“More businesses are blogging for marketing purposes. And more people are reading them. Blogs are the lowest cost marketing channel; yet, as the fact below show, they can produce high returns.” (Source: barnraisersllc.com)

Quick Facts

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• 57% of companies with a blog have acquired a customer from their blog. (HubSpot)
• More than 60% of U.S. online consumers say they’ve made a purchase as a direct result of reading a blogger’s recommendation. (Factbrowser)
• Companies that blog 20 or more times in a month see the most return in traffic and leads. (HubSpot)
• Blogs are the most valuable type of content, according to more than ⅓rd of today’s marketers. (Content Plus)
• B2B marketers who blog gain a 67% increase in lead generation over their peers that don’t. (Insideview)

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Yet the creation, optimization and daily management of a company blog can become tedious without the tools necessary to help your content manager, or you, work smarter. If you’re on the lookout for new, fresh and better ways to improve your company blog, here’s a look at fifteen blogging tools that no blogger should be without.

Content Creation

1. Grammarly

Grammarly is a writing-enhancement platform. Grammarly offers a tool that corrects contextual spelling mistakes, checks for common grammar errors, and provides citation suggestions. Above and beyond eliminating grammatical errors, this tool can easily improve any text and detect plagiarism. When it comes to content marketing, your content should be as error-free as possible. This tool helps even the most inexperienced writer share ideas more effectively – and correctly.

2. ScribeFire

ScribeFire is a blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blogs. You can post to WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Windows Live Spaces, Xanga, LiveJournal, or any other blog that supports the MetaWeblog or MovableType APIs. It can pretty much handle everything that your blogging platform can dish out. This is a handy tool if you manage content for more than one company blog.

3. Canva

Canva makes design simple for everyone. Create designs for Web or print: company blog graphics, presentations, Facebook covers, flyers, posters, invitations, infographics and more. If you don’t have access to costly and robust photo editing software, this is a great option. The tool aims to make design accessible to the masses and help people get over their fear of design.

Design

4. WooDojo

Need to enhance your WordPress blog? This tool adds helpful interactive elements to any blog without having to change your design theme. Add a tabs widget, short URLs, custom CSS code, Login Branding, social profiles, and more.

5. Hello Bar

Need help with lead generation or conversions? The Hello Bar is a great tool to grab a visitors attention and encourage them to take an action. You’ve likely seen this horizontal bar at the top of prominent sites and blogs. You can add the Hello Bar for free and perform A/B testing on various CTAs and copy.

6. Skitch

Get your point across with fewer words using annotation, shapes and sketches, so that your ideas become reality faster. Skitch is a multi-purpose tool that lets you markup virtually any document. It’s more than just a note-taking tool. You can markup a graphic design with feedback, markup a webpage for redesign purposes, annotate a PDF, or use it as a blank canvas for new content creation ideas.

Search Engine Optimization

7. WordPress SEO by Yoast

Many SEO professionals use various tools, but many will attest to the superiority of Yoast. This WordPress plugin will improve your site’s SEO on all needed aspects, take care of the technical optimization, and help you write better keyword focused content. Easily update titles and descriptions of your blog’s pages without technical know-how and more.

8. SEOQuake

This browser extension allows you to view PageRank, Alexa and tons of other SEO parameters in order to analyze your website’s SEO impact and areas that could use improvement. It is used by SEO professionals to efficiently analyze a web page, and can help you identify what areas need in-house improvement or the help of an SEO expert.