20+ best tools & apps for beginner bloggers

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Being a new blogger can be a tough job but not if you have the right tools guiding you every step of the way. However, finding the right tool can be tricky. That’s why we made things easier by building this comprehensive list of well-rated blogging tools. All these tools are amazing, although some of them may not be a perfect fit for your needs. So, read through our list and pick yours!

Are you an aspiring vlogger or photographer? check out our well-rated list of cameras for your next project.

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Disclosure: Some links in this article may be affiliate links, which means that if you purchase through them, we receive a small commission. This will never cost you extra and in some cases, you receive a special discount. We appreciate your support!

Tailwind

^{Rrecommended by Helga Dosa from ShegoWandering}

Tailwind is an online blogging tool that every beginner should use. It’s been created to help content creators, brands, and businesses in their online marketing strategy. With Tailwind, you can schedule ahead of time your posts for Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as well.

If you’re focusing the majority of your blog traffic on Pinterest, you should start using Tailwind for many reasons!

• With Tailwind, you can schedule ahead hundreds of pins, shuffle them, mix them up, and spread them out.
• You can optimize your schedule by setting up how many pins and what time to pin a day.
• With Tailwind, you save a lot of time, and you have a great tool to share more than you’d be able to do manually.
• Tailwind also helps you grow site visibility! Another reason to use Tailwind as a blogger!
• Tailwind works the same way with Instagram. Tailwind might actually become the best Instagram scheduler tool on the market.

Prop Tip: For the best results, you should join Pinterest group boards in your field, so you have the possibility to share your pins in more places.

Canva

^{Recommended by Debbie Fettback from WorldAdventurists.com}

Canva is one of the most popular online tools used by bloggers in the market today. The app has a really impressive suite of graphic design tools, that you can run using your browser, or on Android or iOS. With the simple drag-and-drop interface, it is incredibly simple for beginner bloggers to use, even they do not have graphic design experience.

• Canva enables you to create engaging content quickly and easily that will attract your targeted prospects.
• It gives you access to a ton of ready-made templates that will help you to create eye-catching imagery.
• With the Canva, you can create a variety of products, from newsletters and presentations to social media posts on the go. 
• Canva offers an impressive library of templates that includes over 1 million photos, graphics, fonts, stock photos, video, and audio content, as well as the ability to use your own images.
• Producing so much content can be a huge challenge and Canva really makes it easy to produce gorgeous imagery.

Canva is a freemium graphic design tool for bloggers and others alike, but if you want access to the special features, you will have to pay a fee.

Keysearch

^{Recommended by Amélie Gagné from Mostly Amelie}

There are several blogging tools to help beginners develop the perfect SEO strategy for their site. Keysearch, as its name suggests, is a search engine for keywords, but also SERP and competitor research, as well as analysis, keyword rank verification, backlink analysis, and more. It’s affordable and extremely helpful.

Keysearch should be one of the first steps of the content creation process and will help you uncover easy-to-rank keywords while giving you all the tools you need to spy on your competition and track your SEO efforts.

So here are a few reasons why you should get Keysearch now if you are a blogger:

• Starting at around $17 per month, Keysearch gives you 200 research and analysis credits per day.
• Keysearch helps you analyze the competition and find keywords that are easy to rank for.
• The tool provides dozens of features including keyword research, backlink analysis, keyword difficulty checker and SERP, keyword ranking tracking, API access, and white-label report, and much more.
• Keysearch can also perform YouTube keyword research as well.
• Also, Keysearch goes beyond its platform as they offer a Chrome and Firefox extension.

At the present time, Keysearch is not available as a phone app, but it is so helpful even without it. Keysearch isn’t just a cheaper version of Ahrefs, it has everything you need for your blog.

Google Analytics

^{Recommended by Kieren from Got My Backpack}

Google Analytics is one of the industry’s standard blogging tools in which professional bloggers and beginners can monitor how many people are visiting their blog, which pages they are visiting, and tons of other useful metrics. Once you’ve placed the tracking code on your blog, the Google Analytics tool will immediately start providing you with valuable information.

