One of the first big decisions for any new blog – and one of the most daunting – is choosing a theme for the website.
But with so many different options to choose from, how do you know which one is the best for your new blog?
In this post, we will list 9 of the best WordPress themes for new blogs.
These themes are easy to use, customizable, and most importantly – affordable!
So if you’re looking for a new WordPress theme that will help launch your blog into success, look no further than the list below!
Why You Need a WordPress Theme
Themes on WordPress allow you to customize the look, feel, and layout of your site.
Without a theme, you would end up with a very basic webpage that looks like something straight out of the 1990s.
While the ’90s was a great time, the internet has moved on. And your website should too.
When choosing a theme for your blog, it’s important to choose one that’s able to grow with your blog.
You want something that can be further customized later, can grow to utilize new features you need down the road, and can support a larger website as you continue to fill out your blog.
There are few bigger headaches for a blog owner than trying to migrate to a new theme after uploading 100, 1,000, or more blog posts.
It’s not impossible, it’s just a massive headache.
That’s why I believe it’s so important to choose the right theme from the start.
But how do you even know what the right theme looks like?
What Makes a Good Theme
When exploring new themes for my websites – including the themes for this list – I look for a few different key aspects:
Customization
The first thing I look for in any new theme is customization.
I don’t want my website to look like every other site, and I have a vision for what I want my site to be.
Therefore, the ability to customize the theme is key to bringing that vision to life.
While some themes offer so much customization that it can be overwhelming, others might not offer many options without using custom code.
I tend to look for a middle ground between these two.
Additionally, some themes offer website templates that you can then customize to your own liking.
I enjoy this because it gives me a starting point to work from.
Personally, it’s a lot easier to start building when you’re not looking at a blank screen.
It’s kind of like writing – it’s easier to get working when there’s already something to build off of.
Overall Features and Plugins
Can this theme build pop-ups and opt-ins?
Can it plug into the various tools I use on my blog (autoresponders, affiliate programs, marketing/social media tools, etc)?
Can I set global settings to help with branding?
Is the theme mobile responsive?
Can I hide/show specific elements based on mobile users vs desktop users?
These are some of the questions I’m asking myself when looking at a new WordPress theme.
While every theme may not have every feature I’m looking for, I’m still taking all of this into consideration when making a decision.
If a theme doesn’t offer its own pop-ups for me to collect emails, for example, that may not be the end of the world.
The autoresponder I use – or some other tool in my arsenal – may already have that feature regardless.
But these are still questions to ask yourself.
What features do I need? How critical is it that the theme has it? Can I live without that feature, or does another one of my tools make up for it?
Ask yourself these questions as you’re evaluating your new theme.
Consider what features you want to use not only today, but also in the future.
Impact on Site Speed
Site speed is a crucial part of creating a powerful blog.
While site speed isn’t only affected by your theme – your hosting provider has the biggest impact – the theme you use makes a big difference.
Simply put, some themes are created better than others. There’s no way around it.
Over the last few years, there has been a massive shift from WP theme creators to create smarter themes that are more efficient in how they load web pages.
Without getting into the techy side of things, just know this: more and more theme creators are waking up to the importance of site speed, and they’re designing these themes around that aspect.
That’s good for you and me and other site owners, and it’s good for our users.
While evaluating themes for this list, I put a lot of consideration into the impact on site speed.
You can be assured each theme on this list will have a positive impact on your speed, as well as your reader’s experience.
Ease of Use
Do you want a theme that requires you to basically write code yourself, or do you want one that offers a series of sliders and buttons to allow you to customize it?
Since I know approximately nothing about coding, I know what my response is.
Because of the vast customization options different themes offer, you can quickly become bogged down in all the different menus and features when creating your site.
It’s for this reason I always like to consider the ease of use of any theme I’m exploring.
I don’t want to have to spend 45 minutes to get 1 little image sized properly, or spend hours to build out a landing page that will only be used once.
While having a ton of customization options is important for any theme, how those options are presented makes a big difference.
The upside here is that theme creators know this as well and they build the backend of these themes to be more user-friendly, taking the headache off you and I.
Future Growth
As I said earlier, it’s important your chosen theme is able to grow along with your website.
I don’t want to have to build from an entirely new theme in a year, I’d much rather expand on the one I already have.
For this reason, it’s important to take into consideration the future use of your blog.
What features and tools do you want to use in the future as your site grows?
How does the theme handle different menus and organization of your posts?
Will you be able to expand your site and its features with this theme?
These are all questions I ask myself when choosing a theme.
Now, you may not know what you will need in the future.
In fact, you most likely don’t really know.
That’s fine. It’s more important that you’re confident the theme you choose has options for the future than it is that you know exactly what you will need.
Choose a theme that’s robust, and built for many different uses or types of websites, and you’re more likely to end up with the features you need in the future.
Choose a theme that’s very specifically tailored to one type of website, on the other hand, and you limit your possibilities.
