It’s the end of the year, which means it’s time to look ahead to the next year! When you look at your blog and what you want to accomplish in 2022, you should be thinking about what tools you’re going to use to achieve your goals. To help you with that, I’m sharing what the best blog tools were in 2021 so you can grow your blog in 2022. If I’m sharing them here, it means they helped me grow my blog.
Past Years’ Posts: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Kate the (Almost) Great!
13 Best Blog Tools for 2022
Stopped posting Blog Traffic Reports
I don’t have a ton to say about this other than I finally stopped writing blog traffic reports. I did this for probably 6 years, and while they did bring some traffic, they took so much effort and time to make. The traffic they brought wasn’t worth how long they take to write, and since I’m only posting 1 post a week these days, they just weren’t worth it any more.
Continued to work through The Hot List
This is a course that I got through my purchase of the Genius Blogger’s Toolkit in 2020. I started it in 2020, and continued at the start of 2021. The Hot List helps people “Build an email list that grows your bottom line and sells your stuff on autopilot” (x). This completely changed my newsletter for the better!
And I think my newsletter subscribers agree, given that both the open rate and the click-through rate both increased.
My policy in general is to not share with others what I learned from a course I paid for because it’s not fair to the people who make these courses, so I won’t tell you what exactly makes this course so good. But I will say that this course helped me change my procedures for making and sending an email to my newsletter.
I will fully admit that this course is more than a little pricey; it’s nearly $400. So if that’s more than you can afford, be sure to snap up the next time you see it in a bundle like the Genius Blogger’s Toolkit.
Essential Social Media Tips for Bloggers
Added new Pinterest boards
A way cheaper (aka free) thing you can do in 2022 is make new Pinterest boards for your niche. I already had Pinterest boards for tons of specific things I blog about – such as Blogging Tips, Social Media Tips, Chronic Illness, and Endometriosis, among others – but I added 2 more this year. Specifically, they are Fibromyalgia, Dysautonomia, and St. Patrick’s Day.
A lot of these specific boards are for my content only. For example, the board Blogging Board is for all sorts of website sources as long as the pin is about blogging, while Blogging Tips is only for pins with my website as the source. But when it comes to holiday boards, those are for pins with sources from all sorts of websites.
Wondering why I do this?
It’s mainly to provide my pins with more places to go. While I do pin and repin other people’s posts, the vast majority of my pins are from my website. Having more places to pin and schedule pins enables more opportunities for people to see my material on Pinterest.
Additionally, even though I’m not sharing where my blog traffic comes from any more since I’m not writing blog traffic reports, Pinterest is still the biggest source of my blog traffic. Why not maximize on that?
What Blogging Platform Should I Use?
Retook Pinterest with Ell
I’ve said this before, but when I first started this course, I thought that I was pretty good at Pinterest already (and, not to brag, I was definitely better than the average user). This course, though, showed me more ways to use Pinterest that have clearly brought me more traffic.
The reason that I chose Ell’s course is that I had heard so much about it since I’ve been in her Facebook group, and it wasn’t just from people who were new to blogging and using Pinterest for blogging. It was also from bloggers like me, who already used Pinterest and already thought that they were experts.
The course itself is $39, which is a pretty good price, especially if you’re new to Pinterest and using it for blogging. To me, it’s worth it. Especially because Ell regularly updates the course, so you can get up-to-date Pinterest information without paying for a new course.
And those updates are the main reason why I retook this course this year. While in the past I’ve just done the updates, this year I decided to retake the entire course. There were some things that I missed the first time I took the course, and it was good to catch them.
Check out Pinterest with Ell here.
Got a new theme and changed website hosting
My blog hadn’t had a theme refresh in probably 6 years, so it was time to get a makeover. The home page is now a lot simpler to navigate.
I also changed my website hosting. I used Webhostinghub for years, and they were good, but they weren’t great. I decided to go with Bluehost because I had heard good things about it and it didn’t cost as much as other hosting providers.
I’ve been very happy with Bluehost, and my blog traffic has increased since I changed.
Starting a Chronic Illness Blog: Tips for Blogging with Fatigue and Pain
Deleted old blog posts
I’ve said this a million times, but I’ve been blogging for a long time. 2022, in fact, makes it 10 years since I started this blog and 9 since I really started blogging in earnest. This means that I hit 1,000 blog posts in 2020, and I have a lot of posts from those early days that just aren’t good.
