1. Grammarly

One of the fundamentals of being a copywriter is the ability to edit and vet your writing. For example, although informal expression has become commonplace in professional communication, proper grammar and punctuation are still necessary for conveying thoughts with accuracy, clarity, and precision.

With a specialised proofreading tool such as Grammarly, many options are available to make the process of proofreading smoother.

Grammarly is a highly praised online grammar correction tool for writers. It has multiple functions, but its primary purpose is to work as a dependable spell-checker and writing assistant. Grammarly is committed to helping people craft their writing in the best way possible and reduce errors.

Features include:

• Grammar Scanning: As the name implies, Grammarly offers basic and complex grammar examination. Additionally, it provides clarity on grammar guidelines.
• Punctuation and Spell Checking: These are must-haves for any copywriter.
• Plagiarism Detector: It uses a 16-billion web page database to identify any unintentional plagiarism.
• Vocabulary Expansion: Refrain from using the same words repeatedly. Grammarly offers suitable word substitutions.
• Writing Format Evaluation: Grammarly offers inspection of several types of writing formats. You will receive personalised tips depending on the type of content you are producing and the audience you are targeting.
• Readability Rating: This evaluates how easy (or hard) it is for readers to comprehend your sentences; the greater your score (up to a maximum of 100), the better.

The tool is free and if additional features are required, there is Grammarly Premium and Grammarly Business. Grammarly is one of the most accurate AI writing tools available. It significantly enhances any piece of writing and is an essential tool for every writer.

2. Hemingway App

The Hemingway App is an online tool that can help make writing easier to read for your target audiences. It provides instant feedback on your writing, including highlighting overly complex sentences, jargon, passive writing, and other areas that can be improved.

With its intuitive interface and colour-coded feedback system, you can easily identify areas for improvement and refine your work to engage readers more effectively.

Key features:

• Readability Score: Measures text complexity and suggests improvements.
• Sentence Simplification: Breaks down long sentences into shorter, clearer ones.
• Adverb and Jargon Detection: Highlights unnecessary words and phrases.
• Formatting and Style: Offers suggestions for paragraph structure and clarity.

By using the Hemingway App (free and paid plans are available), you can streamline your writing process, enhance your messaging, and communicate more effectively with your audience.

3. Answer The Public

There are many useful SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) tools available; however, when it comes to content marketing, we do have some favourites. One of these is Answer The Public, an invaluable resource for copywriters and marketers.

This long-tail keyword tool shows queries and auto-complete searches related to a particular topic. By utilising Answer The Public, it’s possible to determine what audiences are searching for so that marketers can provide content with pertinent and comprehensive answers that audiences are actively trying to find.

It also provides a dashboard to track your content. The results are shown, divided into the different variants used to generate them: it shows the “whys” and the “hows” separately, all displayed in a shareable image.

Copywriters and content creators can use this tool to study and find trending subjects — you can leverage these trending topics to write blog entries to increase traffic and improve your SEO rating.

Being able to conduct thorough research on any topic is essential because it enables you to produce content that is more likely to be read, shared, and cited, all excellent factors for SEO.

4. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a great tool for content ideas and keyword research. It also provides basic analytics of your website and that of your competitors.

Here is a list of features in Ubersuggest that every copywriter should leverage immediately:

• Keyword Research: Look for relevant keywords with high search volume and low competition.
• Generate blog post ideas, headlines, and suggestions based on topics that are trending or going viral.
• Competitor Analysis: Examine competitors’ websites, keywords, and content strategies.
• SEO Audit: Identify website technical issues and optimise for search engines.

Advantages of Ubersuggest:

• Enhanced SEO: Write for better search engine results.
• Increased Productivity: Simplify content creation with data-driven ideas.
• Competitive Advantage: Keep ahead of rivals with insightful research.

Ubersuggest is free but there are limits in the areas of features and data output. To get full access, there are three paid plans to choose from: Individual, Business, and Enterprise. Use Ubersuggest in addition to Google Analytics (which is free!) to uncover data that is useful in helping you write the content that your audience appreciates.