Best WordPress Themes for New Bloggers
Now that you know what to look for in your future theme, how about we start looking at the best themes that meet all of the above criteria, and offer you all the customization and options you will ever need to build your site?
Here are the 9 best WordPress Themes you should consider:
Divi is, by far, my favorite WP theme. It’s also the theme that this website is built on.
Everything you see on this site? Built by Divi.
Divi – created by Elegant Themes – is also one of the most popular WP themes in the world.
And there’s good reason for it.
Here are just a few things Divi does – and does well:
Extensive Page Builder
Divi does more than just offer a theme for your website, it also allows you to build custom pages for whatever you want.
Whether you need a quick landing page, a photo gallery, a testimonial page, form pages, or anything else. You can create a page built just for that purpose, starting from scratch and using only what you want.
There are over 200 modules included that you could add to your custom pages so you can build what you need, when you need it.
Website Templates/Layouts
Building a website from nothing can be difficult.
Staring at a blank screen and not knowing where to start is something we all face from time to time.
And that’s why Divi has included 2,000+ template designs for you to work from.
You can take these designs and customize them as far as you want.
You might even end up with a website that looks completely different from the design you started with.
But having that template to work from allows you to get working faster.
To be clear, I have not looked at every single template Divi offers.
There are just too many.
But I did build this website starting from a pre-made design (and I wish I had taken note of which design it was).
From there, I built everything you see on this website.
No coding. No in-depth tech knowledge. Just the power of Divi.
If I can do it, you can too.
Forms, Pop-ups, Opt-ins
While there’s no shortage of tools and products you can purchase to build forms, promote your products, and collect information from your readers, it’s always great to see the feature built into your chosen theme.
Not only does this cut down on costs by requiring 1 less tool for you to buy, but it also cuts down on bloat and increases your site speed by having 1 less tool loading into the site.
Divi’s built-in options for building pop-ups, contact forms, and connecting with your email tools allow you to grow your audience quickly and easily.
And just like the website templates, they offer pre-made designs for you to use.
You can have your first pop-up created and live literally within minutes.
And, again, it doesn’t even require you to purchase another tool or plugin.
Built for Speed
I talked earlier about how site speed affects your reader’s experience.
Well, the creators of Divi have really taken this to heart.
The Divi theme is programmed in an incredibly smart way that – without going into the technical aspects (that I don’t even fully understand anyway) – basically makes it so that when a page loads, it only loads the features it uses, not all the features of the theme.
This may sound like common sense – after all, why would you have your page load, say, an image slider, if you’re not using one on that page?
Well, the thing is, in the past, this is exactly how these themes worked.
A theme would load in a ton of aspects that are not being used on that page, which would slow down load times.
Today, however, theme creators have figured out how to program their themes in a way that it only loads in the code required for that specific page.
And this has a drastic improvement in page load speeds.
I’m sure Divi does a ton of other things to speed up load times, most of which I probably wouldn’t even understand.
But this “No Bloat” aspect of Divi definitely impresses me at first sight, and it makes a noticeable difference in load speeds.
To give you an idea, here’s a screenshot of my GTmetrix performance results on this site. Note that I’ve done almost nothing to improve the performance of this site (yet):
All green? All good.
Built-in Split Testing
Part of running a blog, at least once it becomes a business, is marketing that blog.
Part of marketing requires you to test different versions of pages.
Landing pages. Colors. Headlines. Calls to Action. Literally, anything on any page can be tested for marketing purposes.
While you don’t have to get into the weeds on this, it’s nice that Divi offers split testing on the pages you create.
Having options like this is what allows you to be able to grow and continue to use Divi in the future if you ever needed the feature. Without it, if you wanted to begin split testing aspects on your site, you would need to buy an entirely different tool to help with that.
eCommerce Store Builder
On WordPress, WooCommerce is pretty much the gold standard for building your own eCommerce store.
It’s a powerful plugin, and definitely something you want to look into if you ever decide to sell physical products on your website – which is a path that many bloggers choose to take.
Divi includes a powerful integration with WooCommerce that allows you to completely customize and build product pages in any way you’d like.
If you ever decided to build a store on your blog, Divi provides everything you need to make that store a reality. Again, this helps with future-proofing your blog.
All The Documentation
While Divi is a massive theme and can do a lot, the creators have also built a large collection of documentation to help you learn to do basically anything you want within Divi.
They offer a huge resource of articles, and even videos, providing all the ins and outs of the Divi theme.
And what they don’t offer, many other people in the community have created content themselves.
This means, whatever your question is, someone out there has probably already answered it and created a guide on how to build it.
0That drastically speeds up your ability to learn and build with Divi.
Elementor is more than just a WordPress Plugin, it’s a full suite of page-building tools.
Like Divi, it offers a ton of customization and the ability to create custom pages, pop-ups, opt-ins, and the like.
Elementor is powerful. Very powerful.
100+ Widgets
Widgets are the individual elements that make up your page.
