As we round out the end of 2022, let’s reflect on all that we’ve accomplished this year and the best tools for copywriters that helped get us there.
If you’re a seasoned pro, you likely have a refined toolkit of copywriting resources that are your ride-or-die, tried-and-true choices. If you’re just starting your copywriting journey, you’ve probably been trying new tools to see what works and what doesn’t. You may still be on the hunt for the best tools for the job.
Regardless of where you are in the journey, there’s always room to discover new tools.
Here are my favorite tools of 2022 for editing, drafting, productivity, project management, and design and one final tool that’s a jack of all trades.
Editing and Drafting
Thoroughly editing your pieces is essential to your success as a copywriter. No client or boss wants a piece to hit their design that’s riddled with typos, punctuation errors, and grammatical mistakes. So, while we recommend that you curate an editing process, using tools to support your proofreading and editing can keep you from making this mistake.
Side note: The best tools for copywriters don’t just focus on grammar, spelling, syntax, and punctuation. They should also focus on other aspects of your writing copy, like SEO.
Best for Grammar: Grammarly
Why I like it: Regardless of if you pay for pro or use the free version, Grammarly is one of the best options for grammar, spelling, tone, and punctuation. As a plus, you can draft directly in their web browser app.
Favorite feature: The browser-based plugin and phone app can be used for email, docs, social media, and more to keep your writing clean and correct across multiple platforms. I cannot tell you the number of times the plugin and app have saved me from sending a really egregious typo in an important email.
Best for Collaboration: Google Docs
Why I like it: Who doesn’t love Google Docs? At this point, Google Docs is one of the most popular word-processing applications. It makes collaborating and sharing pieces a breeze, especially when you have to share documents both internally and externally.
Favorite feature: Approvals is a newer feature to Google Docs that makes approving copy and requesting feedback even easier. You can easily input the information you need for approval with the due date, and you can then lock the document from being edited by anyone but the approver.
Best for SEO: Serp Simulator
Why I like it: SEO is an important part of most copywriters’ jobs, especially when you focus on blogs and other web copy. While SERP Simulator doesn’t help with keyword density, it does help you make sure your meta title and meta description appear the way you want them to on Google search results. The tool also features some great SEO tips at the bottom of the page.
Favorite feature: Fetch data from your current pieces to preview how they look on Google. This gives you a chance to preview what you’ve already written and improve it.
Best for Social Media: Greymetrics Social Media Ad Mockups
Why I like it: If social media writing is part of your copywriting job, making sure your posts look the way they’re supposed to isn’t the easiest task. Greymetrics Socail Media Ad Mockups solves this problem for you. Most of the time we aren’t just posting on Facebook or Instagram, so being able to see how your social media ad or post will look across different platforms is super helpful.
Favorite feature: Greymetrics gives you the ability to mock up your ad and see how it will look in multiple views (news feed, right side, and mobile for Facebook or expanded or board for Pinterest).
Raise your hand if you’ve created a social post only for it to look horrible in mobile. ✋
Productivity
I’ll start this section with a disclaimer: Productivity does not have to equate to hustle culture. Productivity does not have to mean getting all the things done all the time.
HOWEVER, I do believe in finding the best tools for copywriters to streamline your workflow when you’re actually working. Why not make it easier to work and get more done so that you have more time to enjoy your life–because isn’t that the point of being a freelance copywriter?
Best Scheduling: Google Calendar and Tasks
Why I like it: If you’re already using Google Docs and Gmail, you might as well use the full power of Google Suite by using Google Calendar and Tasks. Google Calendar’s Focus Time and Tasks features can help you be more productive by setting aside time for each client and by placing your tasks and due dates directly on your calendar.
Favorite feature: Hands down, my favorite feature is Focus Time on Google Calendar. It helps me time block and balance work between different clients and projects. Bonus tip: I like to color code my calendar and give specific tasks or clients their own Focus Time.
Best for Time Tracking: Toggl Track
Why I like it: I can organize my work by client, project, and tasks in Toggle Track. It also boasts some of the best free integrations and features to make tracking a breeze.
Favorite feature: My personal favorite integration is the ability to import my Google Calendar into Toggl Track to copy specific meetings and other time blocks into my time tracker. This is particularly helpful for keeping track of the time spent in meetings with clients.