Here are some of the top things bloggers can do with Google Analytics tool:

• See how much traffic your site has had in the last day/week/month and compare it to the previous period.
• See the top landing pages on your site so you know which types of content are driving traffic.
• Compare the different sources of traffic. This will help you know whether users are coming from search engines, social media, email, etc.
• See how long visitors are spending on your site. This is an important metric for SEO.
• Find out which countries your visitors are from. This is important if you’re serving ads on your site as ad revenue is higher for US and UK traffic.

Google Photos

^{Recommended by Vrushali from Couple of Journeys}

Google Photos is a place where you can neatly store all your photos and videos. This app by Google lets you upload photos and videos to it from various devices. It is an excellent app for creating a safe backup of all your photos and relieves you of the stress of accidentally losing photos stored on hard drives, phones, and memory cards. Moreover, you can effortlessly search for photos uploaded on Google Photos based on date, location, names, and more! 

What can beginner bloggers do with Google Photos? 

• Google Photos allows you to automatically back up your photos from your phone gallery whenever connected to wi-fi or mobile data (if you allow it to). This lets you clear photos from your phone, thereby freeing up a lot of internal storage.
• Once uploaded, Google Photos automatically stores the photos neatly in chronological order. This makes searching for photos based on date, month, and year possible. 
• You can also search for photos based on people as Google Photos automatically detects and groups together photos with the same faces. You can help Google Photos further by naming all the people in the photos so that you can also search for photos by name. 
• Google Photos also groups together photos based on the geo-tag in it. This makes it particularly helpful for travel bloggers who may need to look for photos from a particular location while writing articles. 
• You can also search for photos using generic terms such as beaches, trees, art, coffee, etc., to quickly find relevant photos from your collection. 

Adobe Lightroom

^{Recommended by Stephanie from Bey of Travel}

To edit photos on the go, look no further than the powerful Adobe Lightroom for Mobile tool. It is a lightweight application that allows beginner bloggers to brighten, sharpen, resize and add filters, also known as presets, to images. By using presets in Lightroom App, editing is a breeze. The set tone, color, and temperature in each photograph can be retained, reused in future images, which is a time-saver in every busy blogger’s life.

Here are some 5 reasons to use the Adobe Lightroom App on mobile,

• Lightroom is a powerful editing app. As compared to the desktop version, the LR mobile app is FREE to use, and still provides the same versatility. The desktop version of Lightroom starts at $9.99 per month
• Using Lightroom, it is easy to post images on various social media channels with ease. From Instagram to Twitter, images can be edited quickly and on the go.
• Lightroom can be useful in resizing photos (crop option) for uploading on other platforms such as blogs.
• Lightroom’s ‘healing’ option allows the user to edit/remove unwanted objects from images (premium feature).
• As a beginner blogger, selling Lightroom presets can be an added source of income, so knowing the app and its use comes in handy.

Mojo

_{Recommended by Rachel from Children of Wanderlust}

Mojo is a graphic design tool that has been created specifically for use with Instagram. It allows bloggers and users to dramatically change the appearance and function of slides within Instagram, making it particularly useful when composing stories. It is possible to add multiple photos to a single slide in a carousel format and animate slides, as well as editing colors and additional text to further decorate them.

Instagram stories are a great way to boost engagement and to drive traffic to your latest blog posts, so here are some great Mojo features that can help you reach that:

• With Mojo you can create eye-catching designs for these story slides
• You can display more of your photos in one go, which can really help with boosting the profile of any linked online content.
• It should be a must-have for any aspiring blogger who is also running a linked Instagram account. As a travel blogger, the app is one of our essential apps for travel.
• Mojo’s free app includes many great and easy-to-use templates that are sufficient for most beginners.

For additional functionality and templates, a pro version of the app is also available, on a subscription basis of ≈$42 per year.

LastPass

^{Recommended by Anisa from Norfolk Local Guide}

So many apps and websites require a password to use, it can be impossible to manage. Forget the days of trying to memorize tons of passwords, LastPass will take care of that. It’s a password manager that works on both mobile devices and desktop (there is a browser extension). 