These could be menus, share buttons, image/video elements, testimonial sliders, or any number of different things.
Widgets are what allow for so much customization.
You can start from a blank page – or a template – and begin adding and changing each individual widget to create the look and feel you want.
Altogether, Elementor includes over 100 different widgets for building basically anything you want.
On top of that, the Elementor community has built tons more widgets that you can access for further customization. Just be aware that some of those widgets are paid products purchased on the Elementor Marketplace.
300+ Pre-made Templates
Instead of starting from scratch, use a template created by professional designers.
Use these templates as-is or customize them to your liking. Everything can be changed – elements, colors, layouts, whatever.
Form and Popup Builder
Elementor includes power form-building tools that can be used to gather information and insights from your readers.
Whether you’re creating a contact form, collecting emails, or gathering specific information, Elementor has a ton of customization options you can use.
Avada is a versatile theme that can be used for a wide variety of websites.
It includes several pre-built websites that you can use as templates, or you can create your own custom website using the drag-and-drop builder.
The builder lets you easily add new pages, customize the look and feel of your website, add widgets and plugins, and much more.
One of the best features of Avada is the Performance Wizard.
This tool helps to improve the performance of your website, decreasing load times and increasing reader experience.
It does this by optimizing your website’s settings and eliminating any unused plugins or widgets.
If you’re looking for a versatile and easy-to-use WordPress theme, Avada is a great option.
It includes everything you need to create a beautiful and functional website, and the Performance Wizard will help to keep your website running smoothly.
Thrive Theme Builder is part of a much larger suite of tools that I personally use.
While Thrive probably isn’t best suited for completely new bloggers, it’s a powerful suite of tools to be used when you’re ready.
Not only does the Theme Builder itself offer a ton of customization options, pre-built websites, and a comprehensive setup wizard to get running faster, but the included suite of Thrive tools simply takes your site to a completely new level.
Build custom pop-ups and opt-ins with a ton of different options, create and sell full courses on your website, create quizzes to engage your readers, and so much more.
The Thrive suite is truly impressive, but again, it’s not for everybody.
Before taking on Thrive you really have to consider the future of your blog and where you want to go with it.
Hestia by Theme Isle is an extensive theme without being overwhelming for new site owners.
With Hestia, you can customize your pages to your liking right inside of WordPress in a simple editor, and expand with a list of page builders including Divi, Thrive, Elementor, and more.
Hestia’s easy-to-use customization options are perfect for new bloggers looking to get up and running with a custom feel in less time.
While it may not have the expansive suite of options that other themes include, it’s still a powerful tool to build your custom website quickly and easily.
Ashe, created by WP Royal, is an elegant but simple theme that includes both a free and a premium version.
Ashe is really built specifically for bloggers and creates a stunning layout design without much user input required.
While the complete features included in Ashe are a bit limited compared to other themes, the design options are still more than enough for any new blogger to take advantage of.
Ashe is worth considering if you’re concerned less with building a custom site from scratch, and would rather just get up and running immediately.
Note: After uploading this post the WP Royal site wouldn’t load. Maybe it was a fluke, but it might be a sign that this theme isn’t going to be updated any longer.
Honorable Mentions
Now that we’ve looked at 9 of the most powerful, most versatile WordPress themes available, I’m going to just quickly list some honorable mentions that I like, but may not have quite made the list.
If you didn’t find everything you’re looking for above, then check these out. You just might find something that fits your needs.
9 of the best currently available WordPress themes for your new blog, plus a healthy list of honorable mentions to further explore.
Now I want to hear from you: Was your favorite theme on this list? If it wasn’t, mention it below!
And what’s your favorite feature of the themes listed?
Personally, I love the advanced page load speeds of Divi. It’s a unique but underrated feature that I’d like to see included in more themes in the future.
There are many time-saving tools out there that can help you become a more productive blogger.
In this blog post, we will showcase the most valuable and practical tools that every blogger – beginner and expert – can use to improve the quality and output of their content.
By using these tools you can build a better workflow that produces more content, with a higher value, in less time. This helps you create better content for your readers to enjoy and brings them back for more.
So without further ado, let’s get started!
The 4 Major Components of a Winning Blog Post
Let’s face it, blogging is both a science and an art.
Some aspects of blogging require strategic thinking and planning to drive traffic, rank in search engines, create relationships and community, and create revenue for your website.
That being said, each blog post you write should consist of – at least – these 4 major components if you hope to turn that post into a valuable and helpful piece of content for your audience.
Each tool that is listed below feeds into these components in some way, and that’s why we are talking about them now.
Regardless, make sure each post you create consists of these 4 things:
Attention-Grabbing Headline
It’s important to understand that the overall goal of a headline is to get people to click on your blog post.
Without an attention-grabbing headline, readers may not even notice your post amidst all of the other content they are presented with on a daily basis.
But once they do click on your post, a catchy headline also sets the tone and expectation for what the content will be about.
It helps keep readers engaged and encourages them to continue reading through to the end of the article.
