How To Boost Your Productivity with Grammarly
As a busy mom entrepreneur, you know that time is precious. You only have so many hours in the day to create content, promote your brand, and engage with your audience, on top of also running your household, making meals, doing endless amounts of laundry, and driving your kids to and from activities all day.
When it’s time for you to work, you don’t have time to mess around. It’s essential to use every tip, trick, and tool at your disposal to boost your productivity, and today we’re talking about one of my favorites—Grammarly. Trust me, this is one that you’ll want to have in your toolbox if you’re doing any amount of writing (even if it’s just emailing or posting on social media).
What is Grammarly?
Grammarly is a free online grammar checker that can help you improve your writing and avoid errors. It’s a valuable tool for anyone who writes regularly, whether you’re a professional writer, a casual blogger, or anything in between. It saves you time by analyzing your text as you write it and making real-time suggestions for spelling and punctuation, word usage, tone, redundancy, and much more.
One of my favorite features is their weekly email reports. They analyze your writing for the week and tell you how productive you’ve been, how many weeks in a row you’ve been writing, how accurate your writing is, how many unique vocabulary words you use, and basically just how awesome you are all around! (I’m joking but also serious—if you ever need a confidence boost, just open one of their email reports!)
How To Get Started With Grammarly
Grammarly is easy to use. Just go to andreafrey.co/grammarly and sign up for a free account. They also offer a premium version, but I recommend starting off on the free plan until you need more features. Once you’ve signed up, you can either download the Grammarly app or use the web app. Personally, I like using the web app/Chrome extension because it’s more versatile and easier to use.
Once you’re signed in, all you have to do is start writing. Grammarly will analyze your text and highlight any errors for you to fix. You can also click on any of the highlighted words or phrases for more information about the error and how to fix it. The best part is that once you have it running, it will automatically work anywhere you type—from emails to Google docs to MS Word to social media.
Why Use Grammarly?
Grammarly can save you so much time because literally anywhere you type, you’ll have it’s full power with you, catching everything from small typos to incomplete sentences and more.
If you do a lot of writing, it’s convenient to be able to keep going and not have to stop what you’re doing to fix spelling and grammar mistakes, since Grammarly is always running in the background. You will quickly learn to recognize Grammarly’s suggestions as you type, and you can quickly make changes without losing your train of thought!
How Can Grammarly Help With Productivity?
There are so many ways Grammarly can boost your productivity. For starters, it’s available almost anywhere you could possibly need to type—on your phone, iPad, desktop, in Google Docs, MS Word, social media, etc. so you never have to waste time trying to figure out how to use it, or having to wait until the next time you are at your computer to send an important email.
Grammarly also has many other features, both free and paid, that make it a huge productivity booster. Here are my favorites:
Catch mistakes as you go
One of the best things about Grammarly is that it automatically catches errors in your writing. This includes typos, misspellings, grammar mistakes, and even stylistic choices like overuse of exclamation points. By catching these errors before you hit “publish,” you can save yourself time and embarrassment.
Grammarly can help you boost your productivity by catching mistakes as you make them. It will even offer suggestions on how to fix the errors it catches. So not only will it save you time in the editing process, but it can also help you improve your writing overall. There’s nothing more overwhelming than sitting down to proofread something you just spent a ton of time writing. This way, you don’t have to waste time proofreading your work after the fact—you can fix mistakes as they happen. This not only saves time in the short term but also helps train your brain to avoid making those same mistakes in the future.
Write clear and concise content with ease
In addition to catching errors, Grammarly also offers suggestions on how to make your writing clearer and more concise. For example, if you tend to use a lot of filler words like “that” or “very,” Grammarly will suggest alternatives that can help trim down your word count without sacrificing meaning. This is especially helpful for mom bloggers who want to write concise posts that pack a punch, and are short on time when it comes to writing. Their premium plan also offers full sentence rewrites, which is perfect for when your brain just can’t figure out how to say something “right” on its own!
Accuracy is important
By using Grammarly, you can be sure that everything you publish is as error-free as possible. This is important because even small mistakes can make your audience not take you seriously as an authority on your topic. Obviously, Grammarly doesn’t replace your own human brain, and, rarely, there are times when I disagree with the given suggestions. But by and large, it helps keep your grammar accurate and allows you to move on to the next line with confidence.
Don’t waste time coming up with the perfect words
Another great thing about Grammarly is that it can help you expand your vocabulary and find just the right word for what you’re trying to say. We’ve all been there; having an idea in your head but not being able to think of the right word to convey it… the worst! That’s where Grammarly comes in. Just type out what you’re trying to say, and Grammarly will offer suggestions for alternative words or phrases that might work better. As an added bonus, it will also point out if you’ve just said the same thing recently and give you suggestions for rephrasing what you’ve written.
No need to watch your tone (because Grammarly will!)
Grammarly detects the tone of your writing based on your sentence structure, word choice, punctuation, and capitalization. In their weekly reports, they summarize what your most used tones are, and I find this so helpful! It’s like an extra pat on the back when you see that you were, in fact, confident, optimistic, and friendly. In the premium version, they also offer tone suggestions as you write.
Which Grammarly Plan is Right For You?
I first signed up for Grammarly in 2020, and I stuck with the free plan for almost two years. I upgraded to their premium plan when I started focusing more on freelance writing, because I wanted to make sure I was putting my best foot forward in everything I do, but especially when other people started paying me for creating written content!
I definitely think the free plan has everything you need to save time and increase your productivity, but if you do a lot of writing for your business or as a freelancer or a VA, it’s definitely a worthwhile investment to upgrade to their premium plan.
At the time of this article, their premium plan is only $12/month #WorthIt. If you pay for a year at a time, the price is even lower. Unless you have a team for your business, you really don’t need the business plan.
If you’re just getting started, go ahead and sign up with a free plan. Start using it, and see how much it helps you with your writing and productivity (you’ll be pleasantly surprised!). Then, after you’ve been using it for a while, consider upgrading if you want to unlock its premium features like tone suggestions, sentence rewrites, and even citations with plagiarism checking.
There’s no doubt about it: content creation is hard work. But with Grammarly by your side, it doesn’t have to be quite so difficult—or time-consuming. With Grammarly, you can catch mistakes that you would normally miss, which will help you save time and produce better work. When used effectively, Grammarly can save you time in the editing process and help you produce clear, concise content that packs a punch. Plus, with its real-time feedback feature, Grammarly can help you boost your productivity by catching mistakes as they happen.
Grammarly is a must-have for every business owner in my opinion, but especially for us busy moms who are juggling running our businesses with the chaos of mom life! Sign up for your free Grammarly plan today and then be sure to let me know what you think in the comments below!
