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Favourite Blog Tools as a Blogger of 16+ Years
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items I've been blogging since 2009, and over that time, I’ve definitely used a range of tools and platforms to help me run my blog and the blogging-adjacent things I need to do. Some I’ve been a die-hard fan of and will never give up, and some have come a...
Sections
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Blogging Support
For Writing Your Blog Posts
For Tech Stuff on Your Blog
For Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
For Content Creation
For Planning Your Blog Posts
Blogging Support
Looking for group or 1:1 blog support? I can help with that!
If you’re looking for support, a place to upskill in your blogging endeavours, get accountability, be resourced, and be able to ask questions in a safe space, I’d love to introduce you to The Blogging Room. This is my membership for women in blogging...
The Blogging Room Membership for Women
Looking for blog coaching? Oh hey I can help with that!
1:1 blog coaching with me is 90-minutes of you, me, and cuppa tea. (Or wine! Take your pick!) It’s a chance for us to sit down and have a natter about the things you could be doing to transform your blog and make it even better than it is already. 😉...
You can learn more here or flick me a messgae on Instagram! I'd love to chat!
1:1 blog coaching with me is 90-minutes of you, me, and cuppa tea. (Or wine! Take your pick!) It’s a chance for us to sit down and have a natter about the things you could be doing to transform your blog and make it even better than it is already. 😉...
You can learn more here or flick me a messgae on Instagram! I'd love to chat!
Blog Coaching For Bloggers And Small Business Owners
If you're making money with your blog, then you'll need to sort out your own taxes. If you're in New Zealand, Australia or the UK, then I HIGHLY recommend Hnry. They file all my taxes returns and make sure everything is paid on time. And it's incredi...
You can see my full review of Hnry here on This Splendid Shambles, my blog.
You can see my full review of Hnry here on This Splendid Shambles, my blog.
Hnry For Taxes (NZ, AU, UK)
For Writing Your Blog Posts
Writing your blog posts is like … the main thing about blogging right? If we didn't write great content, we wouldn't get to help our ideal audience. These are some of the blogging tools I use to help me write my blog posts and get them out there into...
I’m a big WordPress.org fan.
Note: It’s different to WordPress .com. Think of the difference between owning a house and renting it. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with renting space, but if you want to be able to change the walls, install a new bathroom, change things about yo...
WordPress .com is rented space, and while WordPress .org is free, you need somewhere to host that blog. The host is like the land - where are you going to put your house down?
While it can be a learning curve, if you're ready and willing to learn, it's one of the best platforms for your blog.
Note: It’s different to WordPress .com. Think of the difference between owning a house and renting it. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with renting space, but if you want to be able to change the walls, install a new bathroom, change things about yo...
WordPress .com is rented space, and while WordPress .org is free, you need somewhere to host that blog. The host is like the land - where are you going to put your house down?
While it can be a learning curve, if you're ready and willing to learn, it's one of the best platforms for your blog.
WordPress.org
Grammarly is great for picking up those spelling errors or weird grammatical sentences you think work, but might not. There’s a Chrome extension, too, so you can use it wherever you’re writing online.
Grammarly
Part of writing a good blog post is linking up between your other blog posts, but also externally to other websites that you think are helpful for your readers. Link Whisper is a brilliant tool that essentially helps you organise those links. You can...
*Outside Benable affiliate link.
*Outside Benable affiliate link.
LinkWhisper – Smart Internal Linking Tool for WordPress SEO
For Tech Stuff on Your Blog
And there's the tech side of your blog. This is how we build out blogs and make sure people can actually find it. I love these tools and highly recommend.
Lyrical Host is my absolute favourite blog hosting company. They’re incredibly helpful; you can go to them with basically any blog question or help ticket, and they’re on it immediately. There’s also an incredible community. 10/10 love them.
🛒 Use the code SPLENDIDSHAMBLES at the checkout to get 10% off your first year hosting!
*Outside Benable affiliate link.
