Blogging has been the biggest and fastest-growing industry in the world of Web 2.0 today. We can all remember the good old days when people turn online to share their thoughts about their daily lives and get ecstatic every time they see a comment on their posts, knowing they have successfully spread their message out there.
Nowadays, blogging is not limited for personal purposes but for business marketing as well. Millions of blog sites have been published online and continues to grow by thousands each day. It became a platform for online businesses to promote their brand to the world.
Maintaining a blog can be a challenging task even for a content writer or webmaster. Posting your rant or blabbing is not the only thing that needs to be done to say you've got the hang of it. Thankfully, however, there are great blogging tools that can be used for the more complex needs. We have gathered some of the blogger's favorites here:
10 Cool Blogging Tools for the Avid Bloggers
• Visual.ly - creativity is one of the major factors of getting a blog page noticed by people, and with the help of technology, posts are not just confined to plain texts anymore. Infographics are the "in" thing. Visual.ly is a website where you can find free infographics shared by web designers that you can use for your blog post. Visualizations require extensive designer's skills, hard work and time to create. However, with available software like what was mentioned, it would be possible to create quality designs and data for your blog site.
• Diigo - it stands for Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff. This is a great tool that has features for bookmarking and annotating web pages for content sharing and retrieval. The toolbar can be installed in your browser where you can use to highlight information you see online and pass it along on your blog page. It can also be available in Android, iPad and iPhones.
• Skype - this is not just your regular plain IM, but Skype has widgets that can be added to your blog or homepage that allows you to make calls free over the Internet. This can also be used by bloggers to conduct chat conversations with their followers, record podcasts, interviews and more. It can also be used as a business line if you don't want to use your personal mobile or home phone numbers.
• Instagram - this is an application for social photo-sharing that links to Twitter and Facebook. Eye-catching images can help draw readers into your blog. You do not need to be a professional photographer or web designer to get the gist in using Instagram, since the tool creates photo sizes that can be perfect with your blog posts. As Jessica McLaughlin from SproutSocial.com said: "Storytelling is one of the most effective ways for a brand to connect with its target audience, and Instagram is one of the most popular ways to tell that story through pictures... "
• Trello - it is a tool collaboration that organizes projects into boards. This is a good tool for bloggers who engage in outsourcing tasks to remote employees or content writers. You can create boards for each project you are working on like blog calendars, blog ideas and enhancements. Create individual tasks on a board and add your team of bloggers as your collaborators. This tool makes it easy to upload documents, make checklists and add due dates - this also works on mobile devices.
• Google+ - creating a Google+ page for your blog is an important part in building your social networking influence. This program allows you to share your content and create communities through Google+ Circles. The latter can be a good platform in storing your blog ideas and finding them later.
• Disqus - it is a commenting system tool for blogs, it supports major blog platforms available today. The new version of disqus allows you to view recurring comments and adds up-vote or down-vote on all comments. Disqus allows users to sign in with their Google +, Twitter, Facebook or random email and name combination. It also has a "starred" feature that lets you rate posts.
• Bloglovin' - it can be used to follow your favorite blogs or share your posts. It is similar to Google Reader but is easier, user-friendly and only for blogs. You can use this to claim your blog or read your favorite articles in one place.
• Klout - this is a service that measures your influence across social media sites by topic. Connect Klout with your social network accounts and it will analyze your interactions with people in those social sites. If people find you interesting, they are allowed to visit your user page and give you Klout points (+K).
• Optin Skin - it is a plug-in that let bloggers add an email list opt-in or take-action areas at the bottom of each post. The basic steps to get the plug-in working are for you to: customize your opt-in skin, choose your email provider such as MailChimp and Aweber, choose the placement of the plug-in, then test and optimize. This tool also gives stats on how many signups you get a day and which posts drive the traffic.
The ones enumerated above are only a small portion of the countless tools available for bloggers online. The performance outcome of your site still lies in the hands of the owner as well as the circle of your content writers, web designers, developers and all the people involved in running the blog site.
No matter how advanced technology may become, people will still relate to people and not to tools. So keep in mind to always provide updated and quality content in order to maintain the authority of your weblog.
Hey there! I'm Jollie Garado and I'm interested in writing about technology and SEO - for the web developer, content writer or web designer to improve your small business.
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