43 Blogging Tools All Bloggers Should Have

By Gina | August 1, 2018

You know how new workout clothes gets you in the mood to workout more? I think the same thing happens when I stumble upon new blogging tools. Is that just me?

Blogging Tools Workspace

I was excited to join a group of ladies for a Tuesday Together meetup, as part of the Rising Tide Society. It was all about social media, and we spent a couple hours talking about Instagram and Facebook strategies, what we post, and the tools we use. Over the past 8 years (really?!), I’ve found so many different blogging tools and resources. They’ve definitely changed with the times, but this roundup is a good solid bunch. As we know, there is so many things we do as bloggers, marketers, designers, creatives, business owners, and people…and organizations are only as good as their people, food is only as good as its ingredients, and an artist (and blogger) is only as good as its tools.

Broken down by category, here is a collection of the top tools I’ve used and recommend for all bloggers. They are mostly on the inexpensive side, but some are investments or have payment tiers. Happy discovering new ways to make your blog better!

43 Blogging Tools For All Bloggers

Social Media Schedulers

  • Buffer – A great scheduling system for Twitter, Facebook and other social sites. I use it primarily for Twitter – it has a great interface for Twitter and makes it easy to create Twitter content.
  • Later or Planoly – These are two of my favorite Instagram schedulers and planners. I recently switch to Planoly per a recommendation and I’m loving it. It has a feature to see what your feed will look like with your new images.
  • Tailwind and/or Boardbooster – Great Pinterest tools for scheduling and boosting your boards.
  • WhenToPost – This is an app you can download that lets you know the best times to post to Instagram on any given day. It’s great to know this as you plan out your posts.

Photography

  • DSLR Camera – A great camera is an essential for original images and content. If you’re a lifestyle, travel, fashion blogger, this is a must. While our phones can take great photos nowadays, having a professional camera can take your images to the next level.
  • Adobe Lightroom & Photoshop – These high quality editing tools allow you to customize different features of your images and photographs. I use Lightroom for my image editing and Photoshop if I have to do advanced changes, beyond lighting and cropping.
  • WordSwag – A fun app that lets you add a variety of type designs to images.
  • Google Photos – An essential way to back up your photos on your phone and on your computer. It syncs automatically and makes the process of transferring your images from your computer to your phone (and vice versa) much easier.
  • Foam board (for white backgrounds)
  • Photo props – Definitely for styled images!

Web/Graphic Design

WordPress Plugins

  • BeaverBuilder – An awesome plugin for a drag-in-drop page designer!
  • Google Analytics – All tools you would need for your website pageviews, engagement, conversions, etc.
  • Yoast SEO – THE SEO tool that you MUST have!
  • Disqus Comment System – My personal favorite commenting system for blog posts.
  • Simple Social Icons – A great plugin for adding your social links to your website.
  • WP Super Cache – A caching plugin that helps reduce your page load time.
  • Redirection – Helps if you want to redirect old links to new links.
  • Akismet – A must-have anti-spam plugin.
  • JetPack – You get a lot of the basic WordPress features added with JetPack to make your WordPress experience easier.

Writing / Content Creation

  • Grammarly – Write better with Grammarly, a tool that spellchecks and does so much more.
  • BuzzSumo – Get a look at the top content shared in your niche. It’s a great way to begin your strategy for a blog post on a specific topic.
  • Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator – A great tool to get you thinking about headlines for your blog posts.
  • Evernote – One of my favorite ways to keep notes and ideas for posts is Evernote. It lets me take notes on my phone and computer and translate them into blog posts, Instagram captions and more. I also use it for a lot of personal writing too.
  • Trello – A great project management tool to help you write, brainstorm and outline blog posts and keep them (and other projects) organized.
  • Google Trends – Compare search terms to one another to see what people are searching or reading over time.

Email Lists

  • Constant Contact or MailChimp or ConvertKit – Research email marketing tools to start building your list! I use MailChimp, which is a free system and has a lot of good features at the same time. A lot of bloggers use different ones, but there is one out there for everyone!

Affiliates

  • Amazon Affiliates – To get started with affiliate marketing and monetizing your blog, Amazon Affiliates is a great way to start.

Blogging Tools All Bloggers Should Have

Whether you’re a new blogger or been blogging for 10 years, we all have or will use some if not all of these tools in our blogging journey.

What are the most important tools you use for blogging?

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