What is your greatest need as a blogger?
When surveyed, many answered, “sleep”.
Many answered, “time”.
Many others answered “technology”.
According to Neil Patel, blogging is adapting. You need to be up-to-date with new blogging tools.
The best part is you won’t have to worry about cost along with learning how to use these new blogging tools.
They are all free. Some of these tools may sound too good to be true, but not one of them costs anything. Since they are user-friendly and expedite your blogging tasks, they won’t even cost you time to use.
This is a follow-up to my popular post 30 Tools You Need to Create a Successful Blog.
89 Free Blogging Tools
- AB Testing takes the guesswork out of blogging by helping you learn your readers’ preferences.
- Ahalogy: I use Ahalogy to schedule all my Pinterest pins to my boards and community boards. This free plugin is one of the perks of self-hosting. I am such a fan.
- Alexa.com has your blog’s Alexa score. Many experts revealed they won’t subscribe to someone’s blog if that person doesn’t have a low Alexa score.
- AnswerthePublic.com: This fascinating site gives you blog topic ideas. I was shocked to see how many ideas showed up when I typed in my niche, blogging.
- aSleep: You don’t have to use the app to go to sleep. However, it produces white noise that will allow you to block out distracting background noise when you are trying to blog. If you find listening to the sound of the rain or the wind more relaxing than noisy neighbors when you are trying to blog, try the app.
- BeFunky Photo Editor: The graphic accompanying this post was made with BeFunky. I find it quick to use and user-friendly.
- Bounce Rate can be found at Alexa.com. Its analytics are important. It will tell you how long people are staying on your blog and how many pages on your blog they are viewing.
- Buffer is my choice for social media scheduler but only allows up to 10 links to be scheduled at one time for free.
- Buzzsumo.com shows you trending topics. If you write about popular topics, you will be more likely to get page views.
- Canva: Once the graphic is the way you want it, put it into Canva. There are free backgrounds, and templates with text are already designed for your use. If you’d prefer, you can just write the text and not use a predesigned template. You can crop once you’re in Canva as well.
- Capitalize My Title: I used to pride myself on my capitalization, but the site is good to know it’s there if I need it. This free site is great for those of you that have trouble remembering your capitalization rules! It capitalizes your headline for you while you type, and then lets you copy the headline to your post.
- Check Page Rank is Google’s way of checking your blog’s importance. However, Google’s score is based on quality backlinks. The more quality backlinks, the higher the score, and the better the blog. (Note: Subscribers to MostlyBlogging have access to a Link Exchange where we strive to build quality backlinks.)
- Click to Tweet: This site enables others to promote your posts for you.
- CommentLuv encourages others to leave comments on your blog.
- Commun.It is a Twitter tool. It shows you the bloggers in your niche, along with the influencers in your niche. If you want to follow them, you can. It tells you who has retweeted you, so if you want to return the blog love and retweet their links, you can do that as well.
- Content Curation sites: Pinterest, Flipboard, StumbleUpon, and Reddit are great places to do research for an article. Many have a bonus of bringing traffic to your blog if you use them correctly.
- Contentideator: Stuck for a headline idea? Plug your topic into this website.
- Contentrow.com: Not feeling terribly creative? Let this site do the thinking for you.
- Copyright Infringement Notice: With all the talk about hacking on my blog recently, I want to make sure everyone has access to a Copyright Infringement Notice that you can put in your sidebar.
- CoSchedule Headline Analyzer Is my go-to headline analyzer. The best part is that it tells you what you are missing in your headline, so you can get a higher score.
- Dropbox helps you store all kinds of documents and data. Open your data wherever you are. No hard drive is needed.
- Easel.ly: Easel.ly and Piktochart can all be used to create infographics, but I find myself repeatedly returning to Easel.ly more than the others when I need an infographic.
- Editorial Calendar. You need an editorial calendar to plan your content. Variety, they say, is the spice of life. You can’t give readers variety if you’re not planning. You can write it on paper. I use WordPress’s editorial calendar.
