I thought I’d switch things up a little bit this morning and talk to my fellow bloggers out there.
I’m always on the look out for new tools to help me in creating, managing and growing my little blog. Some days it feels a bit overwhelming and the other days it feels like I have things under control.
Today I wanted to share with you all a few fun things that have helped me organize myself and become more productive. Plus, I would love to hear from you all for new ideas. I love learning about new things!
WordPress Editorial Calendar
How did I not know about this editorial calendar sooner? Every Sunday I try to sit down and plan out my posts for the week. Sometimes I know exactly what I want to post and other times I just put in an idea. Having a plan when the week starts to get crazy helps me tremendously.
If you are a blogger who hasn’t started using an editorial calendar I would highly recommend it!
Zite
I just came across this fun iPhone app recently. Zite works a lot like StumbleUpon but puts all the recent news/blog posts etc. for a particular topic right at your finger tips.
You can save topics that interest you.
Then when you have some free time or are waiting somewhere you can go into your phone and it will pull a collection of articles from the internet for you to read.
This is how I have come across some of the articles I’ve been mentioning in my Sunday posts.
IFTTT
If you haven’t discovered this website already it stands for If This Then That.
The basic idea for it is a “recipe.” You create your recipe so that if one things happens then another action is automatically triggered. There are “triggers” and then an “action” that follows from that trigger.
IFTTT has some pre-made “recipes” or you can create your own.
For example: This “recipe” automatically saves any photo you post to Instagram into your dropbox.
This program helps to automate some of the activities you do on a daily base. It will make your life easier!
Blog Title Generators
Have you ever been sitting there getting ready to publish a blog post and you just aren’t happy with the title?
I’ve come across a few blog title generators that can help you create titles you would have never thought of.
Portent’s Content Idea Generator and HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator are two of the ones I have used in the past. Some of the titles are silly but sometimes they can be a great help when you are having some serious writer’s block.
Blogging Tip: Come up with your blog title before you write the post. I often find this makes it easier instead of writing a whole post and then not knowing a good title for it.
Content Gems
Content Gems is a great free web monitor that monitors the internet for content/articles/blog posts that interest you. In total it monitors over 200,000 sources.
Just to show you an example, I set up the interest “running” and “marathon running” and these were a few of the articles it showed me automatically.
It also monitors your twitter account for articles that others you are following share.
You may very well be seeing some of these articles showing up on a future Sunday post!
Evernote
Many of you may have already heard of Evernote, but I didn’t really start utilizing it until a few months ago.
You can download the program on your computer, iPhone (or Android) and have access to it anywhere.
The basic idea behind Evernote is to have a place that you can save articles, content or anything you find to reference later.
You can set up your own Notebooks and add various articles, ideas or just notes that you jot down. You can even upload pictures to use on a blog post in the future.
I primarily use Evernote to write down blog post ideas as I think of them. Have you ever been working out, out at dinner or somewhere and think of a great blog post but don’t have any way to save it?
I simply will log into my account and jot it down and then when I need it later I know where to find it. This has really been a life savor now that I am managing several different things.
There you have it. My favorite blogger resources as of late.
Other bloggers, what are some of your favorite resources?
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Thanks for sharing these! 😀
Thanks for sharing. I’ve honestly never heard of any of these but one. (Do I live under a rock?)…. So glad you shared though. I’m going to start looking into these.
Oh thanks for sharing! I’m always curious how other people get the same things done as me (but often, in a better or more productive way).
I’ve been using PicMonkey to spice up some of my pictures. I ended up trying out the paid version, but may cancel it after this month as I already have some apps on my phone that work just as well (though I like to see if on my computer screen instead–nice and big).
I use photoshop primarily but I have dabbled with PicMonkey it is great for the basic and quick photo adjustments!
Thanks for sharing these! Love the idea of the calendar and the name generator! I love scheduling and having a plan for the week… definitely book marking this!
Yes planning is my favorite thing 🙂
Great list! I use CoSchedule as my editorial calendar & it’s been life-changing! I’ve heard of Evernote, but hadn’t gotten around to using it yet. I have to try it out. And I’d never heard of Content Gems and it sounds really useful. Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Yes it’s amazing how helpful some of these items are once you starting using them 🙂 I’ve used CoSchedule before and it is awesome!
I hadn’t heard of Content Gems, I’ll definitely be looking into that. You can also check out this site: hemingwayapp.com, it’s helped me catch some awkwardly worded sentences in posts.
I just used this for a post that I was working on – Thanks so much for sharing!
Great tips! I haven’t heard of many of these and definitely want to check some of them out!
They are really helpful! Hope you enjoy them Megan 🙂
Thanks for posting this. 🙂 The Editorial Calendar has already been put to good use on my blog! I’ve scheduled a few in for a couple of months ahead already…on the ball! 😛
Yes, the editorial calendar is a life savor!
Really interesting as I didnt’ know about any of those!!! The title generator is genius!
Hope you get some use out of it!