One way to create attention-grabbing headlines is by using power words or phrases that evoke emotion or create a sense of urgency.
Some examples of power words could include “revolutionary,” “shocking,” “amazing,” or “you won’t believe.”
Additionally, including numbers or lists in your headlines can also make them more appealing.
“10 ways to improve your productivity” or “5 surprising health benefits of avocado” are examples of this. While they may not be the best headlines ever, they illustrate the point.
While it may take some practice and experimentation, mastering the art of writing attention-grabbing headlines can greatly benefit your blog’s success and overall reader engagement.
Luckily, writing great headlines is a learned skill. And with a little time, practice, and a couple of easy tools listed below, it’s fairly easy to pick up.
Organized and Well-Formatted Content
If your content isn’t organized, it will come out looking like an incoherent rambling of jumbled information.
Honestly, your blog post could be the most informative piece of content on the internet, but if it’s a mess, your reader will not gain anything from it.
When creating your content, you want to think your way through the topic in a logical format. Plan out the topic in a step-by-step order.
The first problem is this, and it’s solved by x. The second problem is that, and it’s solved by y. The third problem is here, and it’s solved by z.
Do you get the picture?
Think through the problem or topic your post covers from the beginning to the end, and then walk your reader through it step-by-step.
This, alone, will increase the value of your content tenfold.
Use of Visual Aids
Listen, at this point, we’ve all searched the internet for a guide on how to do something in our lives.
Whether it was a blog post walking you through setting up your website, or a YouTube video explaining how to change the capacitor on your HVAC unit (something I just recently did – thanks to a YouTube video), every one of us has followed some kind of a guide at some point.
Now imagine having followed that guide without using any visual aids at all. Imagine how confusing those directions would be.
This is where the use of visual aids becomes so important. Just like organized content helps to push your reader straight through a problem from beginning to end, using visuals makes it even easier for them.
That’s exactly why you notice so many screenshots and step-by-step instructions in my blog posts. I would not want to see the difficulty you’d have trying to set up your first website, changing DNS records, and rerouting URLs, without some sort of screenshot or video to help you through it.
Seriously, that just sounds like a nightmare.
Just remember one thing when it comes to using visuals: they don’t have to be A+ quality.
While I do so highly believe in quality in everything related to blogging, you don’t have to be a professional designer to create these. A few free tools, and a minimal amount of practice using them, and your home free.
Intelligently Promoted
If you write the most epic blog post in the world, but nobody sees it, does it really exist?
Does it even matter?
If nobody sees your content, frankly, it doesn’t matter how good it is.
That’s why promoting your content is so crucial.
This point doesn’t really need to be explained too thoroughly, I’m sure. But just know this: promoting your blog post does not require an advanced degree in digital marketing.
It’s really not that hard. With a few easy tools, you can quickly get your blog post out to potentially thousands of eyes, which will continue to drive traffic for you in the future.
The Most Important Thing in Blogging
There are – quite literally – thousands of tools and tips and bits of advice you could use for growing your blog.
Seriously, you could easily spend years trying to sift through all the information and never even have time to start your blog in the first place.
It’s even easier to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information available to you.
That’s why, above all else, I believe you should focus first and foremost on the most important aspect of your blog: creating quality content.
I highly doubt I’ve written a single post on this site that doesn’t mention the importance of quality content somewhere within it.
It’s that important.
If your content isn’t high-quality, useful, and valuable to your audience, there’s no reason to create it.
So, as you’re sifting through the plethora of tools available to you, including this list itself, focus on what will have the biggest impact on the quality of your content, and put all the rest to the side until a later date.
If it seems overwhelming to you to set up an email list, opt-in forms, and lead magnets right from the start of your blog, that’s fine. Skip that for now, and come back to it once you’re settled in and have some content created.
Quality should always be your first goal. Everything else can come later.
Time-Saving Tools for Every Blogger
Time for the meat and potatoes of this post. The whole reason you’re here to begin with.
I’ve tried to break down the tools in this list into several sections, offering a few options for each.
Just remember, as you’re going through this list, not everything here needs to be added to your process right this moment.
As I said earlier, focus on quality first, and you can build upon your repertoire of tools as you grow.
In the meantime, let’s start with the tools you will use from the very beginning of the writing process:
Quora is one of the top question-and-answer sites on the internet, and it’s a treasure trove of content ideas for your blog.
Literally, all you have to do is search for a topic around your blog, and you’ll come up with a long list of questions that actual people are asking.
I tend to believe that if 1 person asks a question, thousands of others are asking that same question. Or some variation of it.
Therefore, if you see a question pop up on Quora, you can use that as inspiration to write a post on that subject knowing that actual users are asking the question.
For instance, since I write a ton about blogging on this site, here’s the first question that comes up when I search just “blog” in Quora:
This question – “How do I drive traffic to my blog for free?” – would be a killer blog post.