- Email is a great tool whether you use Aweber, MailChimp, or another choice. Email each other off the blog, link to blogging collaborators, Email your new subscribers with a Click to Tweet included; the reasons to use Email for blogging are endless.
- Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer will analyze the merit of your headline for you. This tool actually takes the guess-work out of headline writing, so the effectiveness of your headline is no longer subjective.
- Evernote: The value of Evernote is not overrated. I use it for blogging use as well as for personal to-do lists. You can add a photo you are planning to feature with your article to your Evernote, so you won’t forget what photo you had in mind.
- Dropbox: Never lose your documents or photos again. You will always have them handy since Dropbox is both an app and a website.
- Facebook is a great tool for bloggers. You can join Facebook groups with threads that relate to your blogging niche, expand your community by meeting like-minded bloggers, and join Facebook groups with people that share your blogging goals. The site has an app, so you can visit on your phone.
- Fiverr.com You can outsource any job you need to Fiverr for just $5.00. You can get jobs there too.
- Free Range Stock Photos: Since I take all my own blog photos, I have never used Free Range Stock Photos, but when my guest author blogged about the site, my readers got so excited, I wanted to be sure to mention it here.
- Google AdWords: Keyword Planner: Bloggers dream of being on the front page of Google. This site will enable you to tag your posts, so Google can find you.
- Google Analytics: Whether or not you self-host, you have access to the information available on Google Analytics to varying degrees. Let the data it reveals to you guide your future planning.
- GoogleAlerts will Email you if a new story in your blogging niche is published.
- GoogleCalendar: I just sent another blogger an invitation to collaborate using Google Calendar. It may sound silly to say my husband and I love this tool. We live in the same house, why don’t we just talk to each other? If I have a blogging conference or if my blogging schedule supersedes any social plans I want Wayne to schedule, I put it on my Google Calendar (I have a separate color for blogging,) and Wayne is kept apprised of my schedule. Also, you could use it to keep your blog’s editorial calendar. I logged in and saw my subscribers’ birthdays. How cool is that!
- GoogleDocs I find more valuable as the days progress. Recently, I had questions about a guest post for the author. I pasted it into GoogleDocs where we both looked at and discussed the article in real time. You can access it anywhere you have Internet in case your notes are on it.
- Google Search Console is part of Google Webmaster Tools (See next tool.) Go to Webmaster Tools. Under the “Search Traffic” category, you will see the “Search Analytics” tab. Scroll down to see which keywords people are using to find your site. Use these keywords in future posts; they are working for you!
- Google Trends: Type in your blogging niche at the top. Scroll down to see which keywords people are using to find your topic. Continue to use them!
- Google Webmaster Tools has interesting analytics about your site. Click “Search Analytics, Links to Your Site” and you will see what sites are linking to you and what your top five most linked content is.
- Grammarly Grammarly.com is a free site that will check your grammar for you. Supposedly, the site is able to catch 250 more grammar errors than your word processor.
- Hashtags: Hashtags are used to categorize information on many social media sites. When used correctly, hashtags can increase your visibility. By increasing reader awareness of your online presence, you have the potential to significantly increase traffic to your site.
- Hashtagify.me shows you relevant hashtags. You want like-minded bloggers to be able to find you on Twitter. This site will tell you what hashtags to use with your Tweets, so they can.
- Hashtags.org has a free membership.
- Hootsuite is a free, unlimited social media scheduler. Bloggers need to use social media to promote their blogs. Save time, and let Hootsuite do your scheduling on social media for you.
- Hubspot will offer you three headline ideas, and then charge you after that.
- Hubspot’s Website Grader will assess your blog’s headline strength, SEO, and mobile readiness, among others.
- IF (a.k.a. If This, Then That) is an amazing app. You create recipes of causes and the effects you want to happen. For example, if it is going to rain the next day, IF lets me know, so I can dress appropriately and bring an umbrella. My students and my readers need me. I wouldn’t be much good to them if I were sick. Many bloggers use IF to connect their social media accounts.
