blogging tools - Express Writers

25 Best Blogging Tools for 2023

January 9, 2024March 21, 2023 by Alicia Oakley

Maintaining a regular blog is a valuable marketing tool that can help businesses connect with their customers and grow their business. According to a study published by HubSpot, companies with blogs are more successful than those without. These companies receive, on average, 55% more visitors and get 97% more inbound links. With powerful statistics like these, it makes sense to make blogging a business priority in 2023. Whether you have been blogging for years or are just now considering adding a blog to your marketing plan, this list covers the best blogging tools to take you through 2023 and beyond. Blogging Tools for Topic Research Choosing the right topics can make the difference between a successful blog and one that gets little to no attention. These blogging tools can help guide your topic research. 1. BuzzSumo BuzzSumo makes it easy to research relevant topics. On the homepage, you can enter either a keyword or domain name to generate content ideas. The results page shows you recent trending topics that include your keyword and how they performed on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Source: https://app.buzzsumo.com/content/web?q=content+marketing+budget In the example above, you can see the most popular content with the keywords “content marketing budget” has 181 total engagements. It also has an evergreen score of 2. This score is unique to BuzzSumo and represents how popular content is with audiences a month after its release. For the score, the higher the number, the better. In the Content Analyzer results, you can skim through a few of the most popular topics to see how they approached the topic. You can then customize your topic to fit your target audience and business niche. BuzzSumo is a free tool. However, it only gives you a limited number of free searches each month. For unlimited searches and more in-depth information, upgrade to a premium account. 2. AnswerThePublic This unique website offers an innovative way to do topic research. Type your desired topic into the search field, and results are returned as an interactive wheel that shows questions people have asked related to your topic. Source: https://answerthepublic.com/reports/6de565a6-31bd-4d52-a619-5dc22e36868e When you point at each question, it changes color based on how frequently people have searched for that phrase. Beyond the visuals, the search results include alphabeticals, which show related searches that include each letter of the alphabet. Source: https://answerthepublic.com/reports/6de565a6-31bd-4d52-a619-5dc22e36868e 3. Quora Quora is a crowdsourced website that answers questions and shares commentary on popular topics. Here you can search for topics related to your industry and see what questions people are asking. If you have valuable insights to share that answer those questions, this could be a great idea for an in-depth blog. Source: https://www.quora.com/search?q=content%20marketing%20budget 4. Portent Title Maker In some ways, your blog title can be more important than the blog itself. The title is what attracts people to your blog and convinces them to start reading. Of course, you need quality content to back up your engaging title. Although it won’t matter how good the rest of your content is if your title doesn’t work. To help you create more creative titles or even give you inspiration for the rest of the blog, try using Portent Idea Generator. Enter your chosen topic into the search field, and it will generate titles for you. You can click “See Another Title” until you find something you love. You can also click on words and phrases within the title. The tool then offers a quick explanation of why it works in the title. Source: https://www.portent.com/tools/title-maker/?refreshed_idea=content+marketing+budget 5. Twitter Trending Topics There may be times when the latest news connects with your brand. Check the trending topics section on the Twitter homepage to see what people are talking about. This is a great way to try out newsjacking – tying your brand into the latest viral news story. Blogging Tools for Organization Once you have a list of great ideas, you should organize them into a workable content schedule. There are numerous tools available to help you do this. 6. Dropbox There may be some blog topics that include files, like images, videos, or PDFs. Dropbox makes it easy to store these items and keep them together. 7. Google Calendar Google Calendar and other calendar tools can be easily transformed into an editorial calendar. For example, if you plan to publish one blog per day, you can record the daily topics as events and reorganize them, as needed. You can also schedule time for writing and any other content creation needs. 8. Evernote Evernote is a popular note-taking app that helps you organize projects, notes, and schedules. It has a robust tagging system to help you categorize your content in a variety of ways, whether by topic, planning stage, or anything else. Evernote also works with other apps like Google Calendar allowing you to track everything in one place. 9. Todoist Whether your content team is small or large, Todoist is versatile enough to work with any size team. It is one of the most popular organizational apps. You can be flexible enough to adjust your schedule to be as simple or as complex as you like by breaking down tasks into subtasks and moving tasks into projects. Blogging Tools for Optimization An optimized blog is one that fulfills the needs of the searcher. For example, if someone searches for “content marketing budget” and you have written a quality, optimized blog focused on that topic, it has a better chance of appearing near the top of the search results. These tools can help you create the best optimized blogs. 10. Yoast Yoast is a plugin that works with WordPress. It can help you optimize your content for keywords, in addition to suggesting relevant internal links. It uses red, yellow, and green color codes to show you what you did well and where you need some more work. 11. Keyword Planner Keyword Planner is a free resource available as part of Google Ads. It can help you research keywords for your … Read more

