There’s much more to blogging than selecting a few topics and banging some words out on your keyboard. In addition to the process used to produce top-notch posts on a regular basis, there are also tools that make it easier to blog. For us non-journalist, professional-writer types wanting to share our thoughts, a collection of tools creates a better blog.
A Bloggers Arsenal of Tools
Feedly is a news aggregator app. It’s the simplest, least distracting way to gather blog content ideas. Feedly is the one-stop location for your routine sources of information and research.
Evernote, a digital filing system, collects and organizes topics of information and inspiration for your blog content. The Premium version has a robust automated search and discover feature within the app that we highly recommended to aid your research and drafting efforts.
Don’t forget to download Evernote Web Clipper. Clipping, saving, and storing articles of interest from the web to the notebook of your choice has never been easier.
At a loss for compelling blog titles? No worries. Tap into Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator to stimulate your inner journalist. Amazon is also a powerful title generator to kindle blog title ideas – not plagiarize book titles.
Not sure what title will grab your audience? You’ll love this nifty free tool from the Advanced Marketing Institute. The Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer evaluates your headline to determine the EMV (Emotional Marketing Value) of the title. The higher the EMV, the better it grabs your audience’s attention and draws them in.
Need a blogging platform? Oy! That’s a conversation to have with your web developer/designer! We’re fortunate to be on the Hubspot marketing software – and highly recommend it for small business owners. The marketing software from Hubspot provides a plethora of marketing tools that make your blog sing.
WordPress is a common platform used by most bloggers. With an abundance of plugins at your fingertips, WordPress is a powerful blogging tool.
“A picture is worth a thousands words,” so the saying goes. Visuals are gaining popularity in attracting and enticing your reader. Death to the Stock Photo, Fotolia, BigStockPhoto, and iStock are a few of our favorite hangouts for jpegs.
A timer – who can ink a blog without the use of a timer? You’ve heard the saying, “work expands to fill the time it has to complete,” right? So goes the blog. A timer keeps you focused and on track to avoid your entire day being decimated by blogging.
A content or editorial calendar is a must-have planning tool when scheduling topics for your blog. Organized in advance, an editorial calendar enhances lead generation through strategically designed marketing campaigns. (Stay tuned. A sample content calendar is available for download soon!)
Although we don’t take advantage of this tool nearly enough, Click to Tweet is a fun and easy way for your readers to share key points within your blog on twitter. (Click to Tweet)
Bloggers needs to channel their inner graphic designer to compete in the visually rich world of online content. For those of us with two left brains, Canva makes designing simple for everyone with a simple drag-and-drop functionality.
As it is with all things online, it’s loaded with tools to make the process of blogging less painful and, if you’re lucky, more fun!
What tools make your small business blogging a treat?