Everyone that has a blog, wants to drive traffic, right? Scratch that, needs to drive traffic, right?
And beginning bloggers may not have the budget or expertise to invest in ads.
So they go looking for free methods of driving traffic.
A post like “7 Easy Ways to Drive Blog Traffic For Free” would be a great piece of content.
There you go, in 30 seconds I’ve just come up with a blog post that I already know a ton of my readers are looking for.
It doesn’t get much easier.
Pro Tip: Bookmark the link to the question that inspires your post, then go back and answer the question with content from your post. You can then link back to your website (but do it naturally, don’t spam) and potentially drive traffic back to your blog post in the future.
Remember, these Quora questions don’t expire. So you could drive traffic to your site from a question you answered years earlier. Talk about bonus points 😉
Ubersuggest is a keyword tool owned by the digital marketing legend Neil Patel (fun fact, Neil purchased Answer The Public not long before I wrote this article as well).
Years ago, Ubersuggest was a free tool. Now, it’s transitioned into a freemium model.
That’s fine. We can still get a ton of use out of it.
Like most other keyword tools, Ubersuggest not only offers ideas based around search terms, but you can also look at the data on sites related to yours to find their most popular pages.
This is a great way to find topics within your niche that actually drive traffic.
Let’s say I’m running a personal finance blog, and I want to look at the most popular pages on a similar site: The Penny Hoarder.
This is the initial screen I see when I search the site in Ubersuggest:
As you can see, some results are limited because I’m on the free plan.
That’s fine. We’ll work with what we have.
On the left, I can easily look deeper into the site based on its keywords, backlinks, or – like I mentioned earlier – the top pages on the site.
This is what I come up with:
Limited to 10 results, that sucks. But I can still get a lot out of it.
Now I can select the dropdown next to the Estimated Visits on each post, and get a few keyword ideas for that post:
Again, limited. But let’s keep going.
Using the example page Find Remote Jobs at These 41 Work-From-Home Companies I can quickly and easily come up with a series of post ideas right off the top of my head related to this topic.
I could do a similar post on specific work-from-home companies.
I could do a post about how to succeed in a work-from-home job.
How to get noticed as an effective employee when working from home.
How to set up a home space dedicated to working.
etc.
This way, I can create a large selection of posts on my site dedicated to this one topic, which I know a ton of people are looking for information on.
Furthermore, I can use this broad topic – work from home – and I can search for it in ATP or Socrates and come up with more ideas.
This way, my stack of tools is building upon itself.
And we’re just getting started on the list 😁
While Ubersuggest is highly limited by its daily usage counts, it’s still a great tool to at least come up with broad topics to explore further.
Of course, if it’s in your budget, you could always become a paid member of Ubersuggest and get a ton more use out of it.
The Portent Title Maker is kind of a 2-for-1 deal, and that’s why I love it.
Not only does Portent’s tool give you ideas for blog posts based on a topic that you enter, but it also helps to teach you how to create winning headlines.
Using the same “blogging” example that we’ve been using, here’s what Portent comes up with:
This is a great post idea.
This can become a general post where we explore the benefits of blogging.
This would be a great post to use in a sales funnel that leads up to, say, a course on starting a blog.
Or maybe a guide on how to set up your first blog that includes affiliate links.
Something like that.
But there’s another benefit to Portent’s tool: headline breakdowns.
If I click on a section of this topic, Portent gives me a pop-up that explains why that phrasing was used.
This allows me to learn how to structure blog post titles in the future.
It’s a great way to passively learn how to build better headlines when you’re starting out.
Now, let’s be clear: Portent’s tool isn’t perfect.
Because it works from a general list of pre-determined phrasing and ideas it sometimes gets a little wacky.
Or downright laughable.
Or…
So, no, not every title suggestion from Portent works out. But it’s still a great way to brainstorm ideas.
From my first example: “Why Blogging is More Tempting Than a Cinnabon” I can come up with a series of post ideas.
I can make a list of the benefits of blogging.
I can create a timeline that shows how blogging has grown over the years.
I could even make a post about the downsides of blogging, to show both sides of the equation.
So each suggestion that comes from Portent can quickly build off one another and create a series of posts, rather than just a singular idea.
This is why I like using Portent’s Title Maker.
Although I don’t use it as much as I did when I started, it’s still a handy tool to keep in my back pocket.
I’ve often said that if I could monetize every idea written in my Evernote account over the years, I’d be a billionaire overnight.
Seriously, I think Evernote will be the most-used app on my phone until the day I die.
It’s the best note-taking app I’ve ever used, and it comes in handy in more ways than I could ever fully explain.
Whether I need to brain-dump my ideas, create to-do lists (both personal and work-related), save an article to read later, or even plan out my blog posts, Evernote is my go-to choice.
When it comes to blogging, I use Evernote both to keep track of my general ideas, and for outlining my blog posts.
In fact, every blog post I write starts off in Evernote.
I’ll build the outline, save some links/notes from my research, and jot down ideas all within the app before moving the post into my writing workflow.