5 Tools Everyone in The Blogging Industry Should be Using

December 31, 2020December 12, 2014 by Adam Oakley

It’s tough being a blogger. You spend hours of time on the web as you strategize, plan, and carefully craft your perfect post. You face deadlines, lack of motivation, and writer’s block. Not to mention, you could really use an assistant. Oh, and coffee. Lots of coffee. Sound accurate? As a blogger, you might think that you are on your own in terms of perfecting your craft. Lucky for you, your life is about to get a little bit easier. Whether you are a seasoned blogger or you are just at the beginning of your career, there are a lot of tools available on the web that can help bloggers stay on track and fight writer’s block. Blogger to blogger, here are 5 tools that are bound to keep your fingers flowing on that keyboard. 1. The Wonders of Blogging With WordPress Still using Blogger or another old school blogging platform? If so, it is time to get a little bit of WordPress love in your life. WordPress was originally started as a simple blog platform solution. However, it has experienced explosive growth over the last several years, morphing into the ultimate content management system that it is today. WordPress offers many benefits to bloggers, and you are truthfully crazy if you have yet to convert. So, what is it about WordPress that makes it so spectacular for bloggers? For starters, it is super simple to use and customize. While older blog platforms only allow you to change your background and maybe your font face, WordPress allows you to create an entire functioning website around your blog. If you are not a web designer and shudder at the thought of HTML, you are in luck. WordPress contains literally millions of themes that give you a beautifully designed website with the click of a button. It really is that easy. To take the benefits of WordPress a step further, Google actually favors WordPress websites and blogs. WordPress also contains built-in SEO plug-ins that you can install to help give your blog an extra boost. These advantages only skim the surface of why WordPress makes an excellent tool to bloggers. What are you waiting for? 2. Can’t Keep Track Of Your Posts? Enter the Editorial Calendar So, this blogger tool is mostly developed by you, but it a necessity and really helps bloggers to stay organized. There are several ways to go about creating an editorial calendar; one being a simple Excel spreadsheet. Depending on your posting frequency, you can plan your blogs day-by-day, week-by-week, or even month-by-month. Consider splitting your blog topics into categories, such as posts that are trending, seasonal, news, and how-tos. Another way to create an editorial calendar is by literally using an online calendar. Google Calendar in particular has a pretty decent set up to help keep you on track. If you still doubt your ability to make a solid editorial calendar on your own, there are free templates available that you can mold to fit your needs. For example, Hubspot offers a free and convenient editorial calendar to get you started. Staying organized as a blogger and knowing exactly what topic to write about will make your job a breeze. You know what they say – failing to plan is planning to fail. 3. Never Have Any Good Ideas? Hubspot Helps With That As one of my favorite tools for bloggers, Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator is perfect for coming up with fresh ideas when you are in a pinch. One of the greatest obstacles that every blogger faces is wondering what to write about next. I don’t know about you, but I am not a fan of wasting time while trying to figure out my next blog topic. The blog topic generator is super simple to use. Type in 3 nouns that relate to your industry, and click the button for instant ideas. The disclaimer here is that this tool is not fool proof. Sometimes it generates topics that do not make much sense. A little common sense goes a long way with this tool, but I think it is a lot of fun and pretty useful. 4. Tracking Your Visits With Google Analytics Most bloggers want to know how much traffic is pouring onto their blog on a regular basis. One of the best tracking systems, hands down, is Google Analytics. Google Analytics will give you an overview of specific blog topics that are performing well on a traffic level, and what posts aren’t making the cut. You will see your bounce rate in analytics, which gives you an idea of how engaged your audience is with your website. Google Analytics also can measure your tracking coming in from social media, so you will know exactly how much traffic your Facebook or twitter account is pushing to your blog. Analytics has tons of cool and useful bells and whistles. There are a lot of useful features to explore, and they can all help analyze your best content. Every blogger can absolutely benefit from the power of Google Analytics. 5. Wordfence Security Keeps Your Blog More Secure The reality of owning your own blog is that there is a very real possibility that your site can become hacked. If you are on the WordPress platform, there is a free plug-in called Wordfence that will alert you of any potential threats that occur on your website. This includes attempted anonymous logins and security updates. Hackers can find loopholes to enter your site through old and outdated code, so always be sure to update your WordPress website as requested by Wordfence. This tool can save bloggers a lot of headache and heartache. Don’t put yourself in a position where you become the next horror story. Now that you know 5 essential tools that all bloggers should be using, you can start increasing your productivity while making your blogging career both simple and streamlined. Featured photo credit: ilkefoto / iStock