Are you looking for a way to make your writing business function more effectively? Enhancing productivity and taking your business to the next level may be easier than you think with the following cool tools.

A Productivity Booster

One way to boost your business is to write more in less time. There’s no better way to do this than with speech recognition software Dragon Naturally Speaking or MacSpeech, which is essentially the same thing for Mac users). Out of the box, Dragon has an impressive recognition rate so you’ll be able to craft your articles in half the time. Our tests suggest that you can save at least 15 minutes in every hour of work or, to put it another way, do 25% more work in each hour. Whether you decide to finish your work day earlier or watch your bank balance grow is up to you, but that extra time is there if you need it.

Securing Your Work

In a writing business, your client files and work are your assets, so you’d better protect them. That means backup, backup, backup. Backing up your work is like having business insurance; it may seem costly till you need it.There are lots of options for this. Some of our favorites include Syncplicity, Mozy and Carbonite, all of which work pretty much the same way. The first two have free and paid plans. Install the software, set your backup options and frequency and leave the software to do its thing. For added security, consider an offline backup solution. For set it and forget it offline backup, try the Clickfree Automatic Backup cable attached to a portable hard drive. It’s simple and effective.

Outlining and Planning

Planning is essential when writing and it’s a good idea to have an outlining tool. One of the best we’ve seen recently is Workflowy, which can also serve as a to-do list manager. It’s ridiculously simple to use. You start with a blank page and add items by typing and entering. Double-click on an item to add sub-items and shift and enter to add notes. It’s a great way to keep track of article research or plan ebooks – you heard it here first (well, almost!)

Avoiding Distractions

Moving from planning to writing, some writers prefer a distraction-free writing environment, like those old DOS computer screens. No icons, reminders or anything to take the attention away from the task of writing. According to a recent Lifehacker poll, the best of these tools is Q10. This portable application gives a full screen writing space, complete with word count and spell check. It autosaves and you can even time your writing sessions.

An Oldie But Goodie

It may not be new, but Google Documents keeps getting better. If you use this as your main word processor then your documents are available anytime you have access to a computer or a mobile device. In the last year, Google has added a slew of improvements, including:

• better mobile viewing options
• more page sizes
• document translation
• new fonts
• better collaboration tools
• improved document revisions
• compact controls

There are many ways to link your Google Docs account to Microsoft Word or other online tools (like Syncplicity, for example), giving you many options for writing on the move.

What cool writing tools are you planning to use this year?

This was a guest post by Lior who works as a marketing advisor to iAdvize and also is a consultant to an neon signs company that sells neon signs online.