Top 21 Blogging Tools Shared by Experts & Tested by Us
Hammer. Wrench. Screwdriver.
Those are the first things that come to my mind when I hear the word “tool.”
And just as the hammer, wrench, and screwdriver are tools we all carry around to optimize our desks, walls, homes, etc.—having the right tool in digital marketing is necessary too to optimize your blog posts and grow your traffic.
Having the right tool for your blog posts is simply like hiring a great team member.
Why?
Because finding the right one means you’re going to save a lot of time and make more money.
It means you’re going to grow faster and work less.
That’s why I decided to reach out to well-known experts in digital marketing and asked them what their best blogging tools are.
In this article, I’ll show you:
- A curated list of 21 blogging tools recommended by top digital marketing experts and tested by us.
- A brief description of each tool so you can see how they can help you grow traffic.
- And how every single tool can save you time and facilitate your traffic growth.
Let’s hear what each expert had to say and how much growth you’ve been missing out on by not optimizing with these blogging tools...
Blogging Tool #1: Coschedule Headline Analyzer
What Is It?
CoSchedule Headline Analyzer gives your headline a rating based on its SEO value. With this tool, you’ll always know if your headline is too long or not empathetic or emotional enough. And best of all, it’s free!
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
Your blog post titles are the most important part of your content. Without a good headline, your content won’t go far, no matter how good it is.
CoSchedule Headline Analyzer gives your headline a grade based on conciseness and types of words used.
And it’ll also help you use the highest converting words or phrases in blog post titles.Like for example, “How to get” and “How to make” were listed as 2 of the top 10 B2B headline phrases analyzed by Buzzsumo.
Blogging Tool #2: BuzzSumo
What Is It?
How do you find experts in a chosen field?
BuzzSumo narrows down the best influencers based on their social media shares. These are the people you may want to invite to contribute to your next guest post.
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
Guest posts increase your site’s visibility with little effort on your part. You could even end up with more subscribers by featuring an occasional guest post on your blog.
Blogging Tool #3: Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer
What Is It?
The Advanced Marketing Institute headline analyzer helps you create better blog post titles.
It analyzes your subject lines and gives you an overview of the Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) score.
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
Your blog post titles must convey emotional value to catch your reader's eyes.
This tool checks your headline for its Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) and scores it on a 100-point scale.
Most professional copywriters aim for a score of 40% or higher.
But this tool definitely helps you appeal to emotion in your headlines or blog post titles.
Blogging Tool #4: ActiveCampaign
What Is It?
ActiveCampaign is a cloud software platform that offers software for customer experience automation which combines email marketing, marketing automation, sales automation, and CRM features.
We use ActiveCampaign to send our newsletters and email campaigns.
And while AutoGrow can help you with all your email marketing needs (including creating newsletters and setting them up for you), ActiveCampaign is another good companion tool.
It manages leads, automates tasks, and writes better emails and newsletters to your email subscribers.
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
With ActiveCampaign, you can sharpen your newsletters and email marketing. That’s a great way to nab new leads and better engage with your audience.
And if you’re looking to try it for the first time, here’s our tutorial for sending & A/B testing your first newsletter with ActiveCampaign.
Blogging Tool #5: Hemingway App
What Is It?
Being wordy may be impressive to some, but at AutoGrow, we prefer a simple, conversational blogging style.
Learn to simplify and sharpen your writing with the Hemingway App, which rates your writing based on a grade school reading level. It also tells you which sentences to rework.
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
Simple, clear content appeals to the most customers.
The easier it is for people to read your content, the better experience they’ll have. They might even be more inclined to subscribe.
Blogging Tool #6: Grammarly
What Is It?
Good content starts with good grammar, and good grammar starts with Grammarly.
Run your content through this free-to-use site before publishing to see which grammar errors you made. Grammarly even finds misused and misspelled words.
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
If you want to be a trusted source in marketing, you need copy that’s free of spelling and grammar errors.
Otherwise, customers will focus more on the mistakes than the message.
Grammarly lets you be sure your posts pack a grammatically perfect punch.
Blogging Tool #7: MarketingSherpa
What Is It?
To be an authoritative source, you need stats and research to back you up.
Find that information more easily with MarketingSherpa.
This tool compiles relevant research and case studies for you to cherry pick.
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
Case studies and stats make your content richer.
Especially if you go after a case study blog post type, it may also get you more shares, which can introduce you to brand new leads.
In fact, case studies can actually increase sales by 185%.
We often use this type of blog post at AutoGrow.
And according to Content Marketing Institute, 77% of U.K. marketers use case studies as a content marketing tactic.
Blogging Tool #8: Unsplash
What Is It?
Unsplash is a website dedicated to sharing stock photography.
You can download their high resolution images for free and add them to your blog posts or website in general.
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
Your blog post template won’t drive enough traffic to your website if it doesn’t contain images.
You see, in order to make your blog posts or articles eye-catching and visually attractive, you must add pictures, images, videos, or screenshots showing an example you’re referencing.
Adding a customized header image at the top of your article with the title of your blog post is also a great way to add value.
This will make the reading experience for your blog visitors more pleasant.
