Blogging Tools: 5 Tools Every Blogger Needs
Blogging is a great way to express yourself, find your voice and even earn money online. I’ve been blogging for 3 years now and along the way I’ve learned a thing or two about some of the best blogging tools that allow you to keep doing what you love – blogging!
From design, promotion and support here are some of the best blogging tools to help you on your blogging journey.
Blogging tools can help you automate your blog, improve your SEO and generate traffic
A Graphic Design Tool
If you don’t personally have graphic design skills then it might be a good idea to look into a tool that can help you design the graphics for your blog.
Canva is an online graphic-design tool. It uses a simple drag-and-drop format and provides access to photographs, graphics, and fonts. It’s used by both new bloggers and seasoned professionals. I use Canva for all the infographics, banners and social media artwork that I produce for my blog.
A Media Kit
A media kit is a document containing information about your blog. In many cases influencers, brands and bloggers use media kits to secure new brand collaborations. They can be great tool when it comes to demonstrating what you unique selling points are as a blogger.
To create a powerful media kit follow this step-by-step guide:
- Summarise your blog a few sentences
- Include a short bio
- List any notable milestones/awards
- Highlight what opportunities you can offer (e.g. sponsored posts)
- Include visuals (you could include a breakdown of your audience)
- Make sure that your contact details are on there
Consider using a template to first create your media kit. I used Canva when I created my first Media Kit.
Social Media
Social media is one of the best blogging tools for generating traffic to your blog, especially when you’re first starting out! If you’re new to the blogging scene I would suggest creating a blogging account on several social media channels – Instagram, Twitter and Facebook would be my recommendation.
Once you’ve created these social media accounts for your blog encourage friends and family to support your blog by following you. Hashtags are an important promotional tool on Instagram and Twitter so make sure to include lots of relivent hashtags in your promotional posts. You can connect your blog to Facebook and Twitter – this way it will share any new posts automatically.
Staying active on social media can be challenging especially if you blog alongside a full-time job or other commitments. I use Hootsuite to schedule social media posts. The free version currently allows you to queue 30 posts in advance across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I spend some time on a Sunday scheduling my posts for the week through Hootsuite.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Once you’ve created your content, optimise it to rank well on search engines. When a website or blog ranks on search engines its website traffic increases, search rankings improve, and sales are boosted.
SEO is made up of multiple different elements, and knowing what they are and how they work is key to understanding why SEO is so important. These elements include keywords, content (e.g. videos and infographics), off-page SEO (backlinks), and user experience (page speed).
There are tons of blogging tools to help you improve your SEO. Google PageSpeed Insights can help you to identify opportunities to improve the load time of your blog. Keywordtool.io provides a keyword opportunities and common questions asked across the internet that you could answer on your blog. Google Search Console gives you a taste of what the top two search engines think of your site. It’s helpful to see any bugs, alerts, and indexing issues.
A Network
You can have all the blogging tools in the world, but your network is vital. Successful networking as a blogger will help you to build a network of useful contacts. Don’t underestimate the value of setting aside some time in your monthly calendar to network with new and existing contacts.
Networking can help you to gain new opportunities such as paid work, collaborative posts, increased blog traffic or learning opportunities. Despite all the research you do around SEO, Keywords and content there will be other bloggers with even more knowledge on the subject.
A great way to begin networking is to join blogging groups through social media. I’m a part of the Official UK Bloggers Facebook group and there’s a real sense of community on Twitter amongst other bloggers (check out #writerslift).
More Blogging Tools and Tricks
Ways to Automate Your Blogging Business
Ways to Optimise Your Blog Advertisements
Why Get Blogged is Great for Paid Blog Opportunities
How to Make Money from Your Blog
What blogging tools do you think are missing from list? Is there a website or app that you’ve used to improve your blog substantially? Let us know in the comments below.