Blogging and content creation is one of the most important parts in driving traffic to your site. Though it may seem straightforward and simple, there are so many different important elements to blogging. It can become very time consuming and require multiple team members to execute a solid blogging strategy that gets real results. Luckily, there are many blogging tools you can use to help make the process truly simple.
Our expert team has put together a list of the very best blogging tools for 2018:
1. Yoast SEO plugin
Now a staple of WordPress sites, the Yoast SEO plugin helps you optimize posts so they are Google-friendly. Yoast lets you know how you’re doing with readability and keywords. It helps you add metadata and take care of other little technical aspects of optimizing content. It helps point out where and how you can improve your posts so that everything you put up is optimized to help your site perform better and reach the right audience.
2. Coschedule Headline Analyzer
Your headline is short and seemingly nothing but a huge part of whether your blog is successful or not. Sometimes what you may think is a great headline might not be speaking to your target audience. Coschedule’s Headline Analyzer is a really quick way to make sure your headline is as effective as it can be. You can type in your headline and it will let you know whether the words you’re using are strong or emotional enough, whether its long or short enough, and other suggestions. It’s a small detail but it can make a big difference.
3. Beamer
Beamer is an announcement newsfeed that sits right within your blog’s interface. You can create updates for new content that users can explore without ever leaving the page they’re on. You can create visual, engaging updates that include screenshots, photos, videos, and links to direct users to the most interesting posts on your site. You can segment notifications for specific users groups based on location, demographic, language, and past behavior on your site to more relevantly communicate with users. Users can also leave their feedback in the form of comments and reactions just like Facebook. Beamer helps to boost engagement and lower your blog’s bounce rate.
4. Hemingway App
This is perfect for improving your writing and making it clear and focused for a wide audience to understand. You just copy and paste your blog draft into the editor app and it shows you all of the sentences and words you should change to make your ideas more clear and concise. It’s easy to get carried away with words and run-on sentences. However, the ideal style is simple and clear for high performing blogs. Hemingway apps helps you reel back in your blogs to better serve your audience.
5. Canva
Blogs aren’t words only! The visual component of your blog are really important and shouldn’t be an afterthought. Canva is a really quick simple tool that helps you put together interesting blog covers and social graphics to add a professional touch without a designer’s help. It’s easy drag and drop interface is really intuitive and simple to figure out instantly. Your team can upload your branding info and invite multiple team members to collaborate on visuals for your blog.
6. Unsplash
As mentioned above, the visual elements on your blog are what first attracts someone to your post on your site or on a social site. It’s important to be consistently compelling to keep users interested. The photos you use set the whole mood for your blog and are helpful in illustrating your point. Unsplash is an amazing free database of high quality photos that you can download and user for free. There are no copyright issues or credit necessary. It’s a great alternative to buying expensive stock images and just as high quality.
7. Buffer
No one has time to get content shared across all social platforms. Buffer is an easy way to get your social graphics, blog links, and hashtags shared on a schedule. All you have to do is set them up, schedule your posts, and let Buffer take care of the rest. You can have a consistent social presence with Buffer without having to dedicate a ridiculous amount of time to it.
8. DiggDigg
Buffer actually gave us this amazing tool as well. A big part of why you create posts in the first place is to get them shared and get other audiences back to your site. DiggDigg is a very simple tool every blog should use to make it easy for users to share content. DiggDigg is a floating social sharing bar that you can attach anywhere on your post. As users scroll through, the social share bar follows, making it easy for the to click “share” and post to their preferred social network. The more steps you can eliminate, the more likely users are going to engage in the way you want them to.
9. Optimizely A/B testing
Sometimes you don’t realize how much better your blog performance could be without testing the possibilities. Optimizely Headline A/B testing lets you test different blog post headlines and give you the data so you can continually tweak and improve on real results. It’s simple to install and set your various headlines live. It’s nice to know what is really working on not waste time making changes way down the line.
10. Buzzsumo
Optimizing your blogging strategy is a never ending process. Buzzsumo gives you a “birds eye view” of your target market in terms of blogging and helps you perfect your strategy. With Buzzsumo, you can research content, influencers, and competition to best determine how you should tweak your blogging strategy. Buzzsumo gives you detailed insights on trending topics, keywords, backlinks, etc. You can set up monitoring to give you alert as changes happen in the areas you’re interested in to stay on top of trends.
There are plenty of methods and tools that are simply to work into your blogging process to boost engagement and better your user experience. These are tools we use with our own team and swear by, especially our own. Try Beamer on your site today to better share your blog updates with your readers.