Some of the features include:

• Space to store important digital documents
• Automatically filling in information to make online shopping easier
• Generating strong passwords
• Notifying you if there are data breaches affecting your personal information
• Letting you share passwords securely
• Allowing you to import password data from other managers simply.

Evernote

^{Recommended by Tanya Bindra from My Right Sock}

As content creators, bloggers are ideating pretty much all the time. Evernote is one of the greatest tools to capture those brilliant ideas that inevitably strike at 3 am, or find a way to sneak into your mind when you may not have a pen and paper handy.

• Users can ‘digitize’ their thoughts by capturing them in the form of text, voice notes, files, and photos all in one place.
• Evernote also has a web version that can be synced to your mobile device. This means all your notes are available on desktop, updated in real-time.
• You can clip full articles online and organize them in notebooks and by tags.
• Your information is saved in a secure cloud-based environment, so you can access your notes from any device by simply logging into your account.

Although the free version works just as well, Evernote also has a premium model that allows syncing across unlimited devices, besides a host of other cool features like attaching PDFs and sharing handwritten notes.

Instagram

^{Recommended by Ilse from Digital Travel Couple}

One of the most used apps worldwide at this moment is Instagram. Every month more than 1 billion people use Instagram, for an average of 30 minutes per day. The app doesn’t need an introduction and opinions about whether the authenticity and value of the app are divided. Some people love it, some people hate it. And some people have a love-hate relationship with Instagram.

All the features that Instagram offers create huge opportunities for beginner and professional bloggers to share, market, and sell their work.

• With a feed post, you can show your daily life, new recipes, your travel pictures, or your new workout routine.
• Via Instagram stories, you can easily put a swipe-up link to a blog post (if you have more than 10K followers), which makes it easy to redirect to your blog which generates more traffic.
• If you sell products as a blogger, Instagram offers amazing new shopping and e-commerce features which makes it easier than ever to sell products directly within the app. 

Google Maps

^{Recommended by Roxy from Wild About BC}

Google Maps is one of the best tools for travel bloggers. Whether you are looking for directions to yourdestination, searching for places to eat, or using it to help write blog posts by providing data on timeand distance between places, this is a must-have. This is a web mapping service that’s main function

is to give you directions but has lots more use cases, especially for travel bloggers.

Here are 5 awesome things you can do with Google Maps:

• You can mark places as “Want to go” which means you can easily keep a list of landmarks you plan on writing about.
• If you are writing a road trip itinerary you can use Google Maps to give the time and distance between places.
• Search for the best restaurants, cafes, and bars while on the go and see the reviews to make sure you are picking the best.
• Turn on satellite mode and search for places that look cool that may not be mentioned in any guide. This is particularly useful when searching for beautiful-looking beaches.
• Download maps for certain areas to use offline. Useful if you are heading somewhere remote with no phone signal or in a foreign country with no sim card.

Asana 

^{Recommended by Francesca Brooking from Little Lost Travel}

Whether it’s just you running the show or you’ve employed someone to help you out, it’s important to stay organized when running a blog. Asana can help. This freemium project management app is accessible on your phone and computer. It helps you track tasks both for you and your team if you have one, makes deadlines a breeze, and keeps everything in one place so nothing gets lost in email threads. 

• Asana allows you to create projects and add tasks to them. For example, you can create a blog content calendar, add blog post ideas as individual tasks and include useful links, notes, files, deadlines, or even assign members of your team to it.
• You can also make tasks dependent on each other to create a seamless workflow.
• Another key feature is the Timeline which allows you to visualize how various parts of the project fit together.
• Asana aims to compliment your work style by including multiple visual options for you to view your tasks and projects.
• You can set tasks to view as a to-do list, Kanban board, or calendar. The calendar view is particularly useful as you can keep track of how much work you have and spot any conflicts. 
• Another useful feature is Portfolios which helps you monitor all your initiatives in one place. This is especially handy if you’re working on multiple client projects at the same time. 

Asana has a free plan but bear in mind you will have limited access to features. Still, it’s not an Editor’s Choice app for nothing!

