How to determine which blogging tools you need to help you run your blog like a pro

This one thing changed the game for me in my blogging biz: technology. 

I realized these two things real fast when I decided to go all in with blogging: 

1. I couldn’t do everything on my own 
2. I wanted to work smarter + not harder

When you’re just starting out these two things can be tricky to navigate. The quickest way to achieve both would be to hire help. But honestly, I wasn’t at the point in my biz where I could hire someone to help me so instead I invested in technology to help me automate things that made my life 100x’s easier. 

Investing in technology saved muh life, y’all. One of the best things I love about the tech I’ve invested in is the data that I’m able to collect, which helps me determine what to sell/where to spend my time, what performed well, and also what tanked. (yes y’all, things tank for me too!) But what I’ve learned is to not take everything loss as a loss and instead to look at it as information and use that information to come back with something even better. 😊

 How to determine what tech to invest in when you’re first starting to blog: 

1. What is your overall goal?

First determine what problem you’re trying to solve. For instance, I wanted to send out follow up emails with next steps to clients after they purchased something from me. In the past this was something I did manually after I received a payment confirmation from Paypal. However, I knew this was something that could be automated because I’ve experienced it with online products I’ve purchased. So I did some research and came across Samcart  and decided to invest. Now when someone buys something from me, they are routed to a checkout page that I created in Samcart and then they’ll receive an automated email with next steps. 

2. Repetitive tasks 

Most of the repetitive tasks that can be automated are typically admin tasks so things like scheduling discovery calls, sending out welcome emails. These are all things that can be automated with technology. One of my favorite tools I’ve invested in that has helped me with scheduling meetings is calendly and zoom. If someone wants to schedule a meeting with me to talk about the services I offer and how I can potentially help them, my clients can book calls with me directly on my website and once the meeting is confirmed they’ll get a confirmation email with a zoom link to join the call on the scheduled date. Amazing right? I recently helped a friend set this up for her clients. It’s life changing! 

3. Cost 

Will you be able to cover the monthly cost? And is it worth it? These are important questions to consider especially in the beginning when you’re growing your blogging biz. Determine if the cost is worth the investment by writing down all the tech you need, the cost of your services, and how many customers you’ll need to book to at least cover the costs of all the tech. 

4. Data 

This one is HUGE! The main thing to consider when it comes to data is whether or not the data the tech provides is something you need right now to grow your biz. If the answer is yes, then it’s totally worth the investment. Going back to my samcart investment, I knew that I needed certain information (ie number of page views, conversions etc.) to help me decide how a certain product is performing. I also looked at this when it came to deciding what email marketing software to use, which is why I decided to go with Convertkit. 

What tech will you be investing in this year? 

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you.