5. Meta Ad Library

The Meta Ad Library is an excellent source for gathering ideas and understanding the strategies of your competitors. It allows you to look at all the relevant Facebook and Instagram ads that have been running so that you can maximise the effectiveness of your copywriting:

• Analysing advertisements from competitors: You can search for ads by keyword or advertiser, and gain access to see the messaging used. Seeing their ads can help you understand how they employ copywriting to promote similar products.
• You can get an overview of the various versions of similar advertisements competitors are utilising for split testing and create a list of ad characteristics to experiment with for your upcoming ads.
• To ensure beneficial results, investigate the trends in the respective social media channels and the impact competitor ads have on target audiences.

How to use the Meta Ad Library?

1. To begin, open the Ad Library home page, and select “Search ads”.

2. First, choose the location of the audience that is being served the ads. It is important to remember that this is not the location of the advertiser but that of the audience.

3. Next, you may select the type of ad you’d like to find. This will enable you to view all ads created by specific advertisers or ads related to a certain election, political concern, or issue. Unless you have a special interest in these subjects, it is recommended that you opt for the ‘All Ads’ selection.

4. Finally, type in the name of the keyword or advertiser you want to track. You can now view all the ads that have been running in your location

Do take note of the following:

• Ads that have been archived or deleted will not be visible in the Ad Library.
• Ads that are no longer running because of ad optimisation or budget allocation will still be visible in the Ad Library.
• Ads that have been taken down due to policy violations will be visible in the Ad Library with a notice indicating why the ad was removed.

By choosing “Filters” in the upper right corner of the page, you may further narrow the results based on language, platforms, media types, active status, or the time frame of the ad runs. This is the best way to locate effective ads and use them to accelerate ad market research.

If you are a copywriter and have not already taken advantage of the Meta Ad Library, you should check it out immediately (it’s free!). You will gain a good idea of what other businesses are doing with their marketing.

6. Coschedule Headline Studio

Marketing experts understand how crucial it is to write compelling headlines since only 2 out of 10 people click on links to read blog articles. Now it’s possible to increase that number with Coschedule Headline Studio.

Coschedule Headline Studio is one of the best and most popular tools out there for creating engaging headlines to convert leads. It generates and also analyses your headlines for quality metrics that are likely to boost likes and shares, SEO impact, and traffic. You can also use the Coschedule headline analysis tool to:

• Analyse headlines (yours or your competitors’) that have been shown to increase traffic.
• Increase social shares and clickthroughs.
• Find out which words and phrases help bring in clients.

Coschedule Headline Studio is free to use but with limits. Of course, there is a paid plan (Premium) as well.

7. ChatGPT

ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is an LLM (large language model) chatbot developed by OpenAI. Launched in November 2022, it has led the charge in Generative AI content, enabling users to request information and content in a variety of formats, styles, and languages.
ChatGPT is one of four Generative AI chatbots listed here (the others being Gemini, MetaAI, and Copilot). Most of these chatbots are multimodal, meaning they are capable to some degree of generating not only text, but also analysing and generating images, audio, and video.
ChatGPT is accessible via app and website @ chatgpt.com.

As a copywriting and content writing tool, it works optimally when you provide it with as much information and context as you can. It works exceptionally well in the planning stages of your content writing; instead of immediately asking it to provide you with an entire article, prompt it to provide you with an outline together with suggested headlines and sub-headlines.

There is a free version as well as a paid one (ChatGPT Plus). The free version uses an earlier LLM which has a cut-off point for its data collection about a year or more ago. On the other hand, the paid version uses the latest LLM which has a more recent cut-off date.

8. Google Gemini

Gemini, formerly known as Bard, is Google’s Generative AI chatbot. Based on the PaLM LLM and developed as a direct response to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, it was launched as Bard in February 2023 and then renamed Gemini in December 2023.

Gemini is accessible using your Google account via gemini.google.com.

Gemini has a free and paid version (Gemini Advanced).

9. MetaAI

The Meta AI chatbot was launched in September 2023. It was rolled out across Meta’s platforms like Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram allowing users to access them natively (within the social media apps) for free.

Based on the Llama 3 LLM, the chatbot is also accessible via meta.ai.

