Writing and managing content for your brand is a huge undertaking. Whether your team is crafting and scheduling a social media calendar, editing long form white paper content, or whipping up a few quick blog posts, it’s important that you have some helpful tools in place to make life easier. Here are a few of our favorite writing and content tools that we think will help you create better work for your brand.
Grammarly
There’s a solid chance you’re already using Grammarly. If you aren’t, you need to be. Even a seasoned writer can misspell Massachussetts Massachusetts or forget an Oxford comma. Don’t fret — Grammarly has it covered. The free version will point out any glaring errors, but the premium version will help you refine your work even further. Give it a try. Your customers will thank you.
A Thesaurus
What, you thought all these tools would be high-tech? Being a writer doesn’t mean that you have a fully-baked vocabulary that’s ready to pull out the right word at a moment’s notice. Sometimes you need to do a little bit of digging. I’m guilty of clicking through Thesaurus.com ad nauseam until I find the perfect word for a headline. When you find it, it’s oh-so-sweet.
Notepads
Another writer’s staple is the humble, low-tech notepad. Yeah, it doesn’t give you alerts, call out errors, make suggestions, or do your laundry — but it does let you get your thoughts out on paper. Whether it’s a quick note, a rough wireframe, an outline, or a random doodle of a unicorn, jotting your thoughts down before you open your laptop can be helpful.
GatherContent
If you’ve ever received an email from a team member with an attachment labelled “sales_whitepaper_FINAL_V3.docx”, this one’s for you. When dealing with content, keeping track of feedback and revisions is crucial. It’s easy to lose track of the approval status of an item, what revisions need to be made, and when it needs to be completed. GatherContent helps marketing teams ditch the word documents and keep their content in one central location.
Whether you’re creating blogs or refreshing website content, this tool will be a life saver. You can create customer workflows, custom templates, assign items, make comments, upload images, and more. It does come with a somewhat hefty price tag, but you’ll make up for it with efficiency and productivity. Oh yeah — it integrates with HubSpot and WordPress too.
HeyOrca
Keeping track of social posts for your brand is absolutely zero fun when it’s done in text documents or decks. It’s much easier to see everything in one place! HeyOrca lets you write copy for your social posts, upload your creative, and schedule posts all in one platform. Give this one a try — you’ll thank us later.
Muzli
When you’re working on the same brand 100% of your time, it can be tough to keep an open mind and try new things. Muzli is a Chrome extension that can give you a daily dose of creative inspiration! Basically, it compiles all sorts of marketing and design publications into a single dashboard — InVision Blog, Tech Crunch, Dribbble, and more. It gives you a chance to see what other brands are doing and helps you think outside the box.
An Outside Perspective
Sometimes, the best tool to keep in your content toolkit is a good agency partner. Working with marketers and creatives from outside of your brand can provide your team with a fresh perspective for your campaigns and content initiatives. At Swarm, we love working with brands and writing content that resonates with their audience.
