Blogger's platform is equipped with everything you need to start blogging. It is very easy to use and basic layout and templates for you to design your blog to fit your personal style. But what if you don't like the templates that Blogger has to offer? Maybe you want a more professional theme for your blog. If so, there are some features that you can incorporate into your blog to give it your personal touch, make it easier for your readers to follow you, to help keep your readers on your blog longer, and so much more.
I have included a list of free tools that I use and that are recommended and come in handy when you are just starting out with your own blog. Some of these blogging tools can help to spice up your blog, enhance your blog, and even keep your blog readers interested. Please make sure that you bookmark this page and refer back to it later for even more updates and tools that you need to be a successful blogger.
- Add This - Free sharing tools, social bookmarking buttons from Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, social plugins, and so much more! You can even get a button that you readers can click on to recommend your blog on Google.
- Link Within - A free tool that will link related posts in the form of a thumbnail beneath your current posts for your readers to see and click on.
- Twitter Blog Roll - A live widget box from Twitter that you can embed on your blog or website that shows your readers or visitors to your blog, your latest and most current tweets in real time.
- Free Templates - Louise Franks Design, Blogaholic Designs, Inventing Inspiration,ipietoon, and Ray's creation has some beautiful free templates that you can download and upload to blogger to give your blog a whole new look and feel.
- Free Newsletter - Mailchimp is one of my favorites to use at the moment.
- Free Stats - Stat Counter is a free service that will tell you how many visitors you had to your blog, where they came from, which keywords they used, and more.
- Backup - This is a free file backup service, there is nothing to download, easy to get started and works over any computer. Securely save your files to your personal email account, allowing you access to them from any device without installing any apps.
Read-It-Later
With this tool you can save Web pages to your Read-it-Later list to be read at a later time. Items can be saved from your computer or mobile devices via numerous applications and integrations. You can access your list just about anywhere for online or offline reading.
A similar tool is Instapaper, which works in the same way, but doesn’t have as many applications. One of the best things about Instapaper is that you can forward full emails to save for later (Read-it-Later only allows you to save links via email).
Evernote
You can capture anything from Web pages to images, text, and voice notes with Evernote. Just like Read-it-Later, there are numerous applications and integrations that let you save items to your account. Your notes can be accessed from just about anywhere via a computer or mobile device. Plus, with the ability to search through all of your notes (even text within images), you’ll be able to find things super fast.
Springpad
Springpad is much like Evernote, but refers to itself as “really, really smart notes.” It’s about more than just saving notes, you can also save tasks, set reminders with alerts, and look up items (like products, restaurants and recipes) to save. With Springpad, you don’t have to worry about organizing your thoughts because it does it all for you automatically. So if you want to blog about a specific product or location, Springpad lets you remember and access these items conveniently from your computer or mobile device.
Catch
Don’t let the simple design fool you, Catch is a very effective tool for privately saving notes, ideas, images, places, lists and more. You can then sync those items between your computer and mobile device. It uses a hashtag system (much like Twitter) to add tags to your items for organizing. If you’re looking for a simple too without all the bells, whistles and extra features then Catch is a great option. They have a variety of browser extensions and mobile apps.
Trail-Mix
Trail-Mix lets you “squirrel away” notes, images, Web pages and files right within your browser. It currently works as a Firefox sidebar only. You can drag and drop items like links, text and images right into the sidebar to save for later.
If you’re looking for a similar tool to use in Chrome, you may want to check out Read Later Fast from Diigo (no relation to Read-it-Later). Items are added via an option in the right click content menu. It’s a Chrome app, so it works in its own tab as opposed to the sidebar (like Firefox).
Diigo
With Diigo you can annotate the Web by highlighting, adding sticky notes, bookmarking, taking screenshots, saving images and more. You can then manage it all and reference your findings from your Diigo account for later use. Best of all, whenever you return to a page that you’ve annotated, your notes will still be there. You can even see annotations that others have added to pages as well. You can use Diigo to annotate specific parts of Web pages that you want to use for a blog post or to save items that you want to read at a later time.