As of the writing of this article, there is no paid version of the chatbot although it has been reported that Meta is working on a premium version to be launched in the near future.

10. Microsoft Copilot

Launched in February 2023 as Bing Chat, the chatbot was a built-in feature for Microsoft’s search engine Bing and browser Edge. Renamed Copilot in November 2023, it utilises Open AI’s GPT LLM (Microsoft owns 49% of OpenAI).

Copilot is free to use if you have a Microsoft account, e.g., if you are subscribed to Microsoft 365. It is accessible via app and website using your MS account: copilot.microsoft.com.

There is also a paid version of the chatbot called Copilot Pro (not free for Microsoft 365 subscribers). Whether it is free or paid, Copilot offers deep integration with other Microsoft tools allowing for a seamless workflow in Windows.

11. Quillbot

A key concern regarding the use of Generative AI tools is the high prevalence of AI content online, so much so that content looks the same everywhere you look. Although Google Search does not penalise AI content, it does, however, reward content that is engaging and original, with higher rankings in the search engine results. This is why you should refrain from using AI-generated content as it is given to you. Instead, paraphrase and edit the copy to make it your own, to the point that AI detectors rate your content as original (or as close to 100% original as possible).

A tool that allows you to paraphrase and detect AI content is QuillBot. It can be accessed here: quillbot.com.

Sign up to have full access to the free version which consists of:

• 125 words (at a time) in Paraphraser
• Standard and Fluency modes
• 1,200 words (at a time) in Summariser
• AI Detector

If you want unlimited word count in Paraphraser or access the other tools available, there is a premium version of Quillbot.

12. Editpad

EditPad is a versatile, multi-functional writing platform designed to aid content creators in various stages of the writing process. It offers a suite of tools that enhance content quality, optimise productivity, and ensure original, polished writing. With a simple and user-friendly interface, EditPad is ideal for copywriters, bloggers, and marketers seeking to streamline their content creation.

EditPad’s features include:

• Paraphrasing Tool: Editpad offers a powerful paraphraser that helps rephrase sentences while retaining the original meaning, allowing writers to diversify their content and avoid repetition.
• Plagiarism Checker: Editpad’s plagiarism detection tool scans content against millions of web pages to ensure originality, highlighting any matching phrases.
• Grammar and Spelling Check: EditPad offers a grammar checker that automatically scans for grammar and spelling errors, providing corrections and suggestions to enhance clarity and readability.
• Summariser: The summariser condenses long passages into concise summaries, making it easy to grasp key points quickly.
• Readability Checker: By assessing sentence structure and vocabulary, Editpad checks the text for readability and provides a score based on various indexes.

EditPad is free to use, with premium options that unlock additional features and extended functionality. This comprehensive toolset makes EditPad a valuable resource for any writer seeking to craft high-quality, reader-friendly content.

Conclusion

While using these tools, especially the AI-enabled ones, can generate ideas and content like never before, it’s important not to rely too heavily on them. Remember to constantly check for factual accuracy and use paraphrasing and AI detection tools to ensure that your written content is perceived as original work that is unique to you.

We hope you find these 12 copywriting tools to be of great help and that they will elevate your writing to a whole new level!

If you would like to gain effective writing techniques to engage your audience and get them to take action, Equinet Academy offers the WSQ Copywriting and Content Writing course.

We also offer a wide range of digital marketing courses, including WSQ Digital Content Creation for Content Creators Course, WSQ Branding & Brand Strategy Course, WSQ Digital Marketing Strategy, and the Certified Digital Marketing Strategist (CDMS) v2 Programme, which covers the following seven modules:

• Digital Marketing Foundations (Fundamentals)
• Digital Advertising
• Social Media Marketing Strategy & Optimisation
• Digital Content Creation & Content Marketing Strategy
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Strategy
• Email Marketing & Marketing Automation
• Digital Marketing Analytics & Optimisation (Google Analytics 4)

Learners who complete these modules will be awarded a Certified Digital Marketing Strategist V2 certificate. Our courses are WSQ-accredited, and eligible learners will receive an SSG subsidy.