Project Management
Project management skills are the bread and butter of successful copywriters—not just for freelancers but for in-house and agency copywriters, too!
A good project management tool will help you manage multiple projects and clients at one time, streamline your processes, prioritize tasks and deadlines, and collaborate with team members or clients. However, it’s important to remember that the best tools for copywriters make your job easier, not harder
Best Overall: monday.com
Why I like it: Monday.com is killing the project management game. With their constant improvements, easy-to-use features, great functionality, and numerous integrations, they’re hard to beat.
Favorite feature: I thrive when I can keep as many of my materials in one place as possible. Monday’s integrations make this possible. My two favorites are Doc integrations into your monday boards and the ability to export monday.com due dates onto your Google Calendar.
Best DIY: Google Sheets
Why I like it: The best thing about Google Sheets is that you can pretty much completely customize your project management system to work for you. Or you can use a template from their gallery, which includes a Gantt Chart, Project Timeline, and Project Tracking, along with other calendar and schedule templates, to get started.
Favorite feature: Google Sheets provide the ability to directly link documents in your project management form as well as assign tasks and ping people within the sheet itself.
Design
Even though you’re a copywriter, sometimes you get roped into a graphic design task unexpectedly. So, having the best tools for copywriters for design up your sleeve will be helpful in those sticky situations.
Best for Design: Canva
Why I like it: With both free and pro versions, Canva really makes document and graphic design more accessible to the everyday user. It’s easy to learn how to use and has tons of great, free templates.
Favorite feature: That’s an easy one: brand kits and templates. They make it so much easier to keep your branding consistent through setting specific fonts and sizes for headings v. body text and being able to import logos, and brand colors. You can also use your brand kits to create social and header templates that can be easily modified for new projects.
Best for Font Selection: FontJoy
Why I like it: As with graphic design as a whole, most copywriters aren’t overly experienced at pairing fonts, but certain copywriting projects require it. Fontjoy makes pairing fonts extremely easy.
Favorite feature: The ability to lock one or more fonts helps you curate your choices. This is super helpful if you already have one font selected and just need others to pair with it. You can also adjust how similar or different the fonts will be to one another.
Best for Color Stories: Coolors
Why I like it: If you’re building a brand kit for your client or for your own brand as you build you copywriting career, Coolors can put color palettes and other aspects of colors for design at your fingertips. Bonus tip: Use Coolors to create your color palette and then import it into your brand kit in Canva.
Favorite feature: I love the ability to upload a photo to pull a color palette from it. You can browse through options pulled from the image, tweak them, and adjust the number of colors in your palette.
Best All-Around
Picking the best tool for copywriters all around is difficult, but I was up to the challenge, and I will admit I am completely biased in my answer. This year’s winner for best all arounds is none other than Notion.
Notion
Why I like it: I will sing the praises of Notion until my face is blue. Notion is a “does everything” kind of app. I love that you can build your pages however you want, invite people to view certain pages, and integrate other apps. They have many great free (and paid) templates available You can also find them on Etsy and other platforms for purchase, OR you can build your own with the help of their guides.
Favorite feature: I love being able to embed images, music, and other items directly into Notion. I work best when listening to a specific genre of music. With Notion I can embed my Spotify playlist for writing directly into the dashboard I built. That way it’s ready to play when it’s time to stat writing.
Finding the best tools for copywriters is a journey, not a destination
Because our needs and goals as copywriters are always changing, it’s important to remember that the tools you use should respond to those changes. The best tools for copywriters have yet to be discovered.
Try to avoid feeling stuck with certain copywriting tools and resources just because you’ve been using them for a long time. Keep exploring and trying new tools, just like you explore and try new writing techniques and habits.
Author Bio
Christina Rowell, Ph.D., is a content strategist at Content Workshop, Managing Director at Copywriter Exchange, and a former college writing instructor. She has over ten years of experience writing, editing, and creating content for healthcare, mental health, cybersecurity, and manufacturing clients.
At Copywriter Exchange, we’re a group of master content marketing pros who bring their diverse talents and backgrounds to bear on the art and science of creating high-performance content, tailored to your needs. We exist to help copywriters thrive in today’s economy by connecting them with the resources they need to step up their game. Join now to access our templates, guides, and courses to help you grow your career, skills, and network.
