Copywriting Productivity Tools

When I write copy, some tools help me tremen­dously. Whether it’s the copy itself, or inter­ac­tions with my clients, there are cer­tain web­sites I use that help make it a lot eas­ier for me.

There are quite a few pieces of soft­ware, so let me just stick with the web-​​based ones. How about post­ing yours? What are some of the tools you use in your work to improve your productivity?

Here are some of mine…

Google Writely

Google is com­ing out with some pretty impres­sive tools of late. Writely is cer­tainly one of them.

Writely is an online web-​​based word proces­sor. Great for writ­ing copy and sharing/​collaborating, espe­cially with other copy­writ­ers, clients, asso­ciates, etc. The beauty is that it can also import and export in var­i­ous for­mats, includ­ing MS Word, Rich Text, HTML, OpenOf­fice, image files, and even zipped files.

Google Note­book

Research is an incred­i­ble part of our job as copy­writ­ers. Surf­ing the web or read­ing your email, you will come across a ton of pas­sages and clip­pings you want to copy, ref­er­ence to, gather for data research pur­poses, quote in your copy, get ideas from, etc.

Google Note­book is an per­sonal online repos­i­tory of all things impor­tant. It even offers a browser plu­gin to copy clip­pings on the web, save images, add sticky notes and file book­marks, on the fly. You can eas­ily “click and store” as you browse.

Google Spread­sheets

I use to have a PC-​​based spread­sheet to keep track of all my copy­writ­ing projects, which my junior copy­writ­ers, my accoun­tant and my assis­tant had access to and could work on. But email­ing back and forth was a nightmare.

Like Writely, Google Spread­sheet makes it pos­si­ble to have it all in one cen­tral loca­tion, online. It even imports and exports in a vari­ety of pop­u­lar spread­sheet for­mats, includ­ing Excel, CSV, text, and so on.

Google Ana­lyt­ics

I love Google Ana­lyt­ics. Not only is it free, but Google Ana­lyt­ics is a lot more than your typ­i­cal traf­fic and web-​​tracking soft­ware (giv­ing you typ­i­cal stats like refer­rers, pageviews, search engine traf­fic, key­words, etc). It’s also a really cool split-​​tester and con­ver­sion tracker.

When I test copy, or when I want to track how well the copy I wrote for a client per­forms, I sim­ply add a snip­pet of code on the saleslet­ter and another on the result­ing action page (i.e., “thank you” page). And that’s just an iceberg’s tip of the infor­ma­tion you can gather.

SendTh​is​File​.com

When I need to send files — like copy work, video, images, etc — that are too large, either for my email or my client’s email, I used to upload it to my server and email the link. (Not only is this a two-​​step process, it’s also tax­ing on my resources.)

Now, I use SendTh­is­File to email any size file to my clients/​associates in a snap. You enter the recipient’s data (and you can even send files to mul­ti­ple recip­i­ents), browse to your file on your hard drive, upload, and send. That’s it!

Base­Camp

Base­Camp is a project man­age­ment sys­tem and cen­tral repos­i­tory I use to share infor­ma­tion between clients, co-​​workers and junior copywriters.

It’s com­plete with mes­sage boards, group emails, white­boards, file shar­ing, to-​​do lists, mile­stone plan­ning, dis­cus­sion room, goal set­ting, and more. One of the ben­e­fits is that, when I need infor­ma­tion from a client, rather than a phone call or email, the client can respond via Base­Camp and it keeps, sorts and tags impor­tant communications.

Answers​.com

Answers​.com is an online dic­tio­nary. But it’s a lot more than that. While you can use it as a research tool, Answers​.com also offers a free down­load­able pro­gram that sits in your sys­tem tray and works at any time, when you need it the most.

While writ­ing your copy or doing research, you sim­ply ALT-​​click any word or phrase in any doc­u­ment, web page or soft­ware, and out pops up a win­dow giv­ing you: dic­tio­nary, ency­clo­pe­dia, almanac, ref­er­ences, web searches, wiki entries, trans­la­tions, the­saurus, you name it. All in one.

Tex­t­alyzer

MS Word offers a read­abil­ity analy­sis built-​​in. This is great when you want to know if you’re using words that are too com­plex. (The best copy is almost always eas­ily read­able at a 6-​​7th grade level.) But what if you use Front­Page? Or if it’s online?

That’s where Tex­t­alyzer comes in. (It’s also a great tool for SEO pur­poses.) Need to know the word count, sen­tence count or char­ac­ter count of your copy? Per­haps to quote fees, mea­sure project sizes or ana­lyze competitor’s copy? Tex­t­alyzer does it all for you online.

RhymeZone

Some­times, you need a word that rhymes. Or you’re look­ing for a famous quote. Or you’re look­ing for a word but can’t seem to find it in a dic­tio­nary. Or you want to quote a famous pas­sage, adage or doc­u­ment (like the US Constitution).

Enter RhymeZone. It’s a writer’s all-​​in-​​one ref­er­ence tool. It will even search word vari­a­tions, antonyms, homo­phones, spellings, you name it. It’s an awe­some tool I use quite often.

iDic­tate

Often, I need to tran­scribe copy I’ve recorded, a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion (such as one with a client), a tele­sem­i­nar, or an audio file that’s rel­e­vant to my copy. iDic­tate is an online ser­vice that will tran­scribe audio files of any type and email you a doc­u­ment by email within a few hours.

It’s all done by human beings. (This is impor­tant since soft­ware, like Dragon Nat­u­rally Speak­ing, have to be trained and can only tran­scribe the speaker who trained it.) They even offer a 1–800 record­ing ser­vice, which is great for doing it on the phone.

I have more, but hope­fully this will get things started.

What are yours?

About the Author

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