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Tools for Blogging Beginners

Starting a blog is an exciting roller coaster ride of an adventure. There are a lot of ups and downs. Just when you think you’ve gotten the hang of something, you realize there is something else to learn and yet more tools for blogging than you realized. 

It can be overwhelming and frustrating at times. But it is very addicting and somehow you end up loving it even when you want to throw your laptop across the room. Which is something I’ve felt quite often over my last nearly three years of running a blog. If only I started blogging with what I know now. 

Today, I’m going to share the tools for blogging that I use to run my blog, the ones I wish I knew about when I was first starting my blog.

Tools for Blogging:

Here is a list of tools I use or have used. Depending where you are and what you budget is, different tools may work better now and you can always switch/upgrade later.

Platforms

WordPress + BigScoots Less Debt More Wine (formerly Friday Night Shenanigans) lives on WordPress.org with BigScoots for hosting. Though I started what was Friday Night Shenanigans with BlueHost.

Recommended Hosting

Bigscoots (hosting) is the hosting service I use. The customer service has been fantastic. When I moved my Squarespace site to wordpress, I had a lot of questions, they had the answers. When I screwed up a few things, they were able to help me fix them. They have been awesome to work with and I highly recommend using BigScoots for hosting your blog

Hosting starts at just $3.55/month, which is excellent considering how amazing their customer service is.

Related: Squarespace vs WordPress: Which Blogging Platform is Right for You?

Email Marketing

I currently use ConvertKit, though in the past I used both Aweber and Mailchimp. I must say I love the ease of use of Convertkit. It was built for bloggers by a blogger so they really understand what bloggers are trying to accomplish with email marketing. (check out their report on the state of blogging). They are also subscriber based count rather than a list based count, making sure you aren’t being overcharged. 

Related: How to Start Building an Email List

If you want to learn more about email marketing, check out this FREE book from ConvertKit

Social Media Tools

 SmarterQueue – If you don’t have a WordPress site, you can use SmarterQueue to schedule out your social media quickly and efficiently. I just started using it and I love that it lets you recycle posts, so you don’t have to go in and always reschedule them. 

TailWind – Tailwind had been a game changer for me, I went from 10,000 impressions on Pinterest to over 100,000 impressions and have seen traffic to my site grow (by 40%) as well as email subscribers. The ease of use to schedule pins and track analytics has been awesome. Learn more about Tailwind.

What tools for blogging do you use? Or is there a tool for blogging you want to know more about? Let me know in the comments!

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