20 + 1 Must Have Chrome Extensions To Accelerate Your Content Creation
“I know how to create great content for my website...but how can I do it better, faster and with fewer headaches?!”
That’s the big question a lot of online business owners start asking themselves whenever their content marketing starts to drag.
If you produce blog content for your website on a frequent schedule, I’m sure you’ve felt this frustration before.
So to help you get a step ahead of that relentless publishing monster, this post will show you 20 + 1 must have Google Chrome extensions you should’ve been using yesterday to accelerate your content creation process.
Ready to learn how you can boost your productivity with the help of a few mission critical Google Chrome extensions?
Awesome! Let’s get started...
The following extensions will help you focus in on your most important daily tasks. They’re super simple, but will help you get more done in far less time.
Momentum is a free Chrome extension that replaces your bland “New Tab” Google Chrome page with a fresh landscape photo and inspirational quote each day. Your local time and weather are also shown on top of the photo.
To help you dial in your most important task each day, Momentum will prompt you to write down your primary focus and daily “Todo” list.
Momentum also offers a premium subscription for their extension (currently $2.50 per month) that supports integrations with badass task manager platforms like Asana, Trello and Basecamp.
If you use one of these task management tools to help organize your work, the ability to sync it with your Momentum “New Tabs” page on Chrome will give you a productivity boost over time since you won't have to open and close the app as frequently each day.
Do you ever find yourself logging into Facebook to do a simple task – like checking Facebook messages or publishing a quick post – only to find yourself wasting several minutes scrolling through your Facebook Newsfeed?
The truth is that Facebook is designed to distract you and the only way to fight back is by eliminating its most distracting feature...the Newsfeed.
You can do this by using a free Chrome extension called Newsfeed Eradicator for Facebook.
This extension still allows you to access Facebook’s more useful – and less distracting – features, but completely blocks the Newsfeed from appearing. In its place, a motivational quote is displayed instead.
Install this app right now to get all those productive hours of your life back...you’re welcome! ;-)
How much more productive would you be if your reading speed doubled...or even tripled?!
Think about it. Just doubling your reading speed would make you way more productive since your content research would get done in half the time! That time savings would then allow you to complete each of your content pieces that much faster.
So is it possible? Can you instantly double or triple your reading speed?
A free Chrome extension called Reedy will help you do just that with a technology assisted form of speed reading called Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP).
With the Reedy extension, you can copy-paste any piece of online text into its reader to start speed reading instantly.
If you don’t believe me, just download it already and give it a try. You could have finished reading this entire article by now!
If Google Drive (i.e. Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, etc.) is your go to office app suite, then the Omnidrive Chrome extension is your new speed search tool.
With this extension, you simply type “drive” into the Google Omnibox – a.k.a. search bar – press the spacebar and then type the name of the file that you’re looking for saved in your Google Drive.
Omnidrive will help you navigate your sprawling Google Drive files faster.
If you want to manage your tasks and projects like a badass, use Trello.
Shane will show exactly why you should do this in his ActiveGrowth Trello productivity blog series here.
Once you’re set up with Trello, you can add an additional layer of productivity awesome sauce to it by downloading the free Chrome extension for it.
The extension speeds up your Trello productivity by bringing your Trello boards directly to the Chrome Omnibox. You can search your Trello boards by typing [“t” in the omnibox + click spacebar + typing your search term].
You can also add new Trello cards to any of your existing boards by clicking the Trello icon from your Chrome browser's toolbar.
Bananatag is a freemium Chrome extension that will boost your Gmail productivity.
It allows you to track and schedule emails, get notified when recipients open your emails, and see data metrics on your open and click-through rates.
The free version of Bananatag limits your tracking to just 5 emails per day with open notifications and limited analytics.
Upgrading to a Pro account (currently $12.50 per month or $120 per year) expands the number of emails you can track to 100 per day while also giving you access to advanced tracking data metrics like click through tracking and custom reports.
Let’s face it.
When you’re creating online content, swiping articles, blog posts, images, screencasts and ideas you come across is a big part of what fuels your high value content creation.
Having free and convenient ways to capture all that content quickly is an absolute necessity for you and the next few extensions will help you get all that done like a total boss...
Awesome Screenshot is a free Chrome extension you can rely on to help capture online images and screenshots. It even allows you to capture short, 30 second screencasts of your Chrome browser when you need to share something in video.
In fact, every screenshot you see in this post was captured using Awesome Screenshot!
When capturing content using Awesome Screenshot, you can choose between:
- Capturing the visible part of the browser area
- A selected browser area
- A local image
- Or your desktop screen...
