Free Blogging Tools Every Blogger Should Use

Introduction

When you’re finding amazing content to share on social media—the kind of thing that grabs attention and gets people to click, share, and comment—one of the most valuable, most original places to turn is your own blogging space and the content you personally create.

So the questions become: How to create amazing content, how to put together blogposts strategically and efficiently, and how to get your content out to the masses.

Writing tips are a good place to start. And to supplement the words you use to build your blogposts, I’ve found a huge number of blogging tools that help with everything from coming up with ideas to spread the content far and wide.

Do you have a favorite blogging tool? Read on to see if it’s included here in the list, and drop a note in the comments with which ones you love.

#1 Yoast SEO (Free)

Yoast SEO is one of the most popular plugins for the WordPress platform and with good reason – it’s a one-stop-shop for all your onsite SEO needs!

Using your keyword from Google Keyword Planner, you can enter that as a focus keyword and the plugin will guide you through various elements to make sure your post is likely to rank for that keyword as much as possible. From editing the title tags, meta descriptions, to counting the mentions of the keyword in the article and even the readability of your post.

Some of the settings may seem a little complex if you’re new to SEO and WordPress, but Yoast created a complete tutorial to help you get everything set up.

#2 Google Analytics (Free)

Google Analytics is one of the top, most powerful tools out there for monitoring and analysing traffic on your website.It gives you an enormous amount of information about who is visiting your site, what they are looking for, and how they are getting to your site.

 

Purpose Of Google Analytics

The insights provided by Google Analytics are designed to communicate how well a website itself is performing in terms of user engagement metrics (time on page, etc.), reporting conversion-related goals, and showing site visitor activity on the website itself.

Typical reporting includes:

• Analytics can track performance goals such as purchases or lead generation.
• Can provide real-time site traffic data.
• Provides session quality data to show how close traffic is to conversions.
• User behavior on the website.

#3 Grammarly (Free & Paid)

Simply copy and paste your article into Grammarly’s online grammar checker to how it performs against checks for spelling, sentence structure, punctuation, style, and more. The initial score is free to see. The specifics of what to change (as well as suggestions from Grammarly) come with their paid plans. This great tool will help those who cannot get access to a proof-reader and want the peace of mind that your blog posts are grammatically sound.

#4 Google Keyword Planner (Free)

How will your target audience find your content? It all starts with boosting your organic search traffic.

Keyword Planner uses auto-complete APIs to generate thousands of long-tail keywords in seconds, along with monthly search volume and cost per click data.

Creating a blog post targeting a particular keyword is the best way to grow your organic traffic from Google.

Google’s Keyword Planner lets you enter a series of keywords, and Google returns results on search volume and popularity as well as related keywords that might spark an idea for you.

#5 MailChimp (Free & Paid)

So now you’re collecting email subscribers using Thrive Leads, you now need to treat your brand new subscribers to beautiful emails. Don’t worry, MailChimp offers an easy-to-use platform to create & send emails to your growing database and the paid subscription (from only $10 a month) gives you a huge amount of potential too.

With the ability to set up a welcome series to introduce your new subscribers to both you and your blog it also lets you set up an RSS-to-email campaign where your subscribers will automatically get emailed your latest blog post as soon as it goes live.

MailChimp has features galore, from automatically sending the email at the right time for your subscribers’ location to a simple drag and drop email editor (or the HTML editor for those more advanced coders).

 

#6 Canva

85 percent of Fortune 500 companies use Canva, a free online graphic design tool that offers users millions of stock images, graphics, and templates.

However, it’s not just for designers, and it’s popular among bloggers because of its many features.

With Canva, you can upload your photos, add text, and adjust the size and layout of your design to get the desired result.

In addition, Canva has an extensive library of templates that are free to use and customize, and there’s a design school if you need help.

Benefits include:

• You don’t need design experience.
• It’s intuitive to use. Even a beginner can find their way around Canva with ease.
• It gives you access to stock photography and customizable templates.

Canva is free, or you can upgrade to a Pro account for $12.99 a month or $119 a year.

