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Best Services and Tools for Content Creation

Content creation is far more than just words on the printed page. Words are all over the Internet. To grab and keep attention, content creation must involve the following:

1. Great headlines that immediately get a reader’s attention
2. Great writing that is simple, direct, and easy to understand.
3. Solid research for the facts and data that will provide examples and make the content trustworthy
4. Visuals and interactive experiences for the reader

With that in mind, here are the best services and tools in each of these categories:

Getting a Great Headline

1. ContentIdeator: This is easy to use and will spark some great ideas in your head. Enter a keyword in the search bar and you will get a long list of potential headlines. Some of them will be laughable and you may not want to use any of them directly, but you’ll get tons of ideas for creating a great one.
2. Emotional marketing Headline Analyzer: Once you have a headline, paste it into the text box and pick one of the provided categories. You’ll get a “score” that will indicate how emotionally marketable the headline is.

Becoming a Better Writer

Two things – your writing must be grammatically correct and it must be simple and direct. Here are 3 tools that are a must-have.

1. Hemingway: This tool will analyze your writing for all sorts of weaknesses, the biggest one being sentences that are too long and complex. You’ll get great suggestions for cleaning things up.
2. Grammarly: You copy and paste your content, and this great little tool finds all of your grammar, agreement, verb tense, etc. errors. It highlights them and then provides suggestions for fixing them off to the right of each line. You can also use this tool to check for plagiarism.
3. Read-Able: Again, you copy and paste your content into the box provided and you will get an age-level for that content. You are looking for the 13-14 range, and no higher.

Fast Research

Google is still the best source for research – but it’s all in how you search. So use these two strategies:

1. If you want statistics: type in your keyword + statistics. If your keyword is good, you have all the statistics you could ever want or need and then some.
2. Using an Expert: If you know of a blog that has lots of content in the topic of your writing, your Google search should be Site: (type the URL) + keyword and you’ll get right to a post that you can quote or find more resources (e.g., links).
3. Evernote: If you have this app, use it constantly. You can add notes at anytime from anywhere. You may had facts and data stored but not realize it. So, get into that trusty little tool and do a search.

Visual Content/Media/Interaction

This is a must if you intent for audiences to stay with you as they absorb your content. Here is a list of tools for all kinds of cool visuals and interactive user experiences.

Photos – Free: Each of these sites offers free photos. None requires license, although some do require attribution.

• Unsplash
• Picjumbo
• Pixabay
• Gratisography
• FreeImage

Canva: Create custom images in minutes – great for bloggers who cannot design

Piktochart or infogr.am: Great templates for infographics. Choose one that meets your needs and just plug in your data

Thinglink: You can add interactive content to any image – places for your readers to click and get more info.

Snapapp: This tool lets you add interaction to pictures, infographics and video. So easy to use!

Polldaddy: Engage your readers with polls, surveys, questionnaires, and quizzes that they will want to share

Quickmeme: Break up text with amusing memes you can design in minutes. Type in your caption; pick your meme background from the options, type in any text you want, and you have it – ready to save to your own device.

Haiku Deck: If you want to create an exceptional sideshow, this is your tool. Pick a background for each slide, type in your text, and you are done. Can be saved as a PDF or PowerPoint file.

There you have it – all the services and tools you will need to create the content that gets noticed, read, and shared!