...all in either JPEG or PNG image formats.
If you create a lot of expository content for your website, Awesome Screenshot is an absolute godsend!
If you already use Evernote to manage your notes, web research and web clippings, then why haven’t you downloaded the Evernote Web Clipper Chrome extension yet?!
If you use Evernote, we bet you already have it, but had to include it here for the sake of being comprehensive...
The Evernote Web Clipper will copy and store any webpage you come across. When you clip a page, the extension will then help you organize it by asking for a notebook and descriptive tags to assign it to.
Loom is a free Chrome extension that allows you to capture screencasts for all sorts of cool productivity reasons like:
- Giving feedback
- Creating new feature tutorials
- Collecting testimonials
- Creating online course lessons
- Real time support FAQ videos
You can easily switch between screencasting your desktop or an open Chrome tab while simultaneously displaying your live face in a bubble at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.
I mean, you could create that bubble effect yourself using this Thrive Themes tutorial, but Loom makes just goes ahead and does it for you...
Instead of having to deal with the hassle of setting up cameras, screencasting software and then doing complex video editing, Loom basically takes all those complexities and handles them all for you in a free Chrome extension package.
By comparison, the Awesome Screenshot extension discussed above only allows you to capture 30 seconds of basic screencasting video to Loom’s unlimited video recording and storage time.
Linkclump is a super simple Chrome extension that helps you research online content faster.
After Google returns your results for a given search term, Linkclump allows you to select and open multiple links at the same time with each one appearing in a new Chrome tab.
This simple feature allows you to skim through and evaluate your top search results at a rapid fire pace instead of having to open each individual link one-by-one from the Google search results page.
A little bit of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) research can go a long way towards helping you capture more organic traffic and boosting your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rankings.
Below are a few free Chrome extensions to help make that basic research much more convenient for you...
Although there's a tons of fancy – and expensive – keyword research tools out there, here’s one that’s free and convenient to use:
Keywords Everywhere makes doing basic SEO keyword research as simple as typing in a Google search term.
After each Google search you do, the extension displays the term’s search volume, cost-per-click (CPC) and keyword competition estimate beneath the Google search box. It then shows you a list of related keywords and data in the sidebar of your Google search results browser window.
And on top of all that, Keywords Everywhere will even display keyword data within other popular search platforms like Bing, Amazon, Ebay and Answer The Public:
Before you go spend big money on a keyword research tool, give the Keywords Everywhere Chrome extension a try first!
If YouTube videos are an important part of your online business, SocialBlade is an awesome Chrome extension that gives you key traffic and metadata for any channel or video on the platform.
When activated, SocialBlade automatically displays several important stats about the video and channel you’re watching in the right hand sidebar.
On top of channel, video and subscriber info, SocialBlade also captures the metadata tags assigned to each video. This allows you to quickly research how tags are assigned to videos so you can better attach relevant tags to your own videos.
Over time, this will boost your organic YouTube search performance.
As a content creator, you don’t just want to write faster...you want to become a better writer with each post or landing page you publish.
The following Chrome extensions will help you accomplish exactly that to become a more persuasive and engaging wordsmith!
Airstory Researcher is a free Chrome based writing platform from Joanna Wiebe over at CopyHackers.
Much like Evernote, Airstory Researcher allows you to clip content from the web. Unlike Evernote however, the Airstory Web Clipper lets you add clippings straight to your writing projects.
And if you are an Evernote user, Airstory integrates with it so you can pull your old notes straight into your Airstory writing projects.
One of Airstory’s many awesome features is its “Time Travel” slider bar. It allows you to move back and forth between past and current iterations of your project...the evolved alien icon lets you know it's advanced writing technology!
Finally, Airstory is mobile responsive so you can actually get your content writing done from your phone. Buy yourself a bluetooth keyboard to carry with you and you’ll never have a reason not to write on the road ever again!
Grammarly is a writing assistant that provides spell checking, grammar suggestions and word usage recommendations to you as you write anything in your Chrome browser.
That means Grammarly will give you feedback on everything that you write from emails to Facebook posts.
The only drawback to Grammarly is that many of its advanced features are held behind an expensive monthly paywall (currently $29.95 per month or $139.95 per year).
You get basic edits for your spelling and grammar free, but a premium account is required to unlock features like word choice suggestions and advanced grammatical notes (i.e. making sure you use semicolons properly).
If you can’t afford the premium features and already know how to use semicolons properly, Grammarly Basic is still worth downloading because it offers a cool vocabulary and readability insight feature that will help keep your writing down to earth.
