Writing compelling content for your blog can feel daunting, especially if you're new to the game or not a confident writer. If you can’t afford to outsource this task, it’s something you’re just going to have to get on with I’m afraid. Having a blog for your small business is just too good an opportunity to miss out on.

Don’t worry, you’re not completely alone. There are some great tools out there that can help. Here I’m going to share some of my favourites. These are all ones I either use myself or recommend to my clients, and best of all they’re all free!

Grammarly

Not many people are confident with grammar. It’s something we learn about in school and then promptly forget as soon as we don’t use it. Thankfully Grammarly is here to rescue you as it can help you catch any grammar, spelling, punctuation, and even clarity errors in your writing.

My favourite thing about Grammarly is that you can download the Chrome add-on and it will do all of this for you when you’re writing in your browser, so it even works when you’re writing Facebook posts or uploading content to your website.

Hemingway Editor

It may sound like I’m stating the obvious but if you want people to read your blogs, they must be readable! Just because you know what you want to say, it’s not always easy to get it down in writing. When you upload your blog into Hemmingway Editor it highlights any complex sentences and tells you how to improve them, so you can ensure your content is easy to understand.

Readability is a key metric for search engines too, so doing this also helps to give your SEO a little boost.

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

A good headline can make or break your blog post. It’s your hook to get readers and it can put them off before they’ve even started reading it. It’s for this reason that I love the headline analyser tool from CoSchedule. You pop your blog title in there and it grades it out of 100, plus it even suggests how you can improve it. Many of my clients end up getting a bit competitive about beating their own scores!

Speech-to-Text

If you're not the best at writing or prefer to dictate your thoughts, the speech-to-text function in word processing software can be a lifesaver. Word, Pages and Google Docs all have this feature (though they’re all called something slightly different). Simply speak your content into your microphone, and the tool will transcribe it for you.

Beware though! While it’s a great way to get your ideas down, it does go wrong and you’ll end up with some random words in there, as well as atrocious grammar. Just make sure you read it through carefully!

Text-to-Speech Tools

If you’re not used to writing it can be easy to end up waffling or going the other way, and being a bit short with information. You know what you’re trying to say, but this may not necessarily come across to the reader. Having someone else read your blog is the best way to check you’ve not made these mistakes, but if you don’t have anyone around you then give the text-to-speech function a try. Again it’s something Word, Pages and Google Docs all offer under various names. Click the button and your computer will read your blog out loud to you. If it sounds boring or confusing to you, it’s going to be even worse for your reader who doesn’t know what it is you’re trying to say!

AI: Google Gemini and ChatGPT

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly sophisticated, and can be a valuable tool for small businesses. Just be careful with how you’re using it please! Tools like Google Gemini and ChatGPT are great for brainstorming ideas, researching topics, creating structures and plans, and even for reviewing your work.

However, it's important to use AI as a supplement to your own creativity and critical thinking. It can’t think for you and it doesn’t always know what’s true or offensive, and you can’t use it to replace yourself or another human when creating content.

In fact, it’d be bad of me to not hammer home the point that all of these tools are just that; tools to assist you with your writing. It’s still important to go through a manual proofreading and editing process before you publish anything.

If you’d like some help doing this, let me know. I offer a blog review service as one of the ways of working with me. I know not everyone can afford to have someone write their content for them, so this is the next best thing!