Evernote has a ton of features that I don’t even use so who knows, it could expand your workflow in ways that I haven’t even thought of.
Either way, it’s a tool I used long before I began blogging and I’m 100% convinced that if I ever lost access to my account/notes, I’d die.
Kidding.
Seriously though, Evernote is awesome. If you’re not using it, start.
If you prefer another note-taking app, start using it to jot down and organize your ideas as they come to you.
Preferably, try to find something that has both a mobile app and desktop access.
The fact that I can so easily jot down notes on my phone while out and about and have access to them when I’m sitting in front of the computer working is part of the allure of Evernote. At least for me.
Create a separate notebook inside Evernote that’s dedicated to your blog, and try to keep your notes as organized as possible.
When it comes to planning your blog, create a new note to house the outline and research for your post.
Then, when you begin writing in your chosen writing environment (you could write directly in Evernote, but I prefer not to), keep your notes up on the screen.
This makes it easier to reference your ideas and helps to improve your workflow.
Grammarly is one of the most useful writing tools any blogger could utilize.
Great content is important, and Grammarly makes it easy to improve the quality of your writing.
I am by no means a literary expert.
I barely speak English, and it’s my first language.
So writing properly, with proper grammar, punctuation, and the like can be time-consuming.
See what I mean?
That literally was not on purpose.
Without Grammarly, I don’t think my writing would be atrocious, but it certainly wouldn’t have the same quality that it does.
And given that writing is literally my entire livelihood, that’s kind of a big deal.
What makes it even better is that not only is Grammarly free (there’s a paid option if the features would benefit you, but I haven’t needed it so far) but it kind of runs in the background.
I don’t really have to interact with Grammarly at all, it just kind of does its thing and lets me know when there’s an error in my writing. Honestly, it’s a no-brainer to install even if your writing is amazing.
Grammarly is free, runs in the background, and improves your writing.
What do you have to lose?
#2 Dictation/Speech-to-Text
This one is a bit hit or miss depending on your personal style, but dictation – or speech-to-text – can be a great way to improve your writing efficiency.
A Stanford study found that using speech recognition was 3x faster than typing, and results in fewer errors.
Using speech-to-text software can be incredibly powerful for your writing goals.
But, there’s a downside: it’s not for everyone.
Speaking personally, I don’t use dictation for my writing. I can’t.
Or, I shouldn’t say I can’t, but it just doesn’t work out for me.
No matter how many times I try – and I do still attempt it occasionally – I just can’t seem to work faster with dictation than typing manually.
For me, the ideas just seem to flow faster and more fluidly when I type them out.
I don’t know why, that’s just how it works for me.
Although dictation may or may not work out for you, a 3x boost in your writing is definitely worth giving a try.
And you don’t have to buy any equipment to get started.
Most phones have speech-to-text software built into them, and they obviously already have microphones attached, so you have everything you need already.
The next time you go to write a blog post – or when you’re taking notes for your next post – try using speech-to-text in Evernote and see how it works for you.
It may take some practice, and if it doesn’t work out that’s fine, but it’s worth trying.
As I said, I still attempt it occasionally because the potential of that boost to my writing efficiency would be a true game-changer.
Here’s one that may – or may not – be a bit controversial.
Jasper is a writing assistant that works using AI to produce written content.
It’s a powerful tool and was a central part of my writing process when I first started blogging until I found my voice.
In fact, at the time of this writing, I still use the Jasper document editor as my main writing environment. Here’s proof:
Although this blog is entirely hand-written, some of my other blogs have a mix of AI-driven content, and that’s why I use Jasper’s editor even for this website.
A consistent workflow is key, in my opinion.
When you first start writing, it can be difficult to find your voice and become comfortable with putting your thoughts down on (digital) paper.
That’s where Jasper comes in.
Jasper is meant to be a writing assistant.
I emphasize this because the biggest downside to Jasper – and AI writing tools in general – is that sometimes people forget this “assistant” portion of the equation, and they’ll use Jasper or other tools to completely write 100% (or even 80-90%) of their content through AI, then publish it as their own.
I simply don’t like this.
I feel like it’s lying to your readers and, as a blogger, your readers are your customers.
Don’t lie to your customers. Don’t position yourself as an expert or an authority when you’re not.
Okay, I’m going to get off my soapbox now.
Jasper is a great tool for writers. And what makes it even better is that the team behind Jasper has done an amazing job at creating templates, workflows, recipes, documentation, training, and a ton of content to help you get the most out of Jasper.
Again, sometimes they can kind of lean towards that Jasper-writes-it-all-for-you aspect, but there is still a ton of value to be gained from what’s available and included within Jasper.
I also love how engaged the team is with the Jasper community.
If you hop into their Facebook group, you’ll quickly see just how often the developers are posting content, commenting on posts, offering advice, taking ideas under advisement, and just generally being engaged with the community.
