Today, I am sharing my favorite software and apps that help me run my blog and photography business smoothly! Updated: May 2023

One of the ways to work smarter is to find tools that can help speed up, delegate, + communicate, or even automate some daily tasks in your business!

I am just sharing my experience in hopes that it will help others streamline their blogging workflow. I am only recommending the specific resources I use every day running my high-traffic blogs! I could never be running my blog as well as I do today without these helpful tools!

JASPER, paired with Surfer SEO, is my favorite of these tools. *Big News! Surfer SEO now has a Chrome Extension!

Tools I Use to Work Smarter, Not Harder

1) YOAST Plugin for my WordPress Blog

It helps me optimize my blog posts! This software allows me to choose keywords, add alternative text to images, and insert metadata. It is fast and easy to use and takes nearly seconds to add additional information to your blog posts to boost your SEO. 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!

3) 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 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. Surfer shows me all of the content competition my blog posts are competing against and what I need to do to rank higher than them.

4) 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!

5) Flexibits Fantastical Calendar

This calendar syncs immediately from my phone to my desktop. It tracks my appointments, syncs to my Gmail, sends alerts to my phone, computers, and iWatch, and even gives me estimated drive time.

6) Evernote

Evernote is my lifesaver. I have everything from my editing to-do list to an outline of my weekly income to random thoughts I had on the drive home. I love Evernote because it syncs all of my documents and notes to my laptop, desktop, and phone, and I can access all of my files simply by logging into the website if I am on someone else’s device. Evernote is also great because I can share documents with Caleb, and he can add to them.

7) 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!

8) BackBlaze

I signed up for Backblaze about 5 years ago and am sleeping better. I used other cloud-based backup systems, but nothing has been as easy, reliable, and cost-effective as Backblaze. I love accessing all of my documents and photos from any device!

9) Content At Scale

Unlock the Power of Content at Scale: Save Time, Money & Skyrocket Your ROI!! ?

AI has already completely revolutionized how we all create content. But honestly, ChatGPT is not good at long-form content.

With Content at Scale, in just 5 minutes, you can generate high-quality, engaging, research-backed 2,500-word-plus articles.

Their AI immediately crawls Google and parses all the top-ranking content to generate 100% original, research-backed 2,500-word articles for your website from a single keyword, existing YouTube video, podcast episode, or URL. Using Content at Scale’s innovative AI technology, an experienced writer can now generate and edit up to 10 long-form pieces of content in just one day. ??

Get started using Content at Scale now with our Your Brand-only offer for 20% more post credits for FREE on any plan you purchase – deal you won’t find outside our special link!

10) 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. Discovering Social Curator was the game-changer I needed to grow my business and save valuable time. The best part? You can join for 50% off this week only! I’ll see you inside the private 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 simplify or automate specific tasks that used to waste precious workday hours.