Do you like things that are going to help you? I know I do.

There are a wealth of resources out there for us bloggers, with people giving you a lot of different tools to choose from. I remember when I first started, I didn’t know whether I was coming or going with all the recommendations and reviews. So the five tools I can’t live without aren’t based on what others think – they’re based on my experience with them and how they’ve helped me. That’s ultimately why they’ve made it onto this list.

What each of these tools have in common is that they can help you improve. They do things for you to make life just that little bit easier to manage. So here are my life savers. Now, these are by no means the five tools I’m suggesting you should use – they are the tools that have really helped me since day one in blogging and tools that I’ll continue to use forever.

Evernote

If you don’t already use Evernote, I have one question for you – why the hell not?

This little beauty allows you to create notes that you can put into notebooks. So for example, you could have a blogging notebook, with your blog categories listed as notes and fill those notes with post ideas. See? You can keep everything, absolutely everything in one place. You can include notes that are images, plain text, websites, cuttings – anything you see, you can put into one of your notebooks.

Evernote also has a search function which is super powerful. Just search for a keyword and all your lists relating to that word will appear. It’s great for if you have a lot of notebooks and notes (like me).

This app really will save your life. Out of all the organising apps I’ve read about and tried, I always come back to this one. The team also update a blog with tips and tricks as to how you can utilise it to the best of its capabilities.

What I Love Most:

You can add tick boxes to things on your notes. Say you use Evernote to plan what you need to do for each blog post. You can put a tick box next to each point and tick it off when you’ve done it. I’ll be honest, it does make me a bit giddy.

Buffer

I honestly don’t know what I’d do without Buffer. I can’t live without it and no words will be enough to explain why it’s so great. I know a lot of people that use it, but I also come across people that don’t. And when I do, I always recommend it. No blogger should be without this.

For those of you who don’t know, Buffer is the easiest way to schedule all your social media promotions in one place and gives you analytics for everything you share. You connect your accounts, schedule your content for each channel and hey presto – you can sit back and relax.

You can either create an entire schedule, where your tweets are posted at the same time, every day of the week. Or you can post at different times each day.

Buffer themselves are made up of a wonderful team of people who run a blog that is one of the best resources I’ve ever come across.

They let you in on everything. Their entire process. It’s really no wonder they’re so great.

What I Love Most:

It helps me not to worry. I can sit at work and forget about what time I need to promote a post at – Buffer has already done it for me. I can focus on sharing other content and letting this tool work its magic.

Trello

I haven’t used Trello as an individual blogger, but at work, it’s how we live each day.

The structure of it breaks down into different parts – you have boards, which contain lists, and those lists contain cards. So for example, at my job, I have a board for each of my clients. In that board are a lot of tasks which need completing for each month. There are lists titled “tasks”, “in progress”, “done” and “not relevant.” Then for each task I carry out, I make notes on the progress and move it to each board as needed. It might sound complicated, but trust me, it isn’t.

What I Love Most:

It lets you keep track of everything you need to do in one place. Plus you can track your progress. The best to-do list ever.

Google Analytics

I wrote a post at work recently about why Google Analytics is so great and people loved it. It was a real eye opener for me, because I think so many people have Google Analytics, but they don’t fully understand the amazing benefits it has to offer.

Google Analytics essentially helps you to monitor and make sense of your traffic. So much of what we publish on our blogs is dependent on our audience, and that’s why this tool is so important. You can find out what people are doing when they’re on your site, where your traffic is coming from and what content your readers love the most – to name a few. I could go on, but this post right here has everything you need to know.

What I Love Most:

It tells you everything. And once you get your head around it, it’s really easy to understand.

Disqus

One of the best things I’ve done in my blogging journey so far is installing Disqus for my comments. Let’s face it – we all love getting comments. I know I do. And I love leaving comments too. This is the easiest, cleanest way to manage your comments.

It’s interactive, so you can see what posts your friends are commenting on and it notifies you every time you receive a comment.

Some people don’t use it and that’s fair enough, each to their own. But from my experience, this has just improved my blogging.

What I Love Most:

It lets me know whenever I get a comment so I can go through and reply to them in bulk.