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As a newbie blogger and entrepreneur, it is important that you start off with effective blogging tools that will market your brand and business. From the start, your main goal is to have an active social media platform and create rich eye-catching Pinterest graphic designs to drive traffic back to your business. One of the effective blogging tools every blogger must use is Canva.
What is Canva?
Canva is an AMAZING graphic design tool for bloggers. Canva is beginner-friendly and for anyone who creates content online. The editing program helps you create beautiful design graphics for your website and Social Media platform. As a beginner designing graphics for your blog can be really time-consuming, but Canva offers a pre-made template to save time. You can also create images on your own where you can save to keep it in a template for the next time you need it. Canva helps you create images for Pinterest pins and featured images for your blog posts, newsletter, social media platform, etc.
If you don’t have Canva, sign up here for a Canva account. Canva is completely free to use, you can upgrade to Canva Pro for a small price to unlock additional features. Check out a video tutorial here on how to set it up an account and how to create designs. I feel more comfortable sharing a video so you can see where to click and how to navigate the platform.
Create Design
Once you created your account log into Canva and you will be prompt to the home page.
Using the search bar you can search for whatever design you want to create, Pinterest, Instagram, Ebook, Facebook, Checklist, opt-in, and more. What I love about this graphic tool is that if you can’t find the dimensions you want you can customize it. You can also use Canva from your phone and laptop.
I love using Canva , when I started with the free version it’s pretty good and has a lot of useful features. later on I upgraded to the Canva-pro version and unlocked more features and it’s amazing. Canva offers a lot of stock photos to choose from for your designs, but as always when it comes to photos please read their term and condition to abide by their rules. As a beginner, Canva may seem overwhelming like everything else in the blogging world, but take your time to explore Canva and all its features. It is not that hard and once you get the hang of it, you will be designing images like a pro for your business and social media platforms.
What is Plann?
Plann is an Instagram scheduling tool and visual planner. With Plann you can Plan months of Instagram and story feed. It has the drag and drop tool to create amazing Instagram & stories feed. Not only do you have the ability to organize but you can edit and schedule Instagram posts and stories feed. Plann also has the ability to save group hashtags so you can schedule faster. Robust analytics so you know what is working for you. You can easily find and share user-generated content about your brand.
Monthly Cost Plans
Plann offers five different plans, from free to play big plan that varies from $7 a month to $105 a month. The free version offers up to 30 uploads a month, the ability to upload videos, editing tools, and repost tools. The power user plan allows you to use one Instagram account + one Facebook for $7.00 per/month. The build plan allows you to have two members + 2 facebook account + 2 Instagram for $15 per month. The Grow Plan allows you to have four teams. members + five facebook account + five Instagram. The Play Big Plan allows you to have ten- Facebook account + ten Instagram accounts. You choose whichever fits your budget and business
Plann Features
Strategy– This tool is my ultimate favorite, it allows you to plan your Instagram feed and stories to post your brand story. How amazing is that? With its easy Drop and drag workspace feature have all your custom media feed looking sharp and cohesive.
Calendar– Plann Calendar you can plan your monthly post and are able to see previous posts. It shows you how much you posted the month or week before.
Auto Posting- Plann does not have auto-posting, but they are working on it to get this feature. You schedule a time to post content on Instagram, and when the said time is reached, Plann sends you a notification that reminds you to manually post. It’s a bit of a pain especially for a busy mom like me but I set it for a time that I know I will not have a million things to do. For the time being, you can make it work for you.
Hashtags Management- This is a plus, you can create sets of hashtags save them for the next similar post. You also learn which tags can give you the best reach and you can have them ready when posting for the next post.
Plann + Canva
How does Plann + Canva work?
Yes my dear you read it right, PLANN is part of CANVA extended family. Now you can create, design, and schedule your social media graphics with Canva – without leaving Plann! How AMAZING is that!!!!!! I love the new feature and it saves me so much time. I don’t have to download it to my desktop and then upload it. You can also add media from your Dropbox account, google drive, your folder collection in Canva and it also has free stock photos you can choose from. How amazing is this?
NEW: Facebook Autoposting
Plann now supports Facebook Autoposting. This is a brand new feature due to the pandemic Facebook engagement is up 70% vs this time last year. This feature is only available on the desktop to paid plans. So much you can do with this feature all in one working space.
Overall Plann is an amazing and powerful tool to help you grow your Instagram. It can be used on your mobile device and desktop and makes monthly planning easy. Plann Blog is full of helpful tips and you receive freebies, like monthly posting calendars. I love Plann to schedule my Instagram and stories. If you don’t have Plann Sign up here.
WHAT IS MILO TREE?
Milo tree is a pop-up high-converting Milo tree to get followers via social media platforms (Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook) and grow your email list. As a beginner, you want to start and grow your email list. This is very crucial from the beginning of blogging. The box below is my MiloTree pop-up, it contains an invite to follow me on Pinterest.
Milo Tree offers Free 30-Day Trial! Sign up here to try your trial today.
Subscribe to Uniform-Beauty Newsletter and receive news and immediate access to your FREE Instagram. Sign up here and get your Freebie!!
Milo Tree Plans
There are three plans, The Awesome Plan starts at $9/Month, Smart & Awesome Plan starts and $99/Year, and the Bigger Better Plan, they preferred to be contacted to discuss further pricing. However, for a beginner, the basic plan is simply perfect. If you outgrow the basic plan there are many options to choose from.
What is Tailwind?
If you are a beginner blogger you’ve seen many posts and bloggers rave about using Tailwind for Pinterest for traffic. Well, Tailwind is a scheduling tool for Pinterest and Instagram. Instagram was recently added so it saves time in scheduling Instagram posts.
With Tailwind you can schedule pins per day, weeks, or even months ahead for them to automatically post on the day and time you schedule that pin. But with the new regulation of Pinterest not to have spammy Pins you are allowed to pin between 20-25 pins per day.
The scheduling tool is completely customizable and you can use the smart schedule feature that will show you the best times to post pins. I can go on and on about how great this TOOL is but if you want to grow your audience with Pinterest, Tailwind is the tool to get. Tailwind Blog is packed with so many useful information to help you grow both Pinterest and Instagram. I pay for Pinterest and I use the free Instagram.
Sign up here for Tailwind and get a 30 days Free Trial.
As a beginner with so many options to start with can get overwhelming because it is just so much to choose from. But if you have the right blogging tools from the beginning, you will grow and succeed. I hope this post can help your blog. What blogging tools worked for you as a beginner and what didn’t? I love to hear all about it. Leave a comment below. Sing up here to get your freebie, 5 Instagram Templates to customize in Canva.
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