I’ve been blogging for four years now (OMG! I can’t believe it’s been that long!). I’ve seen and tried lots of blogging tools out there, but today, I’m going to share with you the tools that I have been using and can’t live without. Blogging tools are subjective and if you ask other bloggers what tools they use, it’s likely that they’ll have different tools in their list. It all comes down to technical level, cost and added value to the blog for each blogger.
Ofcourse, I also can’t live without social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc, but the list below includes a more diverse selection than just the most well-known tools that you would normally find in every blogger’s list. Please note that this list is in no particular order.
For this post, I’m going to give you a list of the tools that I love to use on a daily or weekly basis that I can’t live without (or at least, that I don’t want to live without). These tools helps me improve my blogging and manage my social media accounts and followings.
Website Tools
- WordPress (Free) – WordPress is the best platform I’ve used so far. What I love about WordPress is that it’s very easy to use and is highly customizable, plus it’s FREE! You can’t definitely beat that. If you’re not yet in WordPress and would like to migrate, check out this article on Setting Up Your WordPress Blog for a step-by-step guide.
- Inmotion / Pangalan – I use these websites interchangeably. I use Inmotion for my hosting and Pangalan for my domain. Both of these websites have very easy to access interface plus they’re cheaper with almost the same services than most expensive hosting companies out there offers. If you’re planning to self-host your blog, these two is what I’m highly recommended.
- Google Analytics (Free) – This is another must-have tools that you can’t live without. If you want an in-depth information about your visitors, eg. referrals, source, etc., then you need to have Google Analytics installed in your blog.
Social Media Tools
- Hootsuite (Free) – Hootsuite is the greatest of all free tools online. I use it to schedule postings in my Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus accounts in BULK. Can you believe that? So far I’m only using their free plan as it caters all of my basic scheduling needs. You can absolutely upgrade if you are looking for more services ofcourse.
- Unfollowerstats (Free) – I use unfollowerstats to monitor my followers in twitter; those who follow or unfollowed my account. It’s quite massive considering it’s available for free; the statistics, your tweets even the hot topics around you. Isn’t that just amazing?
- Followers Assistant (Free) – I use this mobile app to manage my Instagram followers. Just like Unfollowerstats, this app tells me which users have unfollowed and followed me which allows me to manage them quite easily.
WordPress Plugins
- Yoast (Free) – If you have a blog, you need a tool that will make it easy for you to make your blog searchable in the internet, AKA SEO. This tool pretty much covers all for you even if you don’t know much about SEO. If you’re not familiar with SEO yet, you may want to read this blog about some basics in SEO for bloggers.
- SumoMe (Free) – This is another best free plugins in WordPress that I like. I use it for my social media sharing buttons, making it easy for my readers to share my articles. Aside from social media buttons, SumoMe will also helps our WordPress site grow by making it easy for our readers to join our email list and is optimized with analytics. All of those functionalities are already available for free accounts.
Photography
- Pexels (Free) – This website is my absolute go-to place for my stock photo needs. It’s a place where you can find the best free stock photos with Creative Common Zero (CC0) license, meaning you can use them for free for any personal and commercial purposes with no attribution required.
- Adobe Photoshop (Free) – I purchased this tool a long time ago before Adobe decides to have a monthly subscription in order to use this tool. It’s a very massive tool and it totally trumps Canva & PicMonkey in terms of what you can do to a photo.
- Canva (Free) – Once in a while when I ran out of creative ideas, I go use Canva. They have some free templates you can use from so all you just need to do is to update the text. That simple isn’t it?
- Tinypng (Free) – Aside from compressing my images via Adobe Photoshop for website use, I still uses Tinypng to reduce their size. What I like about Tinypng is that they uses smart lossy compression techniques that reduces the file size of my images without losing its quality. The effect is nearly invisible but it makes a very large difference in file size!
Mobile Apps
- WPS Office (Free) – Sometimes when I am traveling or I’m too lazy to open my laptop or desktop, especially if I just finished a book, I draft an article using my smart phone or Ipad. I’ve been using this tool way before I started blogging and so far it provided me with all the things I need without paying anything at all.
- Mega (Free) – I use this tool not just for remotely storing my files but also as a repository where I upload all of my drafts that I wrote in my mobile or Ipad. Mega doesn’t just have an online website and a mobile app where you can access your files but they also have desktop app that connects automatically to your files in the cloud. So after starting up my computer, all of the files uploading via mobile devices sync automatically. Not just that, for free accounts, they offer 50gb FREE memory. Now, who wouldn’t want that?
Planning Tools
- Sticky Notes in Windows (Free) – I pretty much suck when it comes to organizing or planning unless ofcourse when it comes to traveling. I don’t keep any editorial calendars or such as I said earlier that I’m not good with planning. I’m more of a spontaneous kind of blogger, when there’s an idea that crosses my mind, then I create an article about it. But there are times that I can think of more than one topics to write so I put it down using sticky notes application in Windows. What’s great about this tool is that the moment I open my computer, it’s the first thing that I see, so I’ll get an idea what to do, write or update next.
- Pocket Planner – As much as I hate planning, I love to write. I don’t really use it often or update it that much but when I’m not at home and an idea crosses my mind, I prefer to write it. So next time that I’m in front of my computer, I just refer to my planner and I can have an idea what to write next.
There you have it. These are so far the 16 blogging tools I can’t live without. I’ll sure to update if I encounter some new tools. So, what are you favorite blogging tools that you can’t live without?
