The Top 25 Tools Every Successful Blogger Needs

If you’re trying to make money by blogging, you need to promote and drive traffic to your website through an online marketing strategy. Add these 25 tools to your blogging arsenal to create quality content and accomplish your marketing goals.

Blogging Tools

First and foremost, you need to craft content your audience will enjoy and share. These tools will help you create, edit, and analyze your content.

Google Drive

As a blogger, you’ll have several files, drafts, and ideas floating around your computer. Keep all of your media, documents, and content in one place with Google Drive. If you work with other bloggers or colleagues, this is an excellent tool for collaborating and organizing campaigns, as well.

Grammarly

No one is perfect, not even top bloggers. We all make mistakes, but we don’t want to publish our errors online. Before you hit the looming “Publish” button, run your content through Grammarly. This free grammar checker will catch glaring spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes and also offer suggestions to improve your work.

Hemingway App

In the world of blogging, you want your writing to stand out from the crowd. The Hemingway App helps you fine-tune your content and cut out the fluff. Those who want to improve their writing chops derive a great deal of value from using Hemingway.

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

Arguably one of the hardest parts of blogging is finding the perfect headline. A headline must be catchy, SEO-friendly, and intriguing enough to drive traffic to your blog. Rely on CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer to discover headlines that work for your audience and search engines alike.

BuzzSumo

Understanding what topics and types of content generate top social media engagement is vital information for bloggers. BuzzSumo is an in-depth blogging tool designed to help writers discover relevant topics, top influencers, and other key data including social media insights. Bloggers also use this tool for content inspiration by researching competitors and trends.

Canva

Everyone knows blog content must also be intriguing to the eye. Canva allows bloggers to easily create stunning visuals for blog posts, social media, and other content. The tool also provides simple tutorials for those who need help along the way.

SEO Tools

Once you’ve created your content, you must optimize it to rank well on search engines. These SEO toolsare used by blogging professionals to increase website traffic, improve search rankings, and analyze their content’s performance.

Google Analytics

Every blogger must have a Google Analytics account. This versatile tool offers insight into your website’s performance, traffic acquisition, and audience. Bloggers use Google Analytics to discover what channels their traffic is coming from, how long people stay on their website, and where their readers are located.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a popular WordPress plugin used to optimize a website and blog content for search engines. Everything from the technical aspects of SEO to improving the readability of a page can be accomplished using this handy plugin.

Google Keyword Planner

If you want to rank on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo, you need to know what your audience is searching for. Google Keyword Planner provides expansive information about keywords, search trends, and more to amplify your content marketing efforts.

Keywordtool.io

Another popular keyword research tool is Keywordtool.io. Using Google’s autocomplete feature, this tool assists bloggers in identifying potential keywords for their blog content. Best of all, this tool is completely free!

Moz Open Site Explorer

To generate a wealth of traffic to a blog, you must have quality backlinks directing people to your website. However, some of these links may also be malicious or damaging. Moz Open Site Explorer shows bloggers what links are pointing to their website along with other crucial link information.  

SEMRush

Bloggers looking to advance their search engine optimization efforts should subscribe to SEMRush. As one of the leading SEO tools, SEMRush provides in-depth analytics, competitor research, display advertising information, and so much more. Bloggers will have an abundance of search marketing information at their disposal with this tool.

Social Media Tools

Bloggers are especially active on social media platforms such as Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. To maximize their audience engagement and content distribution on these platforms, bloggers rely on these tools:

Social Sharing Bars

With the goal of offering readers a simple way to share content, the majority of blogs use a social sharing bar or buttons embedded in or near their content. If you look to the left of this article, you’ll notice a social sharing toolbar on our blog. These widgets entice readers to share the content with their friends and followers online.

To add this capability to your blog, use one of these social sharing tools and WordPress plugins:

• AddtoAny
• Social Warfare
• SumoShare
• Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress

Once you install any of these social sharing tools on your blog, remind readers to use it!

Social Media Scheduling Tools

Bloggers are also responsible for distributing their own blog content and engaging with fans on various social media platforms. As you might imagine, this can be quite cumbersome. To speed up the process, bloggers schedule their social media posts in advance using a variety of tools. These social media scheduling tools allow you to create posts for specific platforms and assign when you’d like it to publish.

Top social media scheduling tools include:

• Buffer
• Hootsuite
• SproutSocial
• Everypost
• Crowdfire
• Tailwind

Take advantage of these tools by scheduling as much content in advance as possible. This leaves you with ample time to create more content and interact with your followers.

Email Marketing Tools

Another way to drive readers to your blog content is through email marketing. From regular newsletters to announcements, email marketing keeps your audience informed and engaged.