But as long as those posts are there, they’re taking up server space. And taking up server space means it takes longer for the blog to load, which makes people annoyed and then they leave the site.
How slow is too slow? Well, 47% of consumers expect a website to load in 2 second or less (x). And yeah, 47% is less than half, but it’s still a LOT of people when you consider how many there are in the world.
It’s one thing if you have a ton of blog posts and they’re all incredible. In that case, pay your hosting site more to increase your server space! But if you have a ton of blog posts and only a hundred or so are good? Delete ‘em.
One situation where you wouldn’t want to do this, though, is if one of those older-yet-not-so-good posts still brings you a fair amount of traffic. In that case, I would keep that post and update it. Maybe you write a whole new post, a better version than the older one, and after it’s published you add a link to the new post in the old post. Maybe you update the old post and include a note saying “This post was updated in 2022”. Both are viable options!
As is just leaving it alone. But if you have an older popular post, you definitely should utilize it in some way. At the very least, add some affiliate links and/or links to better posts.
Did an SEO audit with Ubersuggest
If I had to identify the Internet’s foremost SEO expert, I’d say it’s Neil Patel. He is so knowledgeable and he also gives away so much info for free.
You know how when you go to a website there will be a pop-up asking you if you want to sign up for a newsletter and get a free tool of some kind? (If you’re blogging, you hopefully have one set up for your blog!) Well, Ubersuggest/Neil Patel’s version of that is an SEO audit and 7-week SEO challenge.
First it helps you by analyzing your website’s SEO usage overall (the audit) and then gives you a whole bunch of things to work on. This includes pages and/or posts causing problems for your SEO, how fast or slow your site is, and so much more.
Then, you can sign up for the 7-week challenge that is suited to your blog’s needs. Every week, you get a list of things to work on. It really helps! And, to be completely clear, this is 100% free.
I also want to talk about Ubersuggest as a whole, as it’s such a valuable tool. It’s one of my favorite ways to find SEO keywords to use. Not only does it give you keyword suggestions, but you can also find related keywords, long-tail keywords, question keywords, preposition keywords, and more. It will tell you what the search volume is for each keyword, as well as how competitive it is so you can choose the most successful keyword for your post. And so much more.
You can get a basically unlimited amount of info if you sign up for a subscription, but a free membership still gives you 3 searches per day.
Finally, in addition to Ubersuggest, he also has a newsletter and he wrote this post with 19 ways to improve your SEO.
What I Would Do If I Started a Blog Today
Followed my own Instagram prompts
These are chronic illness Instagram post prompts that you can get when you sign up for my newsletter! I figured I would follow all of them for a couple of months and would see what happened.
Reader, doing this increased my post engagement by 11.3% and helped my posts reach 11.5% more accounts than I was before. So it was a great decision.
Because of this success, I changed my Instagram strategy in general. While I still occasionally share things about my personal life (like moving out and going to weddings), I’m focusing more on health content. In general, there’s more cohesive content than ever before.
Get those Instagram prompts here.
Started posting Instagram posts with text over them
As a part of this Instagram change, I started occasionally posting images on Instagram that have text over them.
For example:
The reason I started posting these is because posts with text are more likely to be shared. No, I don’t have a statistic to support this, but I generally don’t share other people’s posts to my story unless they have text on them. Do you?
How To Be a Health Blogger: Writing Blog Posts
Changed some WordPress plugins/plugin settings
I’ve talked a bunch about plugins over the years, and I regularly update the post where I share the plugins I use. This year, though, the only changes I made were changing which cache plugin I use and the settings on my Jetpack plugin.
I used to use W3 Total Cache, but I now use WP Super Cache. It was actually suggested by Neil Patel in this post. The main reason I switched was to improve load times of my website.
As for Jetpack, I hadn’t updated the settings in years. I turned on “site accelerator,” as well as “Lazy Loading” for images. Both of these are designed to improve site speed.
How To Be Good at Blogging: Blogging with Limited Time
Started making Reels
This is something else I did to try and improve my reach on Instagram. Video in general is something that I’ve tried before and have always struggled with it, mostly because of editing.
But Reels has actually been really great for my Instagram account!