Blog Editors
While many prefer to use the blog editor that comes with their blogging platform, it can be much more convenient to use a blog editor – especially if you have more than one blog to update. With most blog editors, you can even write offline and then publish whenever you’re online. They often also make it easier to add pictures to your posts (via drag and drop). You’ll also find many other features that you often can’t find in your blogging platform.
Windows Live Writer
Windows Live Writer is one of the most popular blog editors for the Windows platform. You can create new and edit previous blog posts, see what they’ll look like on your blog before publishing and set up multiple blogs. You can add things like images, videos, Bing maps. There are also 100+ plugins that you can use with Windows Live Writer in order to add more features and increase its functionality. Best of all, Windows Live Writer is complete free.
BlogJet
BlogJet considers itself to be the “most advanced Windows blog editor and manager.” With it’s WYSIWYG editor, you don’t have to have any HTML knowledge. It’s very speedy and lets you add Flickr images, YouTube videos and file attachments. There are numerous other amazing features and it works with numerous blogging formats. Unlike Windows Live Writer, BlogJet isn’t, but there is a free demo version.
ScribeFire
ScribeFire is an extension that you can get for Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari. It’s a full featured blog editor that lets you create and publish blog posts right from your browser. You can drop and drop text and images, schedule blog posts for later, tag and categorize, edit pages, post to multiple blogs and more. While some find the endless features in ScribeFire overwhelming, others just can’t live without them.
Qumana
Qumana is another desktop blog editor that lets you edit and publish posts to one or more of your blogs. It can also be used offline and includes text formatting, Technorati tagging, and the ability to add images and advertising to your posts. Qumana works on both Windows and Mac and lets you type in the WYSIWYG editor or Source view (for editing your own HTML).
Veeeb
Veeeb is a unique editor that integrates with your blogging platform (currently only WordPress and Drupal). It uses a process called “semantic text analysis” in order to scan your content for significant keywords and suggest relevant media and links. You can then drag and drop images and videos right into your posts or store them for later use. If you need to find out more about a topic, you can do that as well with the integrated search.
Deepest Sender
Deepest Sender is another blog editor that lives in your browser. It runs inside Firefox, SeaMonkey and XULRunner. You can add multiple accounts to be used with the WYSIWYG editor. It can be used as a full page editor in a new tab or right from the sidebar, which lets you drag and drop text and images from the Web right into the editor. Other great features include crash recovery, drafts, post editing and offline mode.
More
Content
These tools will help you create content quicker and also help make your posts more interesting to your readers.
Zemanta
Zemanta is a tool that works on the side of your blog editor. There are quite a few browser andserver-side plugins that you can use in order to enrich your blog posts. As you’re typing in your blog editor, Zemanta will analyze your words and then suggest images, tags, links and related articles for your content. Zemanta features over 10 million images that you can use, all with the proper licensing.
PollDaddy
If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to get opinions or feedback from your readers, creating surveys and polls through PollDaddy is a great option. You can get quick responses, plus it’s an easy way to keep tally instead of having to go through all of your comments individually. PollDaddy has a survey editor that is customizable and very easy to use. You can even get immediate responses from people using your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad with the iOS app.
Mobility
Dropbox
Dropbox is the ultimate tool for syncing files between your computer and mobile devices. There is a Dropbox app for just about every device and system and there even more integrations with other apps. So not only are your files always secure, but they’re always with you wherever you go. If you need to save files for use later, just add them to Dropbox or sync them using a supported app.
Google Docs
If you’re looking for a way to access your blog posts from anywhere, one of your best options it to create and save them in Google Docs. Since Google Docs is a Web based word processor, you can access your account no matter what device you’re on – computer or mobile device. This allows you to work on the go, from anywhere. You can also collaborate in real-time with others, which makes Google Docs great for collaborative posts and projects.
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