Are you ready to grow your blog? Whether you’re a new blogger or a blogger who is just now focusing on how to make your blog reach its full potential, I got 10 tools you’re going to need. It’s no secret that a successful blog can have an incredible impact on its readers but if you want it to, you can also make money by doing so!
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you choose to purchase anything through my links, I’ll get a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting my blog!
I’ve been blogging for about four years now but it’s been the past two years that I decided to blog full-time and take advantage of all the tools necessary to create a successful blog. Because of the 10 tools that I’m talking about today, I’m actually bringing in steady blog traffic and yes, even money!
A notebook for your ideas
Let’s start off plain and simple. You’re going to want a notebook or maybe even just the notes on your phone, to jot down all blog post ideas. I’ll be honest, when I try to sit down and concentrate on ideas, they rarely come to me. But when I’m about to go to bed, when I’m in the shower, or even at work, I get the best ideas. No matter where you get your ideas, try to jot them down immediately.
Planner
Before becoming a full-time blogger, I was telling everybody that they needed a planner. Now, I’m stressing that you need a planner especially if you’re a blogger. Listen, blogging isn’t necessarily stressful but there are more tasks than just writing a post and then publishing it. Maybe you plan on promoting your tasks in multiple places, plan on creating an e-course, or you have a collab with a brand. You want to make sure you don’t miss any deadlines. Or if you’re like me, you try to cram everything into one day then get stressed. We need to stay organized and spread out our tasks on certain days.
There are many cute affordable planners that you can get on Amazon. I’ve used the brand, Bloom Daily Planners and they’re great. Personally, I always go back to my Erin Condren planner and think they’re definitely worth it if you have the money.
Grammarly
No blogger wants to publish a post with multiple spelling errors and little to no punctuation. Let’s be honest, readers won’t stick around. I used to have friends and family double-check posts for me but then came Grammarly! The little proofreading assistant that has saved me multiple times a day. Not even exaggerating there. I mean, it saved me in this paragraph alone.
I use the free version which covers spelling, punctuation, and grammar. They do have a premium version that looks like a total powerhouse with fluency, word choice, plagiarism detection, and much more. Whichever plan is best for you, this is a tool you need right now. Go download it after you read the rest of this post. We got no time for spelling mistakes.
Pinterest has become the site driving in most of my blog traffic! It’s a visual search and discovery engine. Every single blogger out there needs a Pinterest account. Nonnegotiable. Let me tell you why. Did you know that Pinterest has over 320 million visitors each month? By creating a visually appealing pin, linking your blog post, and creating an SEO-friendly description, you are bound to start getting traffic to your blog.
Pin this post!
I will be creating a more in-depth post about Pinterest soon but I’m going to link one of my favorite Pinterest courses for you guys because I cannot have you sleeping on Pinterest. Let’s bring in that traffic!
Tailwind
After you have your Pinterest account set up, let’s move onto the powerful tool that can pretty much double your Pinterest views! After utilizing Tailwind, I am getting an average of 50k monthly viewers on my Pinterest. Let’s talk about how Tailwind boosts your Pinterest views and overall helps grow your blog.
Well, first of all, Tailwind has this awesome feature called communities. Communities are groups of other creators who are supporting and engaging with Pinterest accounts inside them. Some communities have close to 3,000 members! That’s a lot of potential support and re-pins!
Next, if you’re tired of constantly manually pinning, Tailwind automatically pushes out your pins for you! This feature is called a SmartLoop. All you have to do is choose the pins that you want to keep getting pushed out. You know that pin that you spent hours on and deserves to be seen more than once? Add it to your SmartLoop. Tailwind does the heavy lifting by choosing a schedule and will continuously share your pins as long as you keep them in your SmartLoop.
Canva
In order to get people to click on your pins on Pinterest, you’re going to want to make sure they’re visually appealing. My favorite tool for creating pins is Canva! It’s actually one of the easiest design tools that I’ve ever used.
They have hundreds of free premade templates for you, including Pinterest templates! When it comes to designing, they make that a breeze as well. You can get hundreds of free stock photos, fonts, elements, and even videos!
I will say that I got by with the free version for years just fine but I recently switched to Canva Pro for $12/month and I’m obsessed with the extra features they offer. This includes branding, premium stock photos & fonts, transparent backgrounds, and much more. No matter the plan you choose, Canva is going to help you create amazing pins!
Email Marketing
When you have a blog, you want to grow and keep your audience. The way to do this is email marketing. Growing an email list can seem daunting at first but once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy!
There are multiple email marketing platforms out there but I personally use MailChimp. I like MailChimp because it’s free up to 2,000 subscribers! This gives you more time to work on your email marketing skills and growing your list before paying any monthly fees. Also, basic automations are free as well. This is nice if you want to create lead magnets with a free email course or an e-book!
Stock Photos
Unless you’re amazing with a camera and editing photos, chances are you’re going to want to use stock photos for your blog posts. This gives your blog a more professional and clean appearance. There are lots of free stock photos out there but there’s a big downfall with free stock photos. A lot of bloggers will be using the same ones.
