Toolkit Tuesday: 4 Multi-Purpose Online Tools for Bloggers

  No doubt you’ve heard all the arguments for why blogging is so important: it improves SEO, grows your web traffic, provides value to your audience, and the list goes on. But having an effective blog requires much more than just writing your thoughts down every week and hitting “publish.” You have to think about things like finding great images for your posts, including calls to action, managing comments, and integrating your blog with your social media and other online marketing efforts. Fortunately, there are some great tools for bloggers out there to help make your blog actually work for

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DeathtoStock_Desk5 (Large)No doubt you’ve heard all the arguments for why blogging is so important: it improves SEO, grows your web traffic, provides value to your audience, and the list goes on. But having an effective blog requires much more than just writing your thoughts down every week and hitting “publish.”

You have to think about things like finding great images for your posts, including calls to action, managing comments, and integrating your blog with your social media and other online marketing efforts.

Fortunately, there are some great tools for bloggers out there to help make your blog actually work for you and help grow your business.

4 Great Online Tools for Bloggers

We’ve written about each of these tools as part of our weekly Toolkit Tuesday series in the past and thought it would be helpful to share a roundup for easy reference. Click on the links within the below paragraphs for a full, in-depth description of each tool’s features and capabilities.

1.) Triberr

Build a larger audience for your blog by creating an account on Triberr, a free social networking site that connects you with bloggers who write about similar topics. Bloggers within the same “Tribes” will be able to share each other’s content. Interacting with other bloggers on Triberr helps to increase traffic to your blog. Have fun connecting your social accounts to Triberr for easier sharing and more interaction with others!

2.) Canva App

We all know that visual content helps to increase visibility and engagement, and now you can create amazing graphics with Canva App. The cloud-based software has hundreds of customizable design templates for almost any type of graphic, and you can add elements such as text and images to all content. It’s free to use, apart from the $1 cost of premium images, and very easy to learn.  After creating content, you can share it on social media or save it to your desktop.

3.) Outbrain Widget

Do you want readers to look at more than one post on your blog or website? Outbrain is a free widget that puts additional content from your website at the end of all your articles. Outbrain is a simple way to increase the time spent on your site by visitors. Users can choose to sponsor their content on a network of other websites using a pay-per-click method, and if your website receives more than 10 million page views per month Outbrain offers a revenue-sharing option to display third-party sponsored content links on your website.

4.) PicMonkey

PicMonkey allows you to edit images for free online in a user friendly way. Images can be uploaded from computer or Dropbox files, or you can start with a blank canvas. The tool allows users to edit, touch-up, collage and design images along with providing features including a full range of photo filters, facial touch-up tools, frames, overlays and more. Similar to many free online tools for bloggers, there is a premium section reserved for Royale (paying) members which costs $4.99 per month.

What do you think are the best tools for bloggers? Send them our way by leaving a comment below and we could feature it in a future Toolkit Tuesday post!

Heather Allen

Belle's first employee. Lover of great food, good books and spreadsheets. Mom of three. Native Floridian and city girl residing in the cornfields of central Illinois.