- Inbound.org: Inbound is a great site to learn more about blogging as well as make new blogging connections. 2020 Update: Inbound folded.
- Instagram: The filters are amazing. Use them to spruce up your blog photos.
- The Jetpack Annual Report WordPress sends out at the end of the year should guide the content of your blog posts. 2020 Update: I haven’t received this report in years.
- Links should go without a mention, but many bloggers don’t think of them. Linking to your other articles helps your SEO. Linking to other people’s articles gives you credibility as well as helping your SEO.
- MailChimp a free Email tool, is easy to use, offers A/B testing, and has analytics.
- Medium is a site but I am considering it a tool. I use it as such. I use it for the sheer joy of writing. I still write about blogging, but without the pressures of making a pinnable graphic, clickable headlines, or optimizing for search engines. I suppose you could say it’s a tool I use to decompress, burn off steam.
- Open Site Explorer will analyze your links for you. Those interested in No Follow and Do Follow Links may find this an interesting site.
- Pablo: I had fun making my first graphic with Pablo, and it only took what felt like a matter of seconds. I wanted to send my graphic accompanying my article to my MailChimp subscribers, but my graphic was on another computer. I used Pablo and had a new graphic almost immediately.
- Paint: I use Paint for cropping my graphics. My screenshots have been modified in Paint. I circle the important elements in red and then save them to my desktop. You can write on your graphics in Paint as well.
- Picassa: I send the photo from my phone to my Email and open it on the computer. I then use Picassa to modify my image. Once in Picassa, you can crop the image, change its colors, blur it, add a border, and do many other special effects.
- Piktochart: At Piktochart, you can create infographics, presentations, or banners. The site is versatile, free, fast, and easy. The graphics can easily be downloaded onto your computer and uploaded onto a blog post.
- PinGroupie is a Pinterest Community Board Finder. PinGroupie has analytics, so you will know how many members are pinning to the board and how recently they have been active.
- Pinterest allows me to store my blog photos on virtual bulletin boards. After they have been seen by my readers, the graphics continue to work for me on the bulletin boards by providing advertising for my blog articles. Pinterest has a great shelf life. Years later, you might find people clicking on your graphics and bringing traffic to your site. Pinterest has an app, so you can always access it.
- Pinterest Community Boards provide a great resource. You can meet like-minded bloggers who are pinning to the same board. The best part is many boards have hundreds or even thousands of people pinning to them. Think of all that increased exposure when you pin your post graphics to the boards. (Note: Subscribers of MostlyBlogging have access to a Pinterest group board. Leave a comment in the comment section that you’d like to be added to the board if you are a subscriber.)
- Phone: I couldn’t blog without my mobile phone. I use the camera on my phone to take blog photos, and I have countless apps that help me with my blogging.
- Portent: Like with Contentrow, the folks over at Portent tend to offer silly, albeit entertaining, headline ideas.
- Publicize will post your articles to social media for you. It’s part of the WordPress platform under “Publish”.
- QuillEngage will analyze your site. Blogger Julie Kaulpali called it “fun” to use. I actually enjoyed seeing the extremely specific analytics. Make blogging decisions based on your reader preferences, which it will share with you. I will give you fair warning: When you get there, you will see a man waiting for you. His name is “The Seeker”. At one point, he started picking his teeth while he was waiting for me. As Julie expressed, a “fun” site to use.
- Read More Tag: In the WordPress dashboard, if you hover over the Insert Read More Tag icon, you will be able to insert a page break. This has two advantages. First, you will get double page views since readers will have to click twice to read your entire article. Next, your home page will fit more articles, so as readers scroll down, they might find more to interest them.
- Snapseed has amazing filters for your iPhone photos you want to turn into blog graphics.
- Skype is used by bloggers to talk to people out of the country. Avoid paying for expensive data plans.
- SocialMention: See who is talking about you in a positive, negative, or neutral way. See who is giving you links to your site. I discovered several people linked to me this way. This was important so I could thank them.