🛒 Use the code SPLENDIDSHAMBLES at the checkout to get 10% off your first year hosting!
*Outside Benable affiliate link.
Lyrical Host
Elementor is a drag-and-drop website builder that makes it easy to create beautiful, responsive websites.
Elementor is an easy way to build your WordPress site. You can use its drag-and-drop interface to create beautiful layouts in minutes. The best part is that you don’t need any coding skills!
I had been blogging for a long time before I jumped on this bandwagon, but it was easy to pick up. Now, most of my pages and over on Learn are created with Elementor.
Elementor is an easy way to build your WordPress site. You can use its drag-and-drop interface to create beautiful layouts in minutes. The best part is that you don’t need any coding skills!
I had been blogging for a long time before I jumped on this bandwagon, but it was easy to pick up. Now, most of my pages and over on Learn are created with Elementor.
Elementor Website Builder
If you’re selling digital or physical products alongside your blog, then you need to have some sort of cart situation happening. This is how people are going to pay for your products or services. I’ve been using ThriveCart for a few years now, both f...
*Outside Benable affiliate link.
*Outside Benable affiliate link.
ThriveCart
For Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Search Engine Optimised (SEO) is how our blog posts and our blogs in general are going to be found. Here are some of the tools I used to help me choose the right keywords for my blog, and how to track my analytics.
If you don’t have Google Search Console set up for your blog, I highly recommend it. You can see what pages people are landing on from Google (just Google, though), and what pages are growing in popularity. You can also double-check that your blog pa...
Google Search Console
Google Search Console at a minimum, but having Google Analytics set up is also a really good call. You can then see all your analytics from across the internet. So where people are coming from (that’s not just Google), how long they’re staying on you...
Google Analytics
When it comes to figuring out what keywords you should be using in your blog posts and on your website, there are lots of options. I like Ubersuggest, and it is the one I use the most. It's well laid out, with colour-coding (which we love!), and it a...
*Outside Benable affiliate link.
*Outside Benable affiliate link.
Ubersuggest: Free Keyword Research Tool
Yoast is a goodie for in-post SEO guidance. I use it with WordPress as a plugin, so I can make sure I'm hitting what I need to be hitting when it comes to blog post SEO. It's not the final say or be-all-and-end-all for SEO, but it's a good place to s...
YOAST
For Content Creation
There are lots of tools out there for content creation, but these are the ones I use a lot - nearly every day!
Ah, my one true love. Look, you either love Canva or you don’t, and there are a lot of in-between people, I’d hazaard a guess. But I’m a huge fan and I literally use it every single day for my blog. Whether that be for simple things like adding text ...
Canva
Finding images that you can use for your blog can be a bit of a challenge at times. With Unsplash, you can use any of the images on the website for FREE, unless it's part of their paid subscription. No copyright at all. While they ask that you credit...
Unsplash Photographs
Another great option for free images to use is Dupe Photos. They also have a great bank of videos that you can use for your Reels or TikTok videos. There are tons of beautiful images on this website, and they’ve been collated for content creators, es...
Dupe Photos
For long-form content, like course material or masterclass replays for The Blogging Room (and the like), I love Descript. It’s one of the coolest video editing software programmes I’ve used, and it’s so simple to edit film as you’re using it like a text document.
When you upload a video that you want to edit, it creates a transcript for that video, and then if you want to cut out a bit or change the order, etc, you literally edit the text of the transcript, and the footage changes in response. It’s genius. “I...
*Outisde Benable affilliate link.
When you upload a video that you want to edit, it creates a transcript for that video, and then if you want to cut out a bit or change the order, etc, you literally edit the text of the transcript, and the footage changes in response. It’s genius. “I...
*Outisde Benable affilliate link.
Descript Video & Audio Editor/Creator
For Reels and short-form videos like them, I like to use CapCut, mostly on my phone, although I have used the desktop version too. It’s a really easy way to create more dynamic short-form videos.
