarly’s free plan is still your best bet. However, if you know you need to become a better writer, ProWritingAid is your best choice (alongside my HitPublish course, of course). Pro Writing Aid costs $6.58 per month when billed annually, which is cheaper than Grammarly Premium.
4. Hemingway
If you want a free straightforward writing tool for blogging check out Hemingway. They also have a version that doesn’t require an internet connection.
Hemingway is basically a combination of Grammarly and Google Docs, only simpler. As you write in the Hemingway editor, the software highlights weaknesses in your writing like:
- Passive voice.
- Overly-complex sentences.
- Hard and very hard sentences to read.
- Overly relying on adverbs.
Suggestions highlight in real-time if you write. Your article also gets a readability score. If you prefer writing without these editing tools, you can toggle them off and turn editing back on when you’re ready to edit.
Note, that you have to either write in Hemingway or cut and paste into the program to get your report.
This distraction-free writing environment is available for free online or for a one-time fee of $19.99 if you want the Windows or Mac app. If you’re a travel blogger who’s on the go, the desktop app is super useful since it doesn’t require an internet connection.
5. YoastSEO
YoastSEO does more than just give you SEO guidance. It also makes readability suggestions.
Yoast SEO lets you monitor the SEO strength of your post as you write. Some of the most powerful features let you check:
- Readability for your WordPress posts. This highlights passive voice, repetitiveness, overly-length sentences, and provides a Flesch reading score.
- Duplicate content risks to avoid Google penalties.
- The right number of outbound and internal links in your post.
- Word count so your post is long enough.
- A Google preview of your post and what your title, slug, and meta description are.
Additionally, Yoast SEO lets you set a focus keyword. If you’re targeting a specific keyword to rank on Google (which you should be doing), this is an easy way to ensure it appears the right amount in your content. You don’t want to spam your keyword, so Yoast flags you if you get carried away.
Yoast also has a lot of back-end SEO features that are great for bloggers who aren’t so technical. With Yoast, you can decide what content gets indexed by search engines, add canonical URLs, create cornerstone content, and edit your schema.
All of these features are free, which is why Yoast is so awesome. There’s also a paid version for $89. Yoast Premium provides more content insights like internal link suggestions and lets you incorporate more targeted keywords into your post.
Beginner and intermediate bloggers can probably get enough value from the free version. Ultimately, Yoast is one of the best writing tools for bloggers from a SEO perspective, and this plugin is a must-download if you struggle to incorporate keywords and links into your content.
Related: 10 Best Free Wordpress Plugins
6. CoScheduler Headline Analyzer
Did you know that having a strong headline for your blog post can actually help them rank better on search engines?
Click-through rate, or CTR, isn’t everything. However, when your post appears online, you want to catch readers attention and to get them to click. Over time, a high CTR helps rank your blog post higher. Plus, it’s also a great way to drive more traffic when sharing your posts on social media.
Writing the perfect headline isn’t always easy. Thankfully, you can use CoScheduler’s free Headline Analyzer to write captivating headlines if this is something you struggle with.
You need to create an account to use the browser-based tool or Chrome extension. However, CoScheduler offers this tool for free. Once you enter a headline, you get a score and actionable suggestions for how you can improve it to beat your competition.
A headline won’t make or break your blogging success, but why publish a great post with a lackluster headline?
7. Google Docs
If you’re not a fan of WordPress’ backend, chances are, you do a lot of your blog writing on Google Docs. For basic blogging, Google Docs is great because it’s simple, fast, and the work you do is hosted on your Google account (so you can access it from any device).
For more advanced bloggers or team-based websites, Google Docs is also useful. For starters, Google Docs lets you integrate plenty of useful writing tools like Grammarly and SEO add-ons like Clearscope. Plus, you can also try voice typing on Google Docs; a feature not many people know about.
With a few extra pieces of software, Google Docs suddenly becomes a lot more powerful. The nature of Google Docs also makes it easy to collaborate with team members, leave comments, and track edits from different team members.
