Must-Have Tools for Bloggers

Part of owning and managing a blog involves keeping an eye on tools and add-ons, trying new things out, and finding ways to optimize every aspect of what you do. With a crowded online blogosphere, each part of your blog is a chance to differentiate and put yourself ahead of the crowd. So, it’s not just about perfecting your writing (though obviously that is still incredibly important!) You need to pay attention to user experience, design, engagement and more to have a real impact on growing your readership, building a community and increasing ROI.

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Choosing the right tools

The good news is there is a treasure trove of tools out there. You can download something for everything from social sharing to popups to analytics. In truth, the biggest issue is choosing the blogging tools that will work best for you – because there are so many and because every blog is different. It might be worth starting to think about your “problem” areas or issues you would like to see improved and focus on researching tools around those themes. But to start you off, we have a few tools that we recommend.

Tools for inspiration

If you are a blogger, chances are you are familiar with writers block. Luckily there are some great tools out there to get you inspired and keep those creative juices flowing. You can start with Hubspot’s blog ideas generator, which essentially does exactly what it says on the tin. And it’s free. Another great tool for the ideation and inspiration stage of things is feedback. Hearing what your readers have to say is important, and can inspire you! You can try forms and surveys such as Google Forms and SurveyMonkey to pick your readers’ brains.

Tools for visuals

Sometimes you need a graphic designer and there are no two ways about it, but sometimes you need some kind of small simple visual, and there’s a tool for that. If you aren’t using Canva yet, get it now! It’s a fantastic one-stop-shop for all things visual, and unlike Photoshop is very straightforward to use. You can browse their image bank for visuals; try different templates and experiment with fonts, colors and placements. The whole process is straightforward and fun. Not convinced by Canva? Click here for a comprehensive list of blog design tools.

Tools for engagement 

Increasing engagement is a core goal for most bloggers and there are lots of tools out there that can help. One of your biggest assets in terms of engagement is your comments section. This is where your readers can have their say, and voice their opinions. Most bloggers rely on the automatic comment section that comes with their blogs (and this is often WordPress). The truth is, you can do better. Text-based comments are ok, but they are limited and tools that offer voice and other forms of rich media can help to significantly increase engagement. Heyoya offers voice, video, image, and text-based comments to motivate readers to engage.

Heyoya is a game-changing comments platform that brings voice to online publishers, improving user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content, while increasing reader interactions with your blog. Join Heyoya today and grow your community.

For more information on Heyoya, click here.