In the web age, being an exquisite wordsmith sadly no longer guarantees people are going to read what you wrote. The writer today must master photography, SEO, and coding. There’s also the small matter of staying focused in our ever cluttered world. But don’t fret. We’ve compiled a list of the easiest , most effective tools you need so your writing doesn’t get lost in the Internet ether.
Writing
- Hemingway: An app that helps you write better.
- Grammarly: A smart grammar checker.
- Zenpen: The minimal writing tool of web.
- Draft: Easy version that allows control and collaboration.
Websites/blogs
- Medium: Medium is a great writing and collaboration tool and can be an excellent place to get your writing in front of lots of people.
- Ghost: Blog and publish easily. Free, open and simple.
- WordPress: An oldie but a goodie.
- Domainr: Fast, free, domain name search and short URLs.
- Webflow: Create professional responsive websites without writing codes.
Getting paid
- Beacon: Crowdfunding great journalism.
- Kickstarter: Everyone knows what kickstarter is and it can be a powerful way to support great journalism.
- Deeper: Another journalism crowdfunding site.
- Cont3nt: Like a distributed newswire.
- Invoice to me: Free Invoice generator.
- Book in a box: Book writing and publishing as a service.
Reporting
- Silk: A tool for data journalism. Go from spreadsheet to analysis to publish-ready visualization in minutes.
- Google Alert: Monitor the entire internet for keywords.
- This Quora post: Has a list of 65 public data sets.
- Google Trends: See what searches are trending.
- NewsDiffs: NewsDiffs tracks changes in articles after publication.
- The Research Browser: A web browser designed specifically for research and reporting.
- Media Toolkit: Get notified immediately when your brand or another topic you follow is mentioned anywhere online.
- Typeform: Free beautiful online survey and form builder.
Staying organized
- Trello: An easy visual to track the stories your team is working on.
- Editorial calendar: See all your posts, drag and drop to manage your blog.
- Dropbox: Dropbox keeps your files safe, synced and easy to share.
- Sunrise: A great calendar app.
- Slack: The best chat app for keeping in touch with your whole team.
- Rapportive: See people’s LinkedIn profiles right inside Gmail (This tool is also great for confirming if you’ve correctly guessed someone’s email).
- Evernote: Bring your work together.
Staying up on the news
- ReadThis Thing: A newsletter featuring one fantastic piece of news each day.
- Nuzzel: The super easy way to see news from from your friends.
- Guardian Open Platform: A real-time API with access to The Guardian’s journalism.
- Reddit: The front page of the internet.
- Twitter: Some people still don’t see how powerful this tool is. Use it every day.
To be continued …
Photo Credit: Webcontentblog.com
About the Writer: Osakwe Richard is an avid follower of tech news and developments around the globe and a Scrabble aficionado.
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This article was first published on 27th May 2015
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