To start your email marketing campaigns, you must collect email addresses from interested readers. WP Subscribe and Optin Forms are both excellent choices for creating subscriber forms for your blog. These forms should be strategically placed throughout your website to entice readers to sign-up.

Once you’ve collected enough subscribers, you can create and send emails through tools like Constant Contact. Remember to only send your subscribers top quality content—never spam!

Bonus Tool: WordPress

We recommend that all bloggers use WordPress to create and manage their blog. WordPress is a versatile content management system that gives bloggers complete control over their content, tools, and website design.

Over to you! What blogging tools do you use? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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10 Content Marketing Tools That Will Improve Your Efficiency

DID you know that 60% of marketers create at least one piece of content each and every day? Furthermore, those who adopt content marketing have 6x higher conversion rates than others who don’t!

There is no question that content marketing is effective and it’s growing in popularity, but it also demands time and effort.

There is a little secret, however, that the most successful content marketers don’t want everyone else to know…Content marketing tools can take a lot of the work out of the process of content creation while maximising productivity.

In this post, we’ll show you 10 amazing content marketing tools that industry experts are using to simplify the content creation process.

Let’s dig in…

1. Trello – Project Organizing Tool

When creating content, staying organised is of the utmost importance. You need to know who is in charge of what, when things are due, and what all is going on. Trello is a tool (essentially built to be used by teams, but great for individuals too) that’ll help you keep your work organised. Groups of users can join together in this one place to collaborate and stay on the same page (literally and figuratively). No more searching through email threads to piece together your content campaigns.

You can create “boards”, each with their own “cards” as shown above, to organise projects. Also, add members to work on tasks as needed and move cards between boards to keep up to date with what’s been done and what items are still due. An added bonus about Trello is it’s free.

2. Feedly – RSS Feed Tool

If you’re looking for hot topics that’ll help you come up with ideas for a piece, the best place to look is at what’s being published on popular blogs in your niche. Visiting each blog one by one is an enormous time vacuum. Enter here Feedly.

Feedly is a super easy place to search for industry leaders in specific niches, add them to your feed, and then stay up to date on what they are posting. The interface organises them all in one neat place for easy browsing. What you can do manually in an hour, Feedly can do in just a matter of seconds. Do you feel your day getting freed up already?

3. MozBar – Domain and Page Authority Stats Tool

MozBar is a toolbar you add as an extension in your browser that allows you to measure domain and page authority along with social sharing stats. Once installed, your Google search results will look like the screenshot below.

If you click on link analysis, a new tab opens which gives you a wealth of information about that search result. See below.

This allows you to research your competition very easily and in depth in terms of domain/page authority and backlink data. If you’re keen on exploring niche competitiveness in search results, there’s also a button available with the premium subscription that lets you get keyword difficulty.

4. Easel.ly – Image Creation Tool

It’s no secret that traffic and conversions get a boost when visual content is integrated with the text, but creating images, videos, and infographics can be time intensive, hard to make to a professional standard, and expensive to continuously hire out. This is why I love Easel.ly. With templates like this one below, you can simply input the text you have in the graphic and you are good to go.

Seriously, anyone can make awesome looking infographics in just a few minutes. If you want more templates and variables to choose from, you can upgrade from the free version to the premium option.

5. Grammarly – Proofreading Tool

The biggest turn off for someone reading your content is annoying grammar and spelling mistakes. However, it can be hard to catch every little one yourself. That is where professionals use a tool like Grammarly. You can download Grammarly and integrate it into Microsoft Word and your internet browser. It will automatically scan your documents, show your errors, and offer suggestions to fix them.

You can also upgrade to a paid version to get a more in-depth analysis of your writing. A bonus is that Grammarly analyzes the corrections it suggests to your documents each month and sends you a summary which can help you improve your writing skills.

6. TrendSpottr – Trend Spotting Tool

How do you gain attention and engagement? Create and share content on a trending topic before the competitors catch up with the hype. However, spotting a trend isn’t always easy (even for experts), but with TrendSpottr, it becomes virtually effortless.

You simply log in and search for the general term you are interested in using the search bar at the top of the page. Then, you will get results like these that show you top trending specific terms on the left, along with recent posts on that topic in the middle column. You can also look at the sentiment the term is receiving, the momentum it’s gaining or losing, and compare your search term to another term to gauge trending strength. This is very cool and allows you to write about what people care about most at the moment.

7. Buffer – Social Media Management Tool

In order to see real results on that great content you’re creating, you need to effectively promote and manage it on social media. But, you don’t want to do this manually because it’s truly like a full-time job in itself. This is where Buffer is the perfect tool because you can connect your social media accounts (like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn etc.) and automate posting to them.