Google drive

^{Recommended by Sean Lau from Livingoutlau}

Google drive is undeniably one of the best weapons in a blogger’s arsenal. For anyone unfamiliar with such a useful tool, Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization device developed by Google. What that means is that the user can upload a photo, video, literally anything onto Google drive, and be able to access it across multiple different devices.

• Google Drive becomes extremely useful when you have to share content across multiple platforms.
• Google Drive is extremely useful for bloggers doing collaborations with brands as it allows content to be shared between parties easily and quickly.
• The platform offers free storage for photos, videos, documents, and more.
• It allows you and others to collaborate on the same project at the same time.

Google Docs

^{Recommended by Constance from The Adventures of Panda Bear} 

Google Docs is one of the best apps for every blogger. The Docs app is part of Google’s suite of productivity apps including Mail for email, Slides for presentation decks, Sheets for spreadsheets, and Drive to save all of the aforementioned files. Docs is the perfect tool for bloggers because it makes travel bloggers’ lives so much easier. It is a great way to make all of your content accessible at all times from all devices even while you’re away or abroad. 

Similar to Microsoft Word, Google Docs is the typical desktop version of Microsoft Word except all of your data is stored in the cloud so it is accessible from any and all of your devices including your phone.

Here are 5 Important things you can do with docs:

1. Use it to plan your upcoming trip itinerary 
2. Collaborate on the itinerary and share the plan with friend and family
3. Add comments and notes when collaborating
4. Draft blog posts while traveling and on-the-go
5. Version history keeps any edits safe

^{Recommended by Vipin Gaur from Misfitwanderers}

Do you want people to stay longer and read what a masterpiece you wrote? Follow this simple advice: increase the readability and stop pissing them off with your English. Two things that are absolute turn-offs to most readers are bad structuring and grammar. You could have the most precious message for the world, but if you can’t present it coherently, forget it.. you’ll never hook a reader or build an audience.

Readability matters. It decreases your website’s bounce rate, hooks the reader to read full, and ultimately sends a good signal to search engine giants like Google. The result? Improved SEO and a happy audience.

Hemingway Editor understands this problem and helps you increase the readability of your writings. It uses The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level to do so. Generally, a Grade 7 level of readability is what you need for web content.

Moreover, to avoid grammatical mistakes, you can use Grammarly along with Hemingway Editor. Remember the critical difference: Grammarly focuses on grammar while Hemingway Editor is used to structure the sentence components and increase the readability.

Here are the five essential things Hemingway Editor can do for you:

1. Decrease the bounce rate
2. Increase the readability
3. Improve the search engine optimization
4. Increase the clarity of your content/message
5. Keep users engaged

You can use Hemingway Editor either on the web or on a Mac or Windows computer. The desktop version doesn’t require the internet to work. It also has integrations with WordPress and Medium, so you can easily publish your post.

Snapseed

^{Recommended by Athul Menon from Our Backpack Tales}

Snapseed is a free photo editing app by Google. It is one of the best photo editing tools for bloggers since it’s extremely user-friendly and has a lot of options to touch up your photos. Snapseed is one of the first editing apps that we tried for documenting our trip to Pondicherry years back.

Here are a few amazing things you cand do with Snapseed:

• You can edit both JPG and RAW files in the app and the edited pictures also retain good photo quality.
• It has all the basic editing options like brightness, contrast, saturation, etc. along with some really good presets.
• There are more than 10 photo presets which can be used to edit pictures in one click.
• Another main feature of Snapseed is that it offers a layer function which can be used to change the edits which are done in previous steps.
• We can select each change made using different tools and make changes using this. Snapseed also offers text and frame adding options.
• It also allows you to remove any unnecessary parts of a picture with its healing feature.

Facebook’s Business Suite

^{Recommended by Elina Michaelidou from Empnefsys & Travel}

Facebook’s Business Suite is a must-use tool if you want to easily manage your Facebook pages and Instagram business connected accounts. As a blogger, you will find the Business Suite extremely helpful as it allows you to manage your social media pages easily and quickly.