Part of it is that I had minimal expectations because I already knew that video isn’t my thing, so I was easily pleased by success. But part of it is that making Reels has yielded way more success than I’ve had on Instagram in years.
Posting Reels – with very little editing! – has brought me more content engagement and more followers.
Here’s an example: I posted a Reel that was mostly a time lapse of me refilling my pill boxes. It has been viewed over 5700 times and saved 13 times, and it has received 349 likes and 9 comments.
Added more image(s) per blog post
For a couple of years, my blog posts only really had 1 image. Then, for a few more years, my posts had 2 images each, and occasionally there was a post with 3 images.
But now, most of my posts have 3 images.
I’ve gone this route because I read somewhere that you should have 1 image for every 750 words. By that rule, if your blog post is over 2,250 words, you should have 3 images. And as a whole, my blog posts are longer than 2,500.
Including more images also means that there are more options for people to share my posts, especially on Pinterest. It also breaks up my posts, which keeps people reading.
12 Tips for New Health Bloggers
Completely changed my Pinterest strategy
Speaking of Pinterest, I completely changed my Pinterest strategy in the last quarter of the year.
In September, I started losing traffic, especially from Pinterest. Like, by a lot.
It turns out that Pinterest changed their algorithm.
Before, I published brand new pins twice a week, and I posted 5 new pins each time. I then added them to my Tailwind queue in general.
I also would make new pins in Tailwind Create and just add them to my Tailwind queue in general.
When I realized that my problem was my Pinterest strategy, I did some research. Then I took a deep breath and completely emptied my Tailwind queue, deleting 300 pins.
One thing that I stopped focusing on is repins, as “repins no longer increase your views on Pinterest” (x).
One thing that I kept doing was regularly publishing brand new pins on Pinterest. However, I went from twice a week to daily. I did reduce the number of pins I published, though, from 5 to 3. I reduced it because 5 new pins every single day is too many new pins to make on a regular basis.
Something else I did was change how many pins I publish in general every day. My Tailwind queue now has an average of 15 pins a day, and I don’t worry about always filling that day’s queue. So what if only 7 pins are published? It’s still better than 0.
Finally, when I schedule pins, I don’t miscellaneously add them to my queue. I intentionally schedule them so that – other than pins promoting a new blog post – pins are only scheduled once per day and a board is pinned to no more than twice a day.
The post that helped me a lot when making my new Pinterest strategy is from Leonne Wang.
How I Manage Social Media Platforms for My Blog
Another tool you should check out is my ebook for health bloggers!
Take your blog (and your income!) to the next level is a bundle of resources I created that is designed for health bloggers – specifically, those who blog about chronic conditions.
I created an incredible 13 resources to help you succeed as a chronic illness blogger. They are:
- 29 blog post ideas for chronic illness bloggers
- 24 blog post title formulas based on my best-performing blog posts
- A list of 7 Tailwind Communities to join to get your posts in front of as many people as possible
- A checklist for getting set up with Tailwind
- 25 Instagram prompts for chronic illness bloggers
- 25 Instagram Reels prompts for chronic illness bloggers
- A checklist with 9 questions designed to help your posts show up in search engine results
- A guide to optimize your social media networks to create a solidified social media presence
- A checklist with a week’s worth of blogging and social media tasks
- 100 inspirational quotes to share on social media to grow your engagement
- Over 60 inspirational Christian quotes (Bible verses and inspiration from Christian figures) to share on social media to grow your engagement
- Resources I suggest you use to make money for your blog, from places to become an affiliate to intermediate companies to land sponsored blog opportunities
- A Canva media kit template based on my own
This is all worth over $175*, but I’m selling it for only $10. That’s less than six percent of the minimum worth. Get it here.
Like this post? Check out:
25 Awesome Blog Post Ideas for Beginners, How To Write a Blog Post in 10 Easy Steps + Free Blog Post Template, Your Guide to Making and Using a Media Kit as a Blogger, Getting Smart with an Editorial Calendar for Bloggers + Free Editorial Calendar
(*I worked at least 1 hour on each – not including the years of experience that enabled me to come up with these. If I charged Massachusetts minimum wage, which is where I live, it’s $175.50.)
Kate Mitchell is a blogger, chronic illness patient, and advocate who helps people understand chronic illness and helps chronic illness patients live their best lives.
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