Jasper is an amazing tool to use when you’re first starting out – and continues to bring value to me now, even if it’s as simple as re-writing a particular statement for clarity or helping to drill down on a more concise headline.
Just know one thing: using Jasper is a learned skill.
It will take a little practice before you really get the full value out of it but if you put in the effort, it can pay off big time.
Give Jasper a chance with a free trial and get 10,000 free bonus credits when you sign up, more than enough to give you some play time to see if Jasper is right for you.
As a blogger, it’s important to have visually appealing images for your content.
As the quintessential Photoshop alternative, Canva can provide the perfect solution for creating stunning graphics without any design experience.
One of the best features of Canva is its pre-made templates.
Whether you’re designing a Pinterest graphic or a Facebook cover photo, simply choose the appropriate template and customize it with your own text and images.
This saves time and ensures that your graphics are the proper size and dimensions for each platform.
Canva comes included with a huge library of free stock images to use in your designs as well.
Finding high-quality, free images can be difficult, but Canva makes it easy with a huge selection to choose from.
Plus, you’re not limited to their selection. You can easily upload your own photos for even more customization options.
The drag-and-drop interface is user-friendly and allows anyone to create professional designs in minutes.
If you have any doubts, just know that almost every edit on any photo or image you see on this blog is done inside Canva. I’m not a graphic designer and I’ve never used Photoshop, but Canva allows me to create what I need without much effort or experience.
In the age of social media, memes have become an integral part of our online communication.
They can add humor and cultural references to a blog post, making it more relatable and entertaining for readers.
But memes can also be used as a way to communicate complex ideas or arguments in an easily digestible format. By using a popular meme as a visual aid, bloggers can make abstract concepts more concrete and understandable for their audience.
Memes often go viral on social media platforms, and sharing a meme related to your topic can potentially attract new readers to your blog.
The Meme Generator by imgflip is one of the easier ways to create memes on your own.
Working from a ton of different templates and popular memes, the Meme Generator makes it as simple as choosing your template, entering your text, and downloading your meme.
Honestly, it couldn’t get any easier.
Just one word of caution: use memes sparingly.
Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing, and memes are no different.
#3 Royalty-Free Image Sites
I’m going to combine a couple of tools into this section because it’s just easier.
“Royalty-Free” refers to images that can be used without having to pay for them directly. These images are often referred to as stock images. Many times, these stock images are completely free for you to use in something like a blog or a video.
However, it’s important to understand the licenses of each site you use for your royalty-free images.
Some sites allow you to use the images without mentioning the photographer or artist that created them, some require you to give credit to the artist.
Some may limit how and where you can use the images, while others may not have any restrictions at all.
Be sure to fully read and understand the license before using any image in your project.
In addition to understanding licensing agreements, it’s also important to remember that just because an image is labeled as “royalty-free” does not mean it’s free from copyright altogether.
It’s always best practice to only use images that have been labeled as “public domain” or “creative commons,” which typically means they are free from any copyright restrictions and can be used freely by anyone.
To find royalty-free images, there are countless websites and search engines available online. Here are a few that I always keep bookmarked for my image needs:
Envato is one of the few paid products that I feel is worth considering when it comes to creating visuals for your blog.
Envato has everything from stock photos, stock videos, unique fonts, WordPress themes and plugins, royalty-free music, and the list goes on.
And the best part is that with a membership, you have unlimited use of every single asset available on their marketplace.
Envato is worth checking out if you require a lot more than just simple, one-off stock images.
If you’re looking for presentation templates, slideshows, stock videos or music for your videos, or any other creative asset along those lines, Envato may be the way to go.
Marketing and Promotion Tools for Bloggers to Get The Word Out
Medium is an open publishing platform where virtually anybody can publish blog posts, and share stories, ideas, and insights.
Medium is a massive, wildly popular site and can be a key part of gathering traffic for your blog, especially when you’re just starting out.
As a new blogger, one of the biggest challenges is getting people to actually read your content.
Sure, you can promote your blog on social media and hope for the best, but having a platform like Medium that already has a huge audience can make a big difference in boosting traffic to your own blog.
One aspect that sets Medium apart from other publishing platforms is its emphasis on quality content.
In order to be recommended by Medium’s algorithm and featured in popular collections, your articles need to be well-written and engaging. This encourages users to put more effort into their writing, resulting in a higher level of content for readers.
One of the coolest things about Medium is that you can publish the same content from your existing blog onto Medium to help cross-promote your site.
This allows you to take advantage of the popularity and search engine power of Medium to help grow your own blog.
Flipboard is a news/article aggregation site that pulls in articles from all over the internet, across all kinds of different categories, and creates a feed for users based on their interests.
Funny thing, I’ve actually used Flipboard for personal reading and learning for over 10 years.
It was one of those built-in bloat apps on an old cell phone many years ago, and once I started using it, I just never stopped.
Now, it’s consistently one of the most used apps on my phone and I read several articles from the app each day.
