9 Free Blogging Tools Every Blogger Needs To Know About
Are you new to blogging? I know these free blogging tools every blogger needs to know about today!
I’ve been blogging for 2+ years, however when I was first starting out there were a few expenses that I had to pay for such as website hosting so I really tried to keep the costs down in all other areas. Perhaps you can relate?
What Is A Blogging Tool
As the name suggests, a blogging tool is a website or app that a blogger would use to help them write content or manage their blog in general.
If you have a self hosted WordPress blog, there’s a lot you’ll need to know about plugins. That’s why I’ve written a separate post with the best wordpress plugins for bloggers.
There are a plethora of tools that you could use with your blog. In order to keep things simple, I’ve kept the list below fairly small so that you don’t get overwhelmed.
You might find over time that you prefer to use different tools for keyword research or a different social media scheduler. That’s totally ok, just find what works the best for you!
Free Blogging Tools Every Blogger Needs
These free blogging tools are so helpful because they will make your life so much easier when you’re writing content and managing your blog.
1. Canva
My favourite blogging tool for creating images for my blogs and social media is Canva. When you’re first starting out you can definitely just use their free plan as that’s what I did for the first year.
Their Pro plan does have a lot of extra features and more stock photos available in their library. However, it might not be necessary for you at the beginning.
I always create my blog images in Canva because I’m not the best photographer and I like to save images as a JPG so that they don’t slow down my websites too much. You can use a plugin to resize your images, I just prefer to do it before I upload them to my website.
Canva had soo many templates to choose from eg Logos, social media templates and even presentations. It’s a great tool for bloggers, I fully recommend you give it a try.
You can design your graphics on the Canva website or on the app if you prefer. I like to create on the website and then download the social images from my phone for convenience.
2. Buffer
Do you struggle to post regularly on social media? Then a social media scheduler would be a great blogging tool to help you out.
On the free Buffer plan you can schedule for a few weeks in advance with 3 social media channels.
As with Canva you can schedule your posts on their website or through the app. I prefer to do it on the website as I can then copy and paste captions easily when I need to.
Using a social media scheduler is a great way of ensuring you are sharing a mix of content on your social media channels. Eg Educating, promoting and relatable.
It’s such a time saver to be able to schedule your posts in advance so you don’t need to get in a muddle when it comes to posting on social media.
There are other social media schedulers such as Hootsuite and Tailwind. Hootsuite prices are from Ā£39 per month. Tailwind scheduler for Instagram and Facebook could be useful if you’re already paying for the Tailwind Pinterest scheduler and other features.
3. Social Media
Social media in general is a great resource for bloggers. Whether that is for seeing what people in your niche are struggling with or as a way to share your own content and get more readers on your blog.
When you’re first starting out and not getting much traffic from Google, it’s a good idea to be sharing your content on social media. I would recommend just picking a few channels that you think your ideal audience will be on. Try not to be everywhere as I was when I first started out. š
Social media is also a great way of connecting with your audience. Once I spent more time concentrating on talking with people on Instagram my account started to grow and now I love the community on Instagram.
I recommend finding your audience and seeing which social media platform works the best for you.
Some niches gain a lot of traffic from Pinterest so you can start there and use Canva to create some beautiful pins for your content.
4. Keywords Everywhere
Keywords Everywhere is an extension for chrome, when you type your keyword into Google it gives you information about the trend data and the SEO difficulty.
When you use the free version you can still search for similar keywords, however it’s limited and doesn’t tell you the search traffic for those keywords. If you pay for credits you’ll be able to get the full data, however the free version is still a useful tool to get an idea of the popularity of your keyword or keyword phrase over time.
You can also see the Domain Authority of the ranking posts on Google, which can be useful to know if it’s worth trying to rank for that keyword.
5. Answer The Public
I love this blogging tool to get ideas for what you should write about. If you type in a few keywords related to your niche it will give you lists of all the questions that people have asked relating to that subject.
This is also a free tool and I think you”re limited on the amount of searches that you can do in a day on the free plan. However, it’s a great tool to use to get ideas for your blog posts all in one go.
I like to use a whiteboard to make a note of the ideas and then when I’m stuck for what to write about I just refer to the whiteboard.
What I’ve learnt in the 2+ years I’ve been blogging is that in order to become an expert in your niche you need to continue to learn as much as you can about the subject and when you write, cover every single subject within that niche. That’s where tools like Answer The Public are really handy to get ideas and become a topical authority.
6. Pinterest Trends
Another great free tool is the Pinterest Trends which you can view from the Analytics on your Pinterest Business account.
All you do is enter your keyword into the Trend tool and if gives you an overview of the interest in that keyword over time. You can also compare two different keywords using this tool.
You can also find the demographic data for your keywords which is useful to see the age and gender of the people searching for these keywords on Pinterest.
Although this is for search queries on Pinterest, it’s still a very handy blogging tool because Pinterest is another search engine so the data is going to be similar to Google etc.
7. Mailerlite
For email marketing my favourite provider to use is Mailerlite. I’ve also used Convertkit and Mailchimp in the past but I prefer Mailerlite because it’s super easy to use and you can do so much on the free plan.
In case you’re wondering why you need an email list for your blog, I go into a lot more detail in this blog post that you might want to check out next.
As a blogger having a tool to create automations for your email marketing campaigns is so useful. You can set up automated welcome emails, email sequences and even make embedded forms for your blog.
You don’t even necessarily need a WordPress blog to use Mailerlite as you can still create a landing page to collect your email addresses from your readers.
8. Rank Math Plugin
One of the best ways of making sure your blog posts are SEO optimised is by using an SEO plugin like Rankmath.
I’ve used Yoast as well but I prefer Rank Math because you can include a few different keywords that you’re wanting to rank for, even on the free plan.
Once you’ve activated the Plugin you will see the Rank Math toolbar as you start writing your blog post. You can input your keywords or keyword phrases and see what it suggests for ways to improve your post. Once you’ve finished it will give you a rating out of 100 and it will go green as long as you’ve fulfilled their criteria for an SEO optimised blog post.
It’s worth noting that keyword stuffing in your blog posts is no longer a good way of ranking your posts. It’s actually much more important to include your keywords in a natural way and concentrate mainly on writing the most helpful blog post for your readers.
9. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is another free tool that you definitely should be using for your blog. This is because Google Analytics is all of the data from visitors to your website.
You can see how long users spend on your website, which blog posts they land on and where the traffic has come from. Eg social media, Pinterest or Google.
Monitoring which blog posts are doing well can help you decide what you should write about next.
It’s also useful to see the demographic data so you can establish where your audience is based and what devices they use to access your website.
When you’re a new blogger you are unlikely to see much traffic through Google Analytics but over time you can look into the Analytic reports thoroughly and figure out what is working and what isn’t.
I truly believe that these are the free blogging tools every blogger needs to know about! They should really help you to turn your blog into a business and get more eyes on your content.
If you’re looking to monetise your blog, you may want to read how to make money blogging, for full details on how you can make money from your blog with 5 easy ways.
Damaris
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