CapCut Video Editor
For Planning Your Blog Posts
Planning your blog posts in advance is so important! It not only helps you get on top of your to-do/to-post list, but it means you can strategy post ahead and get ahead of the game.
Whimsical allows you to do a bunch of different things and is especially good if you’re in a team. But I’ve found the mind-mapping tools especially helpful and are brilliant for mapping out what content I want to create and how it links to other cont...
Whimsical
The tool I use the most to plan out my content is my Google Sheets content planner that I created myself. All the ideas and the connections that I’ve made in Whimsical are then put into the planner so I can see when I want to actually publish them. I...
*Own digital product
*Own digital product
Digital Blog Planner - Blogging Content Planner for Bloggers
For Promotion of Your Blog and Posts
While SEO should be doing its job for our blogs, we can help it out. Here are some of the tools I use and love for promoting my blog and posts.
I've tried many social media scheduling tools over the years, but none have come close to the brilliance that is Metricool. I thoroughly enjoy and recommend this scheduling tool.
One of my favourite things about it is the cross-posting aspect. It's really well-designed and simple to use, but it lets you cross-post to various platforms and tweak the text or images as you go. Genius! You can also schedule SO FAR in advance, whi...
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One of my favourite things about it is the cross-posting aspect. It's really well-designed and simple to use, but it lets you cross-post to various platforms and tweak the text or images as you go. Genius! You can also schedule SO FAR in advance, whi...
*Outside Benable affiliate link
Metricool
For Pinterest, I love to use Tailwind for scheduling Pins to go out. Again, it's a really easy to use way to keep on top of the Pins and what I want to share on Pinterest. It's a little on the pricey side, but considering so much of blogging traffic ...
*Outside Benable affiliate link
*Outside Benable affiliate link
Tailwind
So many blog niches can do so well on Pinterest. As a visual search engine, you need to think a little differently in terms of how you create pins and what keywords you use, but Pinterest has always been one of the highest sources of traffic for my b...
Pinterest
For Blog Communication
We don't blog in a silo. Blogging should be about community and our readers, and engaging with them. Here are some of the tools I use to communicate and engage with my readers and audience.
If you’re a blogger and you don’t have an email list yet, can I encourage you to set one up? Why? You don’t own your social media. That’s one of the biggies. This means if Facebook or Instagram or TikTok decides to pull the plug one day, there go all...
With an email list, you own it. It’s yours. If your mail provider calls it quits, you can take your list with you. You can learn more about email lists for bloggers here.
With an email list, you own it. It’s yours. If your mail provider calls it quits, you can take your list with you. You can learn more about email lists for bloggers here.
MailerLite
ManyChat is a great tool to use if you want to automate some of your tasks, like delivering freebies or links to people. Click here to get your first month for free!
*Outside Benable affiliate link
*Outside Benable affiliate link
ManyChat
Hands up who loves Threads? ✋🏻 Have been loving the connections I’ve made on Threads, and have even made friends. While you may not want ‘yet another social media platform’, if you’ve been thinking about trying it out, can I encourage you to do so? ...here if you want to connect!
Threads
Misc Blogging Tools
Some bits-and-bobs tools I've used for my blog over the years, and a course from a fellow blog coach.
Perfect for book bloggers! This is what I use to display my review information on my blog, and it’s really customizable. It’s also a woman-owned and created plugin, and the support is really good. You can check out this blog post here to see it in action.
Ultimate Book Blogger Plugin
This is a website FULL of graphics, elements, fonts … basically anything digital and creative you can find here. They also do some great sales and bundles.
*Outside Benable Affiliate link
*Outside Benable Affiliate link
Creative Market
If you’re looking for a great course on growing your blog traffic, check out the Blog Machine Traffic by Anita Dysktra. She’s fantastic, and I highly recommend her courses and services!
*Outside Benable affilliate link
*Outside Benable affilliate link
The Blog Traffic Machine - Best blogging course in 2026