But as a blogger, you can use Flipboard yourself to cater to people just like me – and the other 140+ million users.
Flipboard makes it easy for you as a blogger to publish content to their feeds so that your articles will begin to pop up when users show an interest in your chosen blog topic.
It really doesn’t matter what you write about, there’s an interest for it somewhere on Flipboard.
Almost every major blog website can be found somewhere on Flipboard – whether they manually submit to the site or if the articles are aggregated in another way – and if they’re benefiting from it, you can too.
ConvertKit is an email marketing platform that allows you to grow your email list and build an ongoing relationship with your audience.
Although there are many services that offer email autoresponders such as this, I like ConvertKit because it’s geared more toward creators – like us.
Not only is it one of the cheaper options – which can be a huge barrier for those of us just starting out – but it also makes it easy to scale in a way that bloggers and other content creators typically do.
Whether you begin to sell digital products, promote other products, or even create paid newsletters and email campaigns, ConvertKit is built with that in mind.
And this is exactly why, as a blogger and content creator, I’ve used ConvertKit so extensively in my blogs.
Email marketing as a whole can be an intricate and very deep rabbit hole for you to jump down, but it doesn’t have to be when you’re first starting out.
Use ConvertKit to create easy opt-in forms, and quickly and easily write and create email campaigns to begin growing your audience.
As you get more involved, you can always expand your knowledge.
ConvertKit’s own blog can be a valuable resource in this area as well.
Thrive Leads – also included in the bigger Thrive Suite – is a powerful list-building tool to add to your email marketing arsenal.
Thrive Leads offers a ton of value in its package, including a ton of different opt-in forms, pre-made templates to work from, advanced targeting and rules for showing specific opt-ins in specific locations throughout your site, and a ton of marketing-related functions like A/B testing, reporting, and the like.
I’m a big fan of the overall Thrive Suite package, and the Leads plugin is one of my favorites.
And guess what? Thrive Leads even integrates with ConvertKit from above!
So between the 2, you will have all the options and customization features you could ever desire to create an email campaign that builds your blog and your relationship on autopilot.
Especially when you’re just starting out and need to start generating traffic from nothing.
And that’s exactly what Tailwind helps you do.
Although Tailwind is available for both Instagram and Pinterest, I personally use it exclusively for Pinterest so I can’t really speak on its efficiency as an Instagram tool.
Tailwind acts as an automation and scheduling tool for Pinterest, and it makes life a lot easier.
Honestly, with the amount of content that I post to Pinterest, I don’t think I’d ever be able to keep up with it and still create content for my sites if it wasn’t for Tailwind.
With Tailwind’s scheduling features, I can literally plan out pins for each of my blog posts months ahead of when they actually go live.
This allows me to batch my work and do everything at once, rather than having to manually jump in and out of Pinterest and post new pins all day every day.
But scheduling isn’t the only thing that gives Tailwind its value.
One of the most powerful features of Tailwind is what they call Communities.
In previous years this feature was called Tribes, but I like the name Communities better.
It just sounds more collaborative, which is the point of the feature.
Communities allow you join a collection of like-minded Pinterest content creators to share and expand your – and their – reach by sharing each others best pins.
If you’ve ever been involved in Pinterest marketing and learned about or used Group boards, Communities is kind of like a private version of that.
Instead of posting to a public group altogether, you’re still sharing others’ pins on your own Pinterest boards, but you find each other using a private group such as this.
Communities are easily the fastest and most efficient way for you to not only grow your own Pinterest following – and therefore blog traffic – but also to find and share amazing, high-value content from other creators to add to your own boards.
This, in turn, makes your boards more popular and helps to further build your following – and, again, blog traffic – on Pinterest.
When used correctly, the Communities feature is easily worth the price of Tailwind by itself.
I love Communities, can you tell?
Just one word of caution: Communities are meant to be a give-and-take relationship.
If you want others to share your content, you have to be willing to share others’ content.
Each Community you join will have its own guidelines – which are usually pretty simple and straightforward – for successfully contributing to the community, but you should also set your own guidelines.
For me, I try to keep a solid ratio of 3:1 for every piece of content I submit to Communities.
This means for every 1 piece of my own content I submit, I try to find and share 3 pieces of other people’s content to share to my audience.
This forces me to continue to work in the best interest of the community as a whole, which is the only way this feature can continue to work.
If the community becomes filled with everyone just sharing their own content, and never sharing others, then the community serves no purpose.
Communities are my favorite “hack” for growing on Pinterest, but always keep in mind the collaboration and willingness to share that is required for it to work.
It’s give-and-take, so give more than you take.
Now It’s Your Turn
As a blogger, the tools you use can either make you or break you.
You can get bogged down in the literal thousands of available options, or you can stick to a select few that work best for your process.
So now I want to hear from you: Are there any tools essential to you that aren’t on this list? If so, share them with other readers.
And what about the tools listed here? Have you used any of them? What are your opinions?
I look forward to hearing your insights in the comments!
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