12 Oct 8 free tools to improve your communication and marketing

There are so many free services out there that it is hard to differentiate the ones that are truly useful from the ones that won’t serve much of a purpose. This list features tried and tested websites and services that we can personally vouch for – we’ve been using some of them for years!

Writing

Hemingway

Hemingway helps you keep your writing succinct and easy to understand. If you find yourself second-guessing your use of long sentences or even complex language, Hemingway is the tool for you. There’s, of course, an inbuilt word counter, and my favourite part of the tool – a readability rating and grade. The grade tells you what the lowest level education a reader has to have achieved to understand what you are writing. This is based on American grades and it is generally suggested you don’t write above Grade 10 level.

Go to site: http://www.hemingwayapp.com/

Grammarly

Grammarly is a spelling and grammar checker on steroids. Much like Hemingway above, Grammarly helps you write better. The free tier is great to start with but limits the level of corrections it suggests. The paid level is worth it if writing good content and emails is important to you.

Go to site: https://www.grammarly.com/

Website

SEO SiteCheckup

The site does exactly what it’s name claims and helps you understand what you could do better with regard to your site’s Search Engine Optimisation.

Go to site: https://seositecheckup.com/

Dr Link Check

Broken links can confuse website visitors and make for unhappy clients, ruining the overall beauty of your site. Dr Link Check hunts down all the links on your site and shows you which of those are broken, blacklisted, external links and internal links.

Go to site: https://www.drlinkcheck.com

Marketing

Mailchimp

We use Mailchimp almost every day to send and track emails. The best part is that you don’t have to spend money to get access to most of Malchimp’s features, and once you’re using Mailchimp so much that you have to pay, chances are that you’ll be generating enough income to make it worthwhile. There’s a reason Mailchimp is such a popular service – it’s value within any marketing plan.

Go to site: https://mailchimp.com/

Pexels

Finding the perfect photos to use within emails and posters can be difficult and costly. Pexels (and Unsplash) are two sites we trust for our imagery needs. We do use paid sites as well but Pexels and Unsplash are easy to navigate, and images are easy to download so we spend a lot of time browsing the free image libraries.

Go to site: https://www.pexels.com/

Unsplash

Just like Pexels above, Unsplash is a great place to find photos and images for social media, emails, marketing, and basically any time an image would be handy.

Go to site: https://unsplash.com/

Emails

WeTransfer

Sending large files can get annoying. Usually it involves trying to remember the password to an old Dropbox account – but not anymore. WeTransfer lets you send up to 2GB of files either directly as an email, or you can generate a link that you can paste wherever you like. The download only stays active for a week but if all you need to do is send a file to someone, that should be okay.

Go to site: https://wetransfer.com/

We would love to hear what you thought of the sites and services above, let us know by sending us a message on Facebook or leaving a comment below.