Running a blog and/or business can be overwhelming, especially when you are trying to do it all yourself. Today, I am sharing my favorite software and apps that help me run my blog and photography business smoothly! These tools have helped me save time and energy, which allows me to focus on what’s important – creating great content and capturing beautiful photos!

FAVORITE ALL-TIME TOOL: JASPER paired with Surfer SEO is my favorite out of all these tools. *Big News! Surfer SEO now has a Chrome Extension!

To become a more effective entrepreneur, seeking out tools that can help you streamline daily tasks and delegate responsibilities is essential. With the right resources, you can save time while improving communication and even automating some processes!

I sincerely wish to assist fellow small business owners in their journey by sharing the specific tools and resources I use to run my photography business and my high-traffic lifestyle blog. Without these powerful yet easy-to-use solutions, managing a blog with high traffic would be an insurmountable challenge.

Therefore, I highly recommend them as your go-to blogging and bizz workflow needs!

10 Helpful Tools I Use to Run My Blog and Business

1) YOAST Plugin for my WordPress Blog

My blog posts have been revolutionized with this incredible software! Not only does it enable me to pick the best keywords for my content, but I am also able to add alternative text and metadata quickly and easily. Optimizing your blog is easy as pie when you use this amazing SEO tool – in seconds, you can add extra elements that will boost your rankings higher than ever before.

Pro Tip: Don’t get too caught up in hitting that “Green Light” in Yoast; this is a helpful tool to get you started. I use Surfer to get my blog posts optimized perfectly.

2) Jasper

Can you be BFFs with a robot?? If the answer is yes, then Jasper is your new BFF!! Jasper helps me write compelling copy for your blog, social media, website, and more in a fraction of the time it took me before!

He is seriously a genius – I couldn’t be happier with my subscription to “his” service. In addition, Jasper helps me write great SEO blog posts quickly! Use my link, and you’ll get 10,000 bonus credits – you could write several pillar posts in just a few hours! That is seriously HUGE!

3) Tailwind

Tailwind is a lifesaver for both my blog AND business! It is the ultimate Pinterest scheduling tool and will save you hours in your day. They also have a new AI function to help write Pin descriptions and titles.

You can easily create eye-catching pins, schedule them to go out on specific dates, and even connect with other pinners who have similar content. Plus, they offer a great analytics dashboard so you can track your progress and success with Pinterest.

5) Surfer SEO

Instead of wasting hours creating a relevant content strategy for my blog posts, emails, and sales pages, I use Surfer to help me create a plan adjusted to my domain, niche, and audience. It helps me with content ideas, making my content briefs, and seeing how I would potentially rank on Google.

Surfer does all of the hard work that I used to have to do manually. Ultimately, Surfer allows me to identify the content my blog posts are competing against and then strategize accordingly for higher rankings.

6) FIVERR

The Fiverr marketplace is a treasure trove of creative talent and skills. I often use it to find ghostwriters for my blog posts, Canva templates that match the look I’m going for in minutes instead of hours (and they’re cheap!), and edit photos on an outsourcing basis with people who know what they’re doing!

7) Flexibits Fantastical Calendar

This calendar not only syncs from my phone to desktop instantaneously, but also tracks my appointments, links to my Gmail, sends alerts to all of my devices, including my iWatch, and provides me with estimated drive time.

8) Evernote 

Evernote is my guardian angel. Everything from edits to do, a weekly income rundown, and even random musings I had while on the drive home are all stored here. Not only does Evernote sync up with all of my devices such as laptop, desktop, or phone – but if ever needed, I can also access it through their website in case I’m using someone else’s device! Moreover, an added bonus? Caleb and I can share documents and add to them simultaneously too!

9) MileIQ

I remember when I used to have a spiral pad of paper in the car, and I would have to write down the date, current miles, new miles, where I went, and what I did every time I got in my car for work. But, thanks to MileIQ, all I have to do is swipe left or right; it is literally as easy as that!

10) Backblaze

With Backblaze, I’ve been sleeping soundly for the past five years. Compared to other cloud-based backup services I have used, nothing has ever felt as secure and economical – not to mention effortless!

I love being able to access all of my documents and photos from any device, ever!

11) Adobe Lightroom 

After culling my images in Photo Mechanic, I drop all of my starred images into Lightroom. If you want photography editing presets for your images, I recommend VSCO. 

After my photos are perfect (I check my exposure, straighten my horizon lines, darken my blacks, and add split toning), I export them into jpegs. You cannot ask for a better way to edit, export, and sort your photos for your blog.

12) Social Curator

Is social media marketing necessary? I wondered the same thing. But I quickly learned marketing on social media was necessary if I wanted to be a successful business owner.

Finding Social Curator has been a life-saving and business-growing asset for me. The best part? I’ll get to collaborate with you in the exclusive Social Curator community.

Summary

And that’s it! All of these programs I use require a little learning time, and some do have a membership fee, but the payoff will be worth it when you are simplifying or automating specific tasks that used to waste precious workday hours.