I finally took a leap of faith and bought a Styled Stock Society membership for their amazing stock photos and templates. It’s been a blessing when it comes to my blog and even all of my social media accounts!
Members get access to:
- Over 3,500 stock photos with new ones released monthly & unlimited downloads
- Over 500 Canva templates for social media, ebooks, email opt-ins, and more!
- Bonus’s – 365 Instagram captions, Instagram graphics, stock video clips, and more
Yoast SEO
Even if you are getting traffic from Pinterest, the big goal is getting your blog post to be found on Google. How do you do that? Make your post SEO friendly. SEO stands for search engine optimization. You want to optimize your content so Google can understand what’s being shared so it can recommend it to people searching for your keywords. It can be hard to understand but that’s when Yoast SEO becomes your best friend!
After 4 years of blogging, I didn’t even know that my SEO skills we’re so poor. Ever since getting Yoast SEO, my google analytics show that I’m finally getting traffic from google searches! That’s a blog win!
There is a free version of Yoast which you can download. With this you’ll get:
- Access to free courses
- 10 related key phrases suggested for you
- Keyword optimization
- Readability check
- Fast indexing
- And more!
Social Media
Lastly, utilize your social media! There are multiple sites that are incredible for not only sharing your posts but connecting with others is a big part of blogging as well. I’m going to list the three social media sites that I find the most helpful when it comes to growing your blog!
Twitter:
Twitter is one of the first platforms that I started connecting with other bloggers! There is so much genuine support in this community and I love it. There are also a ton of blog post-sharing threads that help you get your posts seen. Just make sure you’re reciprocating the support!
Facebook:
There are a couple of ways you can grow your blog through Facebook. First, you can create a page for your blog. This is where you can share blog updates and connect with your audience.
There is also a ton of amazing blogging groups that are there when you need blogging help, to answer questions, and have blog sharing threads as well!
Some of my favorite groups on FB:
Instagram:
While Instagram isn’t a platform where you can drop your blog links in various places, you do have that one space for a link in your Instagram bio. But what if you want to share more than one link? You can create a page on your blog for all of the links you want to share with your followers. Not only does this benefit you by bringing in traffic to wherever else, but they’re being brought to your actual blog site and will potentially check out your posts. This works even better if you list your recent blog posts on that page. To check out an example, you can go to my Instagram and click the link or just go here.
Next, how do you bring people to your blog without posting a link directly? I like posting a picture, mentioning something valuable that can be found in a blog post, then telling them to go click the link in my bio to read my latest blog post. It might be extra effort on their part but people who find your content interesting will do so. Those are genuine views.
Ready To Grow Your Blog?
Those are my 10 favorite tools that I swear by for growing your blog! After four years of blogging, there’s been so much I’ve learned.
Need additional blog help?
- Best Blog Advice from Other Bloggers
- 7 Tools You Need For A Successful Blog Post
- 5 Things You Need To Know Before Starting A Blog
- Blogging Mistakes I Made So You Don’t Have To
Let me know if this post was helpful or if you have any questions down in the comments!
Amanda Burnett is a 25-year-old content creator. Growing up with a disability, she wanted to prove to herself that she was capable of accomplishing her dream life. Today she is helping her audience realize their potential as well! Her goal is to motivate as many people as she can through her lifestyle, beauty, and self-improvement content.
Awesome tips! I love Canva and a planner is such a must. Thank you for sharing these ideas.
Thanks for this i will have to give Tailwind a go have never tried
I’m off to buy a planner! Thank you for the hints
These are all great tips! A good planner and great scheduling tools can make such a difference while having a blog! Thanks for sharing x
A really helpful list of resources, especially for those who are starting out blogging and may not know all of the things that are needed. Email marketing is something I need to work on as I’ve totally slacked in that area.
Thanks for the tips. SEO has always been a bit random and hope for the best. I’ll check out Yoast CEO.
These are some really great tips! Some of these websites I do actually use like Canva but there’s so much I haven’t tried that I need to use! X
Great tips! I thought long and hard about investing in Tailwind, but it was a 100% worth it in the end! My Pinterest game is so much stronger now.
Great post, I agree with every one! I don’t use Tailwind because you can schedule within Pinterest now which is excellent.
Rosie
Amazing post! You’ve shared so many important resources – I love Canva. I’m really trying to make Pinterest work for me xx
Great tools! This is really helpful. Thank you so much for sharing.
This is a great, comprehensive post! I’m happy to see that I utilize a lot of these tools and resources but there are a couple that I don’t and I’m inspired to use them now because you’ve pointed out how useful they can be.
Thank you for sharing. I love Canva and Pinterest. I definitely need to work on my SEO and email marketing!
Two things I really wish I’d started earlier; Pinterest and my email marketing list! They’re so hard to grow and I wish I’d started back in 2016 when I started my blog. But better late than never! Thanks, though, for so many other great recommendations!
