My 3 favourite blogging tools at the moment
I took the term blogging tool a little broad since I wanted to mainly talk about this three regardless of how I use them.
These tools really made my blogging a lot easier and I think that is something that is always handy for my fellow bloggers. Blogging or content marketing can be so important to get te world to see your products (in my case my artwork). But since I started this blog I have been increasingly loving doing it.
However, when I started off I did have some difficulties. So I found some tools to counter those. I hope these are also helpful for you!
Evernote
Evernote is an app for notes. You can keep your lists and notes in different “notebooks”. I mentioned this one before in my 6 ways to organise inspiration!
This has already been a favourite of mine for a long time. I use this mostly for recording my blog post ideas. In the beginning, I could really struggle with ideas and topics but now that I have a list I almost never have nothing.
I also keep some inspiration and motivation on this.
What I really like is the fact that you can sync the app with the same program on your computers. You just have one universal account and you can open it everywhere.
This was especially handy when my phone crashed last week. Unfortunately, I kept a list in my notes as well and that one is now lost forever but my list in Evernote is still there. I have been only using Evernote since then as you can imagine.
Grammarly
Since I have been introduced to this I have been in love. When I wrote a post about starting a blog or business when you are not a native speaker a lovely blogger Laiq told me about this. Grammarly is a plugin for google chrome that makes writing a lot easier for me.
This plugin checks more than only your spelling. It also sees grammar mistakes and notifies you of those. It keeps count of the amount of mistakes that you make in a text and shows them in the corner of whichever text field you are writing in. I don’t just make fewer mistakes in blog posts but my tweets and comments as well.
I really like that I am more aware of my mistakes now since I can see my grammar and spelling mistakes. I think/hope this is also easier and more pleasurable to read.
What I like as well are the little rapports that Grammarly sends you. It tells you how your writing is and which words you spell wrong most often. For some reason, I can’t seem to spell wonderful for example.
It also tells you how much you write in comparison to other readers and how big you vocabulary is in comparison. I’m proud to say that I wrote 10658 words last week and used 873 unique words.
Buffer
I recently joined twitter to connect to more creative business owners and other people in the business. In the beginning, I did not even know how to use this new platform. I also had no app on my phone (this was before it crashed) so I could not regularly log in or check.
This was when I found this little gem. Buffer is a scheduling tool for twitter where you can create a list of tweets and a schedule for at what time they should be sent out. It even can give a custom schedule based on the times with the most interaction.
This tool is great for me since I am terrible at promoting blog posts. Now I can just schedule a few promotional tweets and let Buffer do the rest.
Buffer comes with analytics of how your tweets are doing and they even send you emails if one happens to go very well. Overall this is a great tool to keep your twitter up and running for if you can not login too often.
So those were my favourite tools at the moment. Let me know if you use any of them or have other favourites blogging tools.
I would love to learn all about them!
Grammarly is something I sur will look at. I’m from Sweden and blog in both English and Swedish:)
Grammarly really helped, especially because I sometimes mix up languages. I hope it will help you to! Thank you for the lovely comment! 🙂
I recently discovered Evernote. Love it!
Glad you did then! Isn’t it wonderful? What do you love most? 🙂
I can organize all content in one application. I can calendar and write blog posts. I feel like I’m accomplishing something.:)
That is amazing! I do love to use it to write blog posts as well, especially when I’m on the way! Thank you so much for sharing, I’m sure this will give others an insight on how you can use it as well! 🙂
Hi Sofie,
Thanks for visiting my blog today. I am glad you liked my post 71 Tips to Make Your Blog Successful.
In response to your article:
I love Evernote with a passion. I have but never use Grammarly. From what you showed, it would benefit me.
Regarding buffer: is it free?
I wrote a tools post myself but didn’t include it for that reason.
Good luck with your art. Thanks again for the visit to my site.
Janice
Hi Janice!
Thank you for stopping by and sharing as well 🙂 I love Grammarly a lot since it is so easy, you just install it and it works!
Buffer has both a free plan and a paid version but the free plan works just fine for me! It lets you schedule around 10 posts and alerts you if things take of 🙂
I would love it if you could link your tools post as well!
~ Sofie
Hi Sofie,
1. How does Grammarly work? Do I just plug in my URL?
2. I don’t understand what you mean by link my tool post, but here is the link:
http://mostlyblogging.com/30-tools-you-need-to-create-a-successful-blog/
I currently use Hootsuite to schedule and the WordPress Calendar. Other than scheduling more social media streams do you think Buffer would have an advantage for me? Thanks for trying to help me. Enjoy my tools post. It actually recommends 31 tools, not 30 like the headline says.
Janice
Hi Janice! I had to do some research, sorry for the late reply! 🙂
Grammarly is Chrome (Browser) extension. If you work with chrome you can find these under more tools > extensions in the right corner of your browser. At he bottom of that page should be a link that says get more extensions. It brings you to the chrome web-store where you can simply search and install Grammarly 🙂 From then on it appears in every texts box when you start typing and opens shows you the amount of mistakes and when you click it it opens the editor where you can correct them !
By linking I meant exactly that, thank you so much for sharing! I love reading others posts on the same topic and I’m sure other do to.
I had to look in to Hootsuit to answer your last question. For as far as I can tell Buffer and Hootsuit are very similar but Hootsuite actually seems to come with options. But both schedule up to 10 posts so I think it is a case of what you like better.
The only thing I can find is that with Buffer you can easily share images by having the Buffer extension for the browser, it then simply ads the image and the name plus link to a tweet. This doesn’t seems to happen in Hootsuit.
I hope this helps! 🙂
~Sofie
Hi Sofie,
You are so knowledgeable about all this! Thanks for doing all this research for me! I would like to invite you to guest author on my site. I feature guest authors on Tuesdays. I think a post about Grammarly would be wonderful, empower my readers both WP.com and WP.org, and is a topic I’ve never written about. My guest authors get traffic from my site, so you might get new readership from it. What do you think? There is no rush.
Janice
Hi Janice!
I think that that is incredible. Thank you for offering me such an amazing opportunity! I would love to write that piece for you.
Are there any guidelines or deadlines?
I look forward to hearing from you 🙂
~ Sofie
Hi Sofie,
I think my readers would love hearing about Grammarly as a blogging tool. Thank you so much for agreeing to guest author for my site. My readers generally click the bio link. You should get traffic from my site.
Here is the link with the criteria for guest posting.
http://mostlyblogging.com/write-for-mostly-blogging/
We’ve already agreed on a topic, but check the link out for other possible requirements like length and how to submit it.
I have four guest authors currently scheduled which will have you scheduled for January 5. Clearly, there is no rush. I’m not sure if someone is going to finish his article, so it could be the last Tuesday in December.
Right now, I have you scheduled for Tuesday, January 5. I am excited! Great way to start the new year. Thanks in advance. My Email is in the link I sent you, so you can send it to me as a Word attachment or via Google Docs. Thanks again.
Janice
Hi Janice,
Thank you so much for this! I’ll try to get the post done as soon as possible and email it to you 🙂
~ Sofie