 

#7 Buffer

Buffer has over 75k customers, and it’s easy to see why.

Buffer is a social media management tool that allows you to schedule and plan your posts on your social media platforms.

You can also track the performance of your posts and see which ones are the most popular.

Other benefits include:

• affordability
• intuitive and easy to use
• gain insights into top-performing content

There’s a free tier available. Other packages start at $5 a month.

#8 Make Web Video

Make Web Video is a video creation tool that enables users to create professional-quality videos in minutes.

Bloggers can use the tool to create videos for personal or professional needs, such as marketing, education, or training. Make Web Video also provides resources on making the most of their videos by including text overlays, slideshows, and animated titles.

Benefits include:

• It has drag-and-drop features which means you don’t need any technical expertise.
• It creates easy-to-share content for social media.
• It creates professional-looking, responsive videos.

#9 Thrive Leads (Paid)

Email is the best way to communicate with your audience – your readers will much more likely see your email than see a Tweet or a Facebook post, so it is vitally important you start collecting email addresses as early as possible.

Thrive Leads offers a complete solution for creating forms on your blog to collect email subscribers. From a simple ribbon across the top of the site, to full screen lightboxes, you’ll be able to create seamless on-brand messaging and grow your audience in no time at all.

Another thing to consider is if you want to become a professional blogger and potentially sell products or services then an email list is the proven best return on investment for this.

#10 Sumo (Free & Paid)

‘A bloggers dream’ is probably one way to describe Sumo, and there is so much power packed into just the free version of Sumo!

The plugin can provide:

• Social sharing buttons
• Email list building forms
• Heatmaps
• Contact forms
• Social sharing buttons on images
• And much more.

The social sharing buttons can be tailored for different audiences, whether someone is on their mobile (so maybe include a Whatsapp share button) or even based on where they came from for example if they arrived from Pinterest making sure the Pinterest share button is as obvious as possible. Check out their site for the full suite of features and how you can use them.

Which tools will you be utilising on your blog this year?

#11 High-quality stock content

Download scroll-stopping images of the best quality to make your projects look professional.

Ready-to-use assets

Access thousands of images and designs ready-to-publish and get your project ready double quick.

Guaranteed search results

There’s an image and style for every project, whatever your needs are.

Fresh content everyday

Our library is updated on a daily basis so you can find the newest and trendiest photos and designs.

 

#12 Quora

According to Quora, 300 million people use its platform to ask and answer questions.

If only there were a social media network where you could build a deeper connection and people could engage with each other on a deeper level. Just imagine how useful that would be.

Well, this network does exist. It’s called Quora.

Quora is a great tool for bloggers. It has everything you need to engage with other people and build a thriving online business.

The best part is that it’s free.

Once you know how to Quora it for marketing, you can tap into Quora’s amazing and diverse community. The next time you experience writer’s block, just log into Quora to find ideas worth spreading.

Other benefits of Quora include:

• brand discovery and blog promotion
• finding blog ideas
• reaching and understanding your target audience

 

#13 HubSpot Blog Topic Generator

61 percent of bloggers say they write 2-3 drafts of a headline before finalizing it.

You can automate most things these days, and there’s good news: blog titles are no exception.

If you’re not sure how to structure your title, HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator is a time-saving blogging tool that helps with this crucial task.

Just enter a noun to start and click “add.” You can choose up to five. Then click on the orange “give me blog ideas” button.

Here’s an example of what I got when entering digital marketing and email marketing:

• Digital Marketing: Expectations vs Reality
• Will Email Marketing Ever Rule The World?
• The Next Big Thing In Web Promotion
• Digital Marketing Explained in Fewer than 140 Characters
• This Weeks Top Stories in Email Marketing

Not bad, and you can always adjust or optimize titles further to suit your needs.

Other benefits of HubSpot’s blog topic generator include:

• Nobody can steal the ideas you generate with the tool.
• The tool is free!

Also read

How to Write Your First Blog Post

Ways to promote your blog in 2022