The Google Dictionary extension is exactly what it sounds like...a dictionary tool that allows you to define words on the fly.
Instead of having to copy-paste words into an online dictionary site all the time, you can just highlight a word and click the the Google Dictionary icon to get the definition instantly.
Because your strengths as a content creation revolve around writing, you probably outsource most of your site’s graphic design tasks.
Even so, it’s still a good idea to have a few go to design tools in your bag of tricks for those times when you need a last-minute design for a post or landing page you’re about to publish.
The next few Chrome extensions are absolute must haves if you deal at all with images or building landing pages on your website.
Have you ever tried to build a landing page or make an image based on something you saw and swiped from another website?
Specifically, how did you match the colors you saw on that site? We hope you didn’t waste time in your color editor trying to match it by hand!
Every color you observe online has an assigned Hex Color Code and to produce that color in Thrive Architect or an image editor, you just need to type in that color’s color hex code.
ColorPick Eyedropper is a Chrome extension that will identify the hex code for any color displayed in your Chrome browser by moving a set of crosshairs over the exact color you want recreate.
Identifying font types on different websites is usually a hassle.
However, the FontFace Ninja extension for Chrome makes that task super easy.
When you hover your mouse over the font type you want to investigate, the extension will display 2 popup windows that instantly provide all the font data you need to recreate that font style on your own website including:
- Font type
- Font size
- Font height
- Font weight
- Font color
- Line width
Creating high value content requires using several online tools and platforms for you to get the job done just the way you want it.
The downside about this is that you’re forced to continually log in and out of several online accounts from whatever Wi-Fi connection you managed to work from that day.
How do you manage all those usernames and passwords while protecting your online information at the same time?
With the following Chrome extensions...that’s how. ;-)
It’s hard to remember life as a content creator before LastPass…
Days were filled with forgotten username and password requests since it was impossible to remember them all. I’m sure you can relate.
With an encrypted password vault service like LastPass, you never have to waste time forgetting passwords ever again.
Instead, you only have to remember one, complex, master password to login to your LastPass account. After that, LastPass will autofill all your login details for any site you’ve saved to your password vault.
Believe me, that’s a HUGE productivity time savings that really adds up over weeks, months and years!
LastPass is free for its basic features and requires a small monthly subscription fee (currently $2 per month) for its more advanced features – like password syncing across all your desktop and mobile devices.
VPN stands for Virtual Private Network and are now offered as monthly or yearly subscription services to help protect your online information in this age of abundant, but vulnerable Wi-Fi hotspots.
With a single click in your Chrome extension toolbar, VPN services like ZenMate or ExpressVPN will encrypt your online connections and allow you to select one of their many proxy server locations from around the globe.
This proxy server feature gives you access to websites that usually block your access based on location. VPN services do this by masking your IP address so you can browse the web with anonymity.
If you work on your online business or access sensitive sites or personal information from public Wi-Fi hotspots, VPN cyber security is an investment you can’t afford to skip!
Want to scare the crap out of yourself?
Install the Ghostery extension for Chrome to see just how many ads and trackers are collecting data about you on each of the different websites you visit.
I’m warning you now...it’s shocking!
However, by downloading Ghostery, you can fight back against unwanted tracking.
The extension gives you the option to block ads and trackers, anonymize the data that is collected about you while also making your browsing experience faster.
I agree. 20 additional extensions on your Chrome toolbar is a lot to handle!
That’s why we're going to give you one more extension to help manage that motley crew and keep you surfing the net at tip-top speeds...
Extensity is a very simple tool that allows you to toggle each of your Chrome extensions on and off with a single click.
Instead of having to open a separate Chrome settings window constantly to manage each of your extensions, you can now do it with ease from your Chrome toolbar. This allows you to quickly minimize the number of activated extensions you use for any job in order to maximize your surf speeds!
So there you have it!
Those are the 20 + 1 Google Chrome productivity extensions that help the Thrive Themes marketing team to create better content faster and we hope they’ll do the same for you!
Are there any Google Chrome extensions you’ve used to help improve and accelerate your own content creation timelines?
Let us know by leaving a comment below!
“I know how to create great content for my website…but how can I do it better, faster and with fewer headaches?!”
That’s the big question a lot of online business owners start asking themselves whenever their content marketing starts to drag .
If you produce blog content for your website on a frequent schedule, I’m sure you’ve felt this frustration before.So to help you get a step ahead of that relentless publishing monster, this post will show you 20 + 1 must have Google Chrome extensions you should’ve been using yesterday to accelerate your content creation process.Ready to learn how you […]
