Over the years I’ve come across a number of tools that help me along this little blogging journey. Of course, you can always blog with just a website and a keyboard, but if you want to share your posts, you might find a few tools handy.
These are some of the tools I use to create my blog contnet, to share my posts online, and to look at the numbers – a really important aspect of blogging if you want to track your progress, make improvements, and secure those all important paid gigs.
The blogging tools I rely on
Buffer
Buffer is a social scheduling tool that I’ve used for the longest time. You can use a free version, but I opt for the Pro account which costs $15 a month and allows me to schedule up to 100 posts for all my social networks. Currently, that includes Twitter, where I schedule about 3 posts a day and my Facebook page which I post once a day.
Buffer is a super handy tool in bulk-scheduling – I can spend an hour or so filling up my social schedules, and be sure that I’m consistently promoting my blog while I’m not online.
Tailwind
Tailwind is a tool I’ve had for a few months now and have started to see the benefits of. That said, I’m still very much learning how to use it and need to dedicate some time to some online learning.
So far, for me, Tailwind has been really handy at keeping my Pinterest account active and scheduling all new blog posts pins in too. You’ll notice a lot of my blog posts will now have Pinterest images featured in them – this is all part of my effort to drive more traffic to my content. And so far, so good, but with some dedicated time learning more about Tailwind, I’m sure I can boost that referral traffic even further.
Lightroom and Photoshop
Before any post goes live on my blog, the images in it will have either gone through Lightroom or Photoshop. I tend to use Lightroom for any outfit or product photography, and Photoshop for any wishlist posts where I want to be a little creative.
For me, Lightroom at least is a must for any blogger – it can be pretty cheap and can make such a difference to your photos.
Google Analytics
I love Google Analytics. I’ve always been obsessed with the figures, and head into my GA account at least once a month to look at them. Here you can see how many views your website has had, where that traffic is coming from, what content users are viewing and more. Take a look at my blog Why your blog should be connected to Google Analytics to understand why I love it so much!
Bloglovin’
Finally, Bloglovin’. Bloglovin’ is a tool whereby you can follow your favourite bloggers and see all their new posts in one feed, rather than directing to each blog individually. It doesn’t necessarily help my blog as such, but I use it almost daily to catch up on all my favourite bloggers content! You can follow me here.
There are plenty of other tools I use to blog, but these are my ‘must-haves’ right now. What could you not blog without?
Lucy x