Blogging Tool #9: Jing
What Is It?
For providing visual references (like, let’s say I want to point to something on the screen with a note), I recommend Jing for screen capture.
It’s free to use and super user-friendly.
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
Your blog posts need to have images in order to make the reading experience more attractive.
For instance, one best practice I recommend is to add as many images as possible so your reader’s eye doesn’t get bored of only reading text.
At AutoGrow, we always try to add as many screenshots as possible in every article I write to make the reading experience more pleasant and entertaining.
That’s especially true for tutorials where I point out everything step by step.
Blogging Tool #10: Google Docs
What Is It?
This is probably the easiest tool to use to write your blog posts and it’s free.
Google Docs is a text processor included for free within Google Drive.
This service also includes Google Sheets and Google Slides, a spreadsheet and presentation program respectively.
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
Well, just like to start writing a letter to someone you need a piece of paper and a pen, for writing a blog post you need a word processor.
A Google doc is your virtual piece of paper where you’ll draft your full article.
Blogging Tool #11: Google Trends
What Is It?
Google Trends is a website by Google that analyzes the popularity of top search queries in Google Search and shows you the most searched keywords during a specific time period.
It analyzes keywords across various regions and languages.
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
Use tools like Google Keyword Planner and Google’s search keyword tool through AdWords to generate keywords that attract the right leads and to see which keywords are popular.
Because if you get the keywords right, it’s a lot easier to attract and keep that high-quality traffic. Not only that, but you’ll get the right kind of traffic.
And if you’re concerned about price, Google Trends is free to use.
Blogging Tool #12: G Suite
What Is It?
G Suite is a no-code application development solution that enables all users to build mobile, tablet, and web apps without coding.
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
G Suite lets you have the ability to share spreadsheets and documents, create video conferences with Hangouts, and use instant messaging.
Blogging Tool #13: WordPress
What Is It?
WordPress is a popular website and blog builder.
In fact, 38% of the web is built on this platform.
And more bloggers, small businesses, and Fortune 500 companies are using WordPress every day (including us).
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
Some people prefer writing their blog posts directly on WordPress to skip the copy/pasting from google Docs.
Blogging Tool #14: Google Sheets
What Is It?
Google Sheets is a spreadsheet program included for free in the Google Drive service.
It lets you organize any information that you can add into spreadsheets, columns, rows, or anything else.
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
Google Sheets lets you organize and plan your content.
For instance, we use it all the time at AutoGrow to plan every month’s content.
See how useful it is for us to break down all the topics?
Blogging Tool #15: Wordlift
What Is It?
Wordlift is a WordPress tool designed to analyze your articles and transform text into valuable content.
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
This tool helps improve your audience engagement and increase the organic traffic to your site.
For example, to write better headlines to boost traffic or to promote your content, you must provide your audience with engaging and valuable content.
And for that, this tool really helps you achieve our blogging goals.
And this is something I actually teach in my 6-Figure Sales Funnel Training that you can order from our Marketplace.
Blogging Tool #16: SEMrush
What Is It?
SEMrush is a SaaS company that sells marketing analytics software subscriptions that lets you get insights into your competitors’ strategies in display advertising, organic and paid search, and link building.
And they have over 6,000,000 users.
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
SEMRush has a feature that lets you look at your competitors and the keywords that are driving traffic to their blogs.
And with that information, you can decide if you want to create content that targets those search terms.
Blogging Tool #17: Ahrefs
What Is It?
Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO toolset to optimize your website, analyze your competitors, study what your customers are searching for, learn from your industry’s top performing content, and track your ranking progress
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
This toolset can help you with backlinks and SEO analysis.
Blogging Tool #18: Trello
What Is It?
Trello is a project management tool that keeps everyone on task, even on multiple projects.
It lets you create boards, assign tasks via cards, and then move the task once it’s done. It’s like a productivity assembly line.
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
Trello keeps your content ideas organized and lets you work with your team more easily.
Its system of cards and columns is easy-to-use and great for content management.
Blogging Tool #19: AutoGrow.co
What Is It?
AutoGrow is like your project management software but with proven pros already inside and ready to work.
You only submit unlimited requests through our web app for digital marketing tasks you want us to get done for you.
Any tasks—emails, landing pages, funnels, graphics, ads, newsletters—anything!
Then it's done for you.
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
Well, AutoGrow actually takes care of all your blog post design and optimization, newsletter copy and automation, and pretty much any other request you may have.
Simply log in to the AutoGrow Web App, create the digital marketing tasks you want us to work on, and let us handle the work for ya.
Blogging Tool #20: Google Keyword Planner
What Is It?
Google Keyword Planner is a free Google Ads tool that suggests keyword ideas and traffic estimates to help you build a Search Network campaign.
It also helps you search for relevant keywords and ad groups ideas for any topic.
This is a free tool for new or experienced advertisers and writers.
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
Relevancy is crucial in keyword selection. You can use Keyword Planner to search for keywords, see how they might perform, and to choose competitive bids and budgets to use with your campaigns for free.