Here are the important things you can do with Facebook’s Business Suite:

• Create and schedule posts to both Instagram and Facebook.
• With Facebook’s Business Suite, you can check out your overall account performance and get insights into individual posts as well as create and manage ads.
• It also allows you to read and manage your messages and comments from any post across Facebook and Instagram. You can mark your messages as “Done” or “Spam” and reply to all messages and comments. In this way, you can save time from accessing these through the individual social media apps.
• This tool is great if you manage multiple Facebook pages and Instagram business accounts.
• You can get an overview of your activity across both Facebook and Instagram side by side so that you really know what is going on.

Notes app 

^{Recommended by Jyoti Baid from Story At Every Corner}

The Notes app on iOS and macOS is the best app for taking notes on the go whether it’s for planning a trip, jotting down awesome tips on “free walking tours”, chatting with locals, or any time during travels. It’s a pre-installed app on all Apple devices so there’s no need to download or install, just open and start using it. 

The app is great for notes, scribbles, photos etc. All your notes automatically synch through iCloud so you instantly have it on all devices, as long as there is internet access. The app and iCloud are only available on the Apple ecosystem. But, given the simplicity of the app, it should be easy to transfer to other devices through any of the sharing mechanisms. 

• The Notes app is lightweight, easy to use, and without frills. 
• Notes app consumes very little battery life so it’s perfect on the go or at home. 
• Take quick notes when you’re on the go so you’ll always remember what you saw and learned on your travels. 

Dropbox

^{Recommended by Kerrie & Woody from Just Go Travelling}

Dropbox is one of the tools that let’s you store all your files safely over a cloud network. This means it will not take up any storage on your device. This is a perfect solution for bloggers as more often than not, our devices will be filled up with photos and videos. With cameras and technology getting even better, with the likes of HD and 4K, this means files will be even larger so more space will be needed on your device.

Some of the main features of the Dropbox app include:

• File and version recovery: If you delete a file by accident or wish to get it back, this is easily done. Old file versions are stored within the cloud
• Smart Sync: Easily access your files from any device such as your phone, tablet or laptop
• Protection & Privacy: Multi-layered protection and the option to lock files ensures optimum security
• Offline file access: You can make certain files accessible offline so you don’t have to have an internet connection to access them

Whether you are on the go or at home, Dropbox is an essential tool for all bloggers as it gives them the freedom to take notes and store files safely anywhere, at any time.

Halide Mark II

^{Recommended by Jiayi from The Diary Of A Nomad}

One important aspect of blogging is pairing your words with captivating photos that will engage readers even more. While there’s plenty of great photography gear for blogging out there, such as some of these awesome Sony A6400 camera lenses, there are also other ways to get great pictures if you’re limited to your smartphone.

Halide Mark II is an app that essentially turns your phone into a high-quality camera. Packed with professional tools, this app allows bloggers to make use of features that their regular phone cameras aren’t equipped with, and consequently, take their phone shots to the next level.

What you can do with this app that you can’t do with your regular phone camera:

• Shoot in RAW mode, which leads to higher image quality and more accurate colors. 
• Shoot in manual mode, meaning you’ll have better creative control over your shots.
• Adjust the ISO so that you can control the brightness and noise levels in your shots (this comes especially handy when shooting a beautiful sunset, for example).
• Adjust white balance as you’re shooting to get rid of ugly yellow tones and to avoid having to fix it in post-processing.
• Focus manually with the Focus Assist feature so that you can have better control of what’s in focus in your shots.

Trello

^{Recommended by Derek and Mike from Robe Trotting}

One of the best tools for new bloggers is the project management solution, Trello. Whether you’re a solo operation or working with a team of others – Trello helps to visually move projects through stages of completion. It’s incredibly handy for teams to have a full view of projects and progress.

Here is what can you do with Trello:

• Create, label, and track task cards and move them across project boards to visually collaborate and monitor projects
• Automate repeated tasks for ease of planning and to stay organized around repeated tasks
• Add detail to your task cards with a customized checklist to better track progress on every level
• Collaborate with others on projects easily and instantaneously update them on project progress 

The main functions of Trello are available for the free version of its apps, although there are two paid versions to consider as you grow or expand your team and collaborators.

I hope you found this list of tools helpful! Also feel free to leave a comment if you have any comments and questions. Cheers!

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