You can easily cut and paste from Google Docs into the Gutenberg Editor for WordPress and all your images and formatting will transfer over.
However, if you’re copying a Google Doc into the Classic Editor for WordPress, you’ll end up importing excess backend code that look like this:
All that junk code will cause you formatting problems and should be removed. You also have to manually upload your images.
If you want to save time, use Wordable to export your Google Doc into WordPress without wasting time on fixing code and formatting your post. Wordable provides three free exports and is then $19 per month afterwards. Or upgrade to Gutenberg for easy cut and paste.
8. Dragon Natural Speaker
Another awesome writing tool for bloggers doesn’t even involve writing. However, it can still help you craft amazing content that flows more naturally without having to sit down at your desk all night.
With Dragon Natural Speaker, you can transform your words into text through AI-powered speech-to-text technology. Yup, Dragon Natural Speaker lets you talk through an entire blog post rather than having to write it.
You might think this is redundant, but there are several advantages of using speech-to-text:
- You’re 3 times faster when talking than typing according to Dragon. If you’re a slow typer, this can seriously boost productivity.
- You can create content anywhere since Dragon is available for Android and iOS.
- Speech is 99% more accurate than typing according to Dragon.
Historically, voice-to-text software wasn’t that great because you needed to spend time training the software to understand your intonation. Times have changed, however, and Dragon Natural Speaker doesn’t require training to understand your voice.
You have to request a demo from Dragon’s actual website to use the software. Alternatively, you can buy the software on Amazon for around $150
9. Read Aloud
One of the best ways to edit your blog posts is to read them aloud. This isn’t always fun, especially if you have a 3,000 word behemoth to tackle, but it’s the best way to catch errors and unnatural sentences.
If you want to make your editing life easier, you can try using the Read Aloud Chrome extension. Read Aloud converts webpage text into audio and supports over 40 languages. Plus, Read Aloud also works on PDFs and Google Docs.
A lot of text-to-audio software requires copying and pasting content into a tool to work. Read Aloud’s advantage is that you don’t have to leave your browser. There’s also a WordPress plugin option, although I’d stick with the extension since the plugin barely has any downloads and the extension works just fine.
The next time you’re on an editing binge, give Read Aloud a try. You might find it catches errors your eyes would have missed!
10. Atomic Reach
Alright, time to wrap up this list of writing tools for bloggers with a bit more AI magic.
Other writing tools use AI to help make you a better writer and to spice up your writing a bit. Atomic Reach takes this concept to a whole different level.
With their AI editor, you can easily optimize your content with a single click, replacing clunky sentences with AI-powered suggestions to boost engagement. Atom Reach also optimizes your title and automatically generates content summaries when you’re done with an article.
However, Atomic Reach can also help with content planning. Their topic tool actually analyzes your entire blog and ranks content based on engagement, so you know which topics are a hit. Atomic Reach also considers trending topics and notifies you when you have relevant content to share.
I don’t know about you, but there have been plenty of times where I’ve missed the window to share a relevant piece of blog content. This feature alone can help drive more website traffic, and it’s all automatically powered through AI!
Atomic Reach also breaks down your monthly progress in a handy dashboard. This isn’t too flashy, but it’s an easy way to track how your content is performing and if optimization is working.
I wouldn’t use Atomic Reach if you’re brand new to blogging. The Starter plan is $29 per month but only provides sentence optimization, grammar and spelling edits, and automatic summaries. If you want all the AI magic, you’re looking at $249 per month; hardly an affordable solution for beginner bloggers.
However, if you’re making money with your blog and want to invest in a tool that can potentially boost engagement (and organic traffic, ultimately), their 14-day free trial could be worth testing out.
Summary
Everyone has their style when it comes to blogging. But, if you’re currently writing on a blank Word document or WordPress’ backend, you might be missing out.
Technology is awesome, and writing tools for bloggers have only gotten better over the years. If you want to save time, improve your SEO, and write better content, it’s definitely worth adding a few pieces of software to your digital toolkit.
You still need to put in the hours to create stellar content. However, there’s no harm in letting technology help you out along the way.