The page you see above is where you schedule your posts on Buffer so you can create a consistent stream of content for your followers. This helps to keep them engaged and grows your follower base without missing a beat. The content tab on the left is where you add in the posts you would like to be scheduled and then, of course, you can monitor performance with the analytics tab. This is a huge key to saving time and taking a few steps closer to content marketing success.

8. Buzz Sumo – Industry Listening Tool

Buzz Sumo is a resource that listens to what is going on in various industries. It is another tool that is helpful for spotting trends. You simply type in the topic you are interested in and you can see which content is most shared and trending. You can also analyse the content, compare domains, and see top authors. Easily view how many shares each piece of content has received on various social media platforms, as well as the backlinks each piece of content has.

This can help when researching topics to write or share and also to locate influencers in your desired industry.

9. Check My Links – Link Auditing Tool

Broken links on your website hurt your SEO and the experience of your users. You don’t want to risk losing a visitor because your link is a dead end, so it is important to ensure that your cited resources deliver valuable and contextual additions to the content on your page. Check My List is a very simple extension to your browser toolbar which will check any page for broken links. Easily identify and fix them, without using up hardly any time.

10. SEMrush – Competitor Research Tool

Last but not least we have SEMrush. In order to ensure that you’re creating and marketing content that’s going to do well, you’ll need to know what the competition is putting out there (yes, you need to do a little spy work).

SEMrush is one of the best tools for this purpose. If you want to find out what keywords the readers and researchers use to find a specific website online, SEMrush will pinpoint that data. The tool tracks and analyses rankings, competitors, links, keywords and PPC ad spending for any domain you need info on. Plus, the dashboard is really nice and easy to understand.

Industry Experts Agree

There you have 10 of the best content marketing tools to help boost efficiency and save your precious time. We all want to be successful, but also want to have time to enjoy off. Not only do these help you do that, but they can significantly increase how effective your content is at the same time. Don’t just take it from me, see what other content marketing experts are saying about these tools:

TopTenReviews named Grammarly the “The best overall online grammar checker; it offers thorough and accurate tools, features and explanations of grammar rules. You can’t go wrong with this online service.”

Gael Breton from Authority Hacker says “Who doesn’t want to know what their competitors rank for?” He says SEMRush is his #1 way of finding keywords.

Adam Connell of bloggingwizard.com says Buzz Sumo is one of his favourite tools. He says the following “Not your usual keyword research tool and well, it’s not. Keyword research has been a foundation of content planning for a good while and it’s about more than specific keywords, it’s about topical reliance and intent. I use BuzzSumo to validate my keyword research and get an idea of how much certain topics get shared.”

Are there any other tools that we missed? Help us out by sharing your favourites!

Or, perhaps you need a bit more help in the content management area? This 2-in-1 spy tool for Facebook Advertising helps expedite your content creation and eliminate the guesswork of creating relevant ads for your target audience. Check out Adsviser today!

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The Beginner’s Step by Step Guide to Google PPC

WHEN it comes time to promote your product or service, one of the quickest ways to get results is with paid advertising. This is typically called pay-per-click (PPC) or search engine marketing (SEM).

There are a number of options to pick from for your paid advertising needs.

The most notable is Google Adwords.

But before you create an account and start advertising, you will need to lay some groundwork in order to get the most out of your Adwords campaign.

So let’s cover a few basics before you launch your SEM campaign.

Set Your Goal(s)

Depending on your business, you will have different goals.

For example, if you sell products online your goal will be to make a sale. If you offer a service, your goal could be a contact for more submission.

The important thing is to know the URL a user must visit in order to be a success.

Without knowing what success is, you can’t measure the effectiveness of your Adwords efforts.

In the case of an e-commerce site, this will be the URL a user gets to after successfully submitting their payment. For a service based website, the URL could be the “thank you” page they get after submitting a form.

Once you know the URL, in Google Adwords you will need to create a conversion tracking pixel.

Here’s how to do it…

In your Adwords account, click on “Tools > Conversions” – you will see a screen like this:

Click on “Select” for “Website”.