- Spreadsheet: Excel, or any spreadsheet, is fine for this purpose. If you are spending money on your blog, your accountant will want your outgoing (and incoming) expenses if there are any.
- StayFocusd: A browser extension that helps you limit the time you spend online.
- Strides: Goals and Habits Tracker: I have never used the app, but for bloggers, it sounds interesting. The app will remind bloggers who might be preoccupied with blogging to stop blogging long enough to drink enough water each day, exercise, sleep, or get up early. The app also counts how close you are toward meeting your goals.
- Tweakyourbiz.com offers headline ideas.
- TwitterReach is a great Twitter analytics tool. It shows you who the top bloggers are in your niche, so you can retweet them. They may return the favor and retweet your links to their many followers. The site also tells you the best time of the day to tweet for your niche.
- Topsy helps you find blogging influencers in your niche. Update: Topsy folded.
- Trello: Like Skype, Trello can be used by groups. Blogging mastermind groups use Trello to show resources and other visual aides on Trello boards. MadLemmings uses Trello to keep his blogging notes organized.
- Tribes: There are sites that offer the help of other bloggers who will help you with blog promotion. JustRetweet and Triberr are two of them. Update: JustRetweet folded.
- Tweakyourbiz.com offers serious headline ideas.
- Tweepi helps you get Twitter followers.
- Twello makes it easy to see who is you are following on Twitter, and who isn’t following you back.
- Twitter: Twitter has a wide variety of blogging opportunities. Twitter Lists, Twitter Chats, and chances to engage with like-minded bloggers are just a few of the opportunities Twitter provides. Get the Twitter app so you can tweet on the go!
- Twitter Cards enable your graphics to look so eye-catching, your odds of reader engagement will increase.
- Twitonomy has Twitter analytics like tracking retweets.
- Ubersuggest: Type in your keyword, and tags not available at Google’s Keyword Planner are suggested, at least that’s what the site advertises.
- Unroll.me helps you organize your Email inbox.
- Upwork.com: If you are looking to make money as an Ebook writer, ghost writer, or editor, contact Upwork. I’m sure there are many other jobs for bloggers there as well.
- ViralContentBuzz saves you time with your blog promotion since it allows you to promote to four sites at once!
- WordPress: I read a recommendation that Tumblr is good for people who write shorter pieces. I am not familiar with Weebly. I have used Google’s Blogger and WordPress. I recommend WordPress. There is a WordPress app I couldn’t blog without. I’m sure many WordPress users would agree. In addition to providing a blogging platform, WordPress has great ways to find like-minded bloggers.
- Wunderlist is a wonder list. Bloggers need to-do-lists since they have so many blogging tasks to attend to. This list can also be shared with others. 2020 Update: As Wunderlist will get shut down on the 6th of May 2020, a lot of Wunderlist users are searching for an alternative. It seems to be that at the moment Zenkit To Do is the closest Wunderlist alternative: www.zenkit.com/
todo. There is also this article you can reference the “10 Best Online Construction Project Management Software” that covers the 10 best cloud-based project management software tools for construction companies – the same basic idea as Wunderlist but in a slightly different market. - YouTube: Videos are ever-increasing in popularity. Some people prefer to get information from a video than from a blog post. Once they watch your video, you can end with a Call to Action to visit your blog.
Conclusion: Blogging Tools
Readers, please share with other bloggers. Many don’t have budgets and would appreciate a free blogging tools list.
What are your favorite tools? Have you had favorable experiences with these tools and sites that you can share? Do you have any others you can recommend? I look forward to your views in the comments section.
Click here to get your own downloadable PDF of the free blogging tools list.
Note: This post was updated: 123 of the Best Free Blogging Tools that Will Save You Time Blogging (2017 Update)
Related Posts:
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5 Free Tools to Help You Easily Improve Your Keywords
6 Ways You Can Save Time Blogging, Technology You Should Know
Sources:
Fight Procrastination with StayFocusd
How to Improve Your Blog with Free Resources
12 Social Media Productivity Tips
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The 31 Best Tools for Improving Your Writing Skills