Katie | katieemmabeauty.com
Great read as a new blogger!
This is such an amazing list. I’m still trying to figure out how Instagram would allow you link to your articles
Awesome tips! I think you just convinced me to get back on Tailwind!
I’d be lost without my planner in blogging! I write everything down in it so I can keep track! x
Lucy | http://www.lucymary.co.uk
As new bloggers we can just simply say thank you for the valuable tips!
This post is so so helpful! Thank you so much for sharing your tips ❤️ I’ve been using later to schedule Instagram posts but I hadn’t really considered scheduling Pinterest’s but Tailwind sounds great so I think I’ll go set up an account. I’ve got Yoast but it confuses me slightly 🙈 but I do really like that it has a sort of check list of things you should be doing. A blog notebook has been a complete game changer for me 🤩
Thank you for this! I’ve only been blogging for about a month and when I started I had no idea there was so much involved but I’m slowly learning. Already use Canva, had no idea about tailwind so will definitely be looking into that.
Thanks for the suggestions, i just canceled tailwind tbh and i trying to do manual pinning instead.
Great tips, I’m just starting out too. I really need to email marketing to my list. It’s now on my list to add this month. Thanks.
Yay, I’m glad you found this helpful!
Fabulous tips thank you. I’ve bookmarked this post to refer to later 🙂
I’m so glad you found this helpful, Lynne!
Great info… had not heard of Styled Stock Society before!
It’s so amazing! Let me know if you try it & what you think!
Great info. I hadn’t heard of some of these. Thanks for sharing!
Didn’t have grammarly! Thank you for the tip!
It’s such a lifesaver! Hope you love it!
Love these recommendations to help grow your blog, thank you for sharing 🙂 I think I need to learn that investing in your blog is often worth it, and I’m in a position where I can afford to invest in a few blogging tools in the next few months!
I was always scared to invest in my blog but when I finally did, it was totally worth it!
I have everything except the stock photos. I agree, these are the best tools that bloggers need. Also, I just recently started using planners. Thank you for sharing!
You have some great suggestions here. I would be lost without Canva for all of my social media graphics and other visual projects. It makes everything SO easy and the ability to easily resize images with a couple of clicks makes it effortless to adjust your images to maximize all that each platform has to offer. For those that are just checking out SEO plugins, another one worth checking out is RankMath. I’m definitely not anti-Yoast, that’s where I started, but I’ve recently moved to the free version of RankMath and I’m super impressed.
I’ve heard good things about RankMath! I think I’ll check it out.
So many great tips! I spent entirely way too much time on Canva but it’s just so fun and easy! Me and Yoast are still getting to know each other on my other blog [http://offtoneverland.blog] but I’m excited to learn more about how it works!
Thanks for ideas, I love using canva it is so powerful tool 🙂
Great tips! I am a Pinterest manager and I see amazing results too using the communities on Tailwind you can get millions in reach and so many shares. Beautiful stock photos! I didn’t know them I will take a look.
Great tips!
Great advice!
Hi Amanda and thanks for these tips! I will have to look into Tailwind for sure. I do use many of the others already 🙂
Great tips! I’m trying to increase the traffic on my blog but it isn’t easy. I started to have a blog notebook and it’s really helpful to write every idea down and I use also my phone for it. I need to figuring out how I get traffic through Pinterest because my statistics are soo low. Still a lot of things to do but I’m not giving up. I hope with your advice my blog will grow. 🙂
Don’t give up! It can take a while sometimes but definitely try Tailwind for Pinterest! It has genuinely helped me so much.
Thank you so much for this blog post. Some really good tips. I must invest some time in Pinterest. It sounds like it could generate a lot of traffic to my blog. I have the free version of Grammarly and love it too. Cannot imagine blogging without it. Look forward to reading more of your posts.
Except for Tailwaind, I already use the rest of the tools you mentioned here! They definitely help grow my blog from the beginning. This is a useful post for a beginner or even experienced bloggers x
I love Canva! I have now been using it for several years and swear by it. I only recently installed Grammarly and am only learning about the benefits it has. It’s definitely helped me understand my grammar mistake more and fix them
I am using a few of these already. I love Tailwind, it makes posting on Pinterest so easy.
Yes to all of these! Some of these I don’t have, but I’ve heard people talk about constantly. I just recently created a mailing list and I love it! Also, I would be so lost without Canva! Great list girl!
Great tips! So proud to say I use a majority of them. Thanks so much for sharing x
http://www.lynnmumbingmejia.com
Such great tips! I use a lot of them at the moment, although do need to get a mailing list sorted out. Definitely find yoast seo super helpful, and I love making pins on canva too. Thank you for sharing! xx
Great tips! I love using canva for creating pins .
Yeah, canva is my favorite tool as a blogger. You can do so much with it & I recommend upgrading to the pro version. It’s worth it.
I honestly have no idea what I’d do without Canva!