From here you will need to fill out some additional information such as:

• Name – This is where you will name the conversion. You will want to make it something that you can easily recognise and understand in your reports.
• Value – Here you will enter how much the conversion will be to your business. A few options will be provided like:
  • Each time it happens (same value for all conversions)
  • Value of conversion will differ (by purchase price)
  • Don’t assign a value
• Count – Decide whether you want to count one or all conversions.
• Conversion Windows – This setting allows you to set options for tracking conversions.
  • Conversion window – The default is 30 days and it sets the cookie on the visitors' browser. If that user in that browser comes back to your site and completes the conversion within 30 days (or whatever you have set) it will be tracked in Adwords as a conversion.
  • View-through conversion window – The default for this is also 30 days and it tracks the views of your ads. Particularly display ads on Google’s Display Network. If a user views the ad, but does not click and eventually converts on your website they will be tracked as a conversion.
• Include in “Conversions” – Enabling this setting will simply create a “conversion” column in your reporting. If you are just starting out, enabling this is preferred.
• Attribution model – Google Adwords gives you a handful of options to determine attribution.
  • Last click – Using the last click attribution will credit the conversion to the last-clicked ad and corresponding keyword. (This is the most commonly used attribution model)
  • First click – Choosing the first click attribution option will use the first-clicked ad and corresponding keyword for crediting the conversion.
  • Linear -When you pick the linear attribution setting, it will distribute credit equally across all clicks.
  • Time decay – Picking the time decay attribution model will give more credit to the clicks that occurred closer to the point of conversion
  • Position-based – The way that position-based attribution works are that it allocates 40% of the credit to both the first and last-clicked ads (including the corresponding keyword), and then uses the remaining 20% of attribution to spread out across the other clicks.
  • Data-driven – While this option is currently in BETA, it will split the credit for the conversion based on previous data for this conversion action. Please note that this will only be available to accounts with enough data.

Once you have entered all of your choices, you will need to save and continue in order to get your tracking code.

On the following screen, you will get a recap of your selections and an option to edit to make any last-minute changes.

Below that you will see the code for the tracking script that will need to be added to your “conversion” pages. These are essentially the “thank you” pages a user will get to after submitting a form or completing a purchase.

The code will look something like this:

You will need to copy the whole script and add it inside the <body> tags of your page template. If you are not sure how to do this, you can email the information to your web developer to implement.

After the code is installed, it will track your conversions moving forward.

Connect Google Analytics To Google Adwords

While tracking conversions are important, don’t underestimate the need to track all your website traffic.

Hopefully, you have Google Analytics installed on your site already. If not, I suggest you stop right here and get it set up ASAP.

If you are already setup with Google Analytics, you are good to go.

Once you have decided to use Google Adwords, linking your Adwords data into Google Analytics can be done in a few steps.

After implementation, you will have a better understanding of how your paid traffic interacts with your website.

But before we begin, you will need to make sure you have the following access:

• Google Analytics – Your account will need to have “edit” permissions that will allow you to make the necessary changes.
• Google Adwords – You will need to have admin access to the Adwords account.

Have the right access?

Cool, here’s what you will need to do in order to link Adwords to Analytics:

• Login to your Adwords account and click on the “gears” icon in the upper right
• Click on “Linked Accounts”
  
• Click the “view details” link under the Google Analytics section and then click the “set up” link next to the site you want to link to Adwords
  

• If you have multiple views, select what views you want to link. If you have one view, it will be the only one to select.
• Either way, click “Import Site Metrics”
• Click save

That’s it.

You have now connected Google Analytics and Google Adwords.

Virtual fist bump.

To view this data in Google Analytics, you will want to go to “Acquisition > Adwords > Campaigns”.

Here you will be able to view your campaigns and the data associated with it. You’ll notice to the right that you can see conversion data as well.

There is a ton of great insight to be had through Google Analytics.

Among some of my favourite reports are the “Keywords” report and the “Search Queries” report.

If you have been around long enough, you might know that Google Analytics used to show the keywords a user searched for to get to your site through organic search. However, a few years ago, Google removed this option and gave us the infamous (not provided).

However, if you connected Adwords to Analytics you can see the keywords you bid on that someone clicked to get to your site. While it is not organic searches, it can give you some nice insight into what people are actually searching for to get to your site.

The “Search Queries” report will show you what phrases (searches) someone ran in order to trigger your ad and click through on it.

Not only can this data help drive your decisions in Adwords, but it can also be used to influence content creation and other tweaks to your site in order to better serve the traffic your website gets.

Data Drives Decisions

By implementing these two approaches, you will have started to lay a solid foundation to more accurately track your Google Adwords efforts.

When you start to pay money, you will know that your data is being properly tracked so that you know what is or is not working by being able to analyse the data from your campaigns.

Without tracking traffic and conversions, how do you know if it is really working or not?

It’s really hard to know.

That’s why having the right data being measured and analysed, you can confidently make decisions based on your data.

Have you implemented these two techniques for Adwords yet?

Let us know in the comments how you use this to drive decisions.

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