And Google Keyword Planner lets you see which keywords in your niche are trending for new or existing campaigns.
You can search for those keywords based on terms relevant to your product or service, website, or landing page.
It also gives you historical stats and traffic forecasts.
With this tool, you can easily search for your target keywords.
And best of all, it doesn’t cost you a dime.
Casa Kids, a custom-built furniture for children saw a traffic rise by 30% within a few months of using Google Ads.
Blogging Tool #21: Sumo
What Is It?
Sumo is a suite of tools for automated site growth.
The 4 tools they offer are:
- The Smart Bar for email collection that can be used as a CTA or placed at the bottom or top of the page window.
- Share Buttons for social sharing.
- Welcome Mat for email collection that can be added as a video, CTA, embedded on an article, or on a landing page.
- List Builder for email collection that can be added as a click trigger or a pop-up.
Sumo offers a free plan and a paid option with unlimited features but doesn’t offer a free trial.
How Can It Make My Blog Posts Better?
Noah Kagan, the founder of OkDork.com, a business and marketing resource that offers website traffic tools that can be used without any coding experience, says:
“It’s helped me grow my mailing list while I’m eating tacos at lunch. CARNITAS! Yeah, you automatically get more email signups everyday. Setting up an autoresponder to request demos = gold.”
And another success story worth sharing is this one.
Tony Robbins wanted to break the 1,000,000 monthly site visitors mark.
And for that, he used Welcome Mat, Sumo Pro, and other apps from Sumo.
The Welcome Mat feature, in particular, was helpful for Robbins.
He didn’t have to make any tweaks to his homepage, but he still secured preorders and contact information from leads.
In all, Robbins had a 15% jump in leads and broke the 1,000,000 monthly site visitor mark.
Experts Say These Are the Top Blogging Tools to Write Better Blog Posts…
Ready to see what these experts have to say?
Tom Rankin of WordCandy
“We really value two tools, pretty much exclusively. Front's email app because it helps us collaborate on client projects as a team, bringing in who we need to for each task, and G Suite. When we're not writing directly within WordPress, we're using Google Docs to provide content and run the business. Google Sheets also powers almost our entire internal systems.”
Jason Barnard
“My top tools will be Wordlift and SEMrush writing assistant. Google launched their mantra "Things not strings" back in 2012. 8 years on and that approach is now a reality.
Wordlift focuses on "things". It identifies entities and encourages me to think about the content in terms of entities. Then the software takes it several steps further by adding the schema markup to disambiguate the entities and create a clear semantic context in a language Google can easily digest and understand.
At this stage, Wordlift has made it super easy for Google to understand what I am talking about and in what context... making it MUCH easier for Google to match my page to the intent of the user's search query.
But Google still uses strings and they remain super important for humans.
SEMrush SEO writing assistant focuses more on the "strings". It analyses the current ranking pages for the string and extracts the related words those pages use. That allows me to tweak my vocabulary in the context of the current search result landscape and expand the keyword reach of the blog post. Further, thinking in terms of entities can sometimes make my writing a little formal and unattractive for humans. The writing assistant shows me when my style becomes too formal or difficult to read, and helps me correct that.
Bingo! I have content that is understood clearly by Google, covers a range of relevant search queries/keywords, and is also super attractive for humans."
Alex Toma of Breakline Agency
“The 2 tools I use for content are Ahrefs and Ubersuggest.
I use Ahrefs’ Keyword Tool to find low competition, high-volume keywords, and Ubersuggest to see which key phrases are most searched in Google. By using these tools I can triangulate the best possible blog titles and rank faster, in return getting traffic and backlinks.
Ahrefs also gives you data about how shared similar articles have been and even the people who tweeted on the subject. In my opinion, Ahrefs is essential in the content creation process.”
Jeff Couret of SEOak
“Google Trends - Since most SEO-friendly topics are already saturated, your best chance of ranking for big traffic is to find something NEW and be one of the first to create content around it.
And Ahrefs - Doing keyword research allows you to easily understand the search intent of a keyword, so you don't waste tons of time trying to rank a piece of content for a keyword that Google doesn't show any articles on page one.”
Simon Lalloz of AB Tasty
“My top 2 tools to help me write better articles and drive more traffic will be:
- Trello & Airtable: They help me to create the content and manage the whole project of creating my articles while involving all my teams. I would say in terms of project management it makes everything easier.
- CoSchedule Headline Analyzer: This one is perfect for my headlines, as having a very powerful headline is super important to drive traffic, these tools help me make sure I'm choosing the perfect headline.”
Conclusion
At AutoGrow I use (or have used) most of these 21 tools on a daily basis.
All of these tools are worth looking at and implementing so you can replicate the success of these marketing experts.
And since everybody’s got a favorite tool (like the digital marketers featured in this article), you have plenty of options to choose from.
Because whether you want to grow your existing traffic, bring new visitors to your blog and site, generate new leads, or improve your content marketing, you’ll definitely want to bookmark these tools.
Now tell me something, have you ever used any of these tools before? Were they successful? Do you have any other tools to add to this list?
Let me know in the comments below.
Keep AutoGrowin’, stay focused.
