5 Must Have Blogger Tools (Apps, Plugins, and More!)

When I first started blogging, I had no idea what a plugin was. I didn’t have any apps on my Chrome toolbar and my phone only had one photo-related app. Luckily, I’ve learned a lot along the way and I’ve found some amazing free and “fremium” apps, plugins, and tools that are definitely worth downloading.

These are a few of the tools that have made my blogging life easier:

1. Askimet– If you have a WordPress site, download this immediately! It’s basically the best spam protection ever and most of the features are free. It means you won’t get a million spam comments and spam trackbacks. You can pretty much just download it and enjoy the hands-off protection.
2. Canva– I’m not a designer but Canva makes me feel like one. They have tons of text and layout options so it makes it easy to design a flyer, cover photo, or banner. They also have a huge library of stock photos for $1 each. I almost don’t want to tell people about it because then they’ll know my secret but luckily I love you all, so I’m sharing.
3. Grammarly– I recently downloaded this Chrome extension and I love it. It’s like spell-check on steroids. It highlights words or phrases that might be spelled wrong or have a grammatical error and steer you in the right direction. It sounds simple, but as someone that tends to go comma-crazy, it’s been super useful!
4. MailMunch– I recently started using MailChimp for emails (are you on our list yet??) and MailMunch makes things easy. When someone adds their email address to our subscription box, the list automatically updates in Mailchimp. I used to have to download a CSV file of email addresses and upload them to MailChimp, but now it’s super simple!
5. Google Analytics– I can’t not mention Google analytics. There are so many reasons you should have it! The reporting is so useful to see where people are going on your site, where they’re dropping off, what channels they’re coming from, etc. It’s also just a great tool to know how to use so if you want to work in a marketing or digital job, you can get familiar with the lingo!

These are just a few of my favorites, but I’ll share more if these are helpful!

What are your favorite blog tools?