Blogging Tools to Make Your Brand Shine Online

If you have a website or are thinking about creating a digital place to call your own, these tools are for you!

I want to share with you some tips, tools and tricks I've picked up along the way. I've tried dozens of plugins, many good, some great, that have helped me to create my website.

As I meet more and more bloggers, I thought it would be a good idea to share some of the blogging tools I've found helpful.

I'd suggest bookmarking this page and referring to it as you develop your site.

WordPress

There are many blogging platforms out there, but I've come to love WordPress. It's free and open-source. That means there are hundreds of thousands of free plugins and software tools for you to use.

Haven't started a blog yet? Click here and I'll show you how to start a blog in 8 minutes or less.

 

What's Next Blogging is built on WordPress and most of these blogging tools and plugins work seamlessly with it.

Note: If you see “Integrated“, that means the blogging tool is integrated into WordPress and you can utilize the “one-click installation” under the “Plugins” menu in your WordPress dashboard.

All in One Favicon

(Integrated) Favicons are the tiny icons on your browser or tabs next to the title of the site. Mine is derived from my logo at the top of this page. This plugin allows you to upload a tiny picture to brand your website in a cool and unique way. Fun fact, if you bookmark a site on the homepage of your smart phone, the favicon will be the icon!

MailChimp

I don't recommend using the mailing list tool built into WordPress. I don't think it is robust and I don't feel like I have enough control over how it emails my subscribers. While there are many email list tools, I prefer MailChimp. It's free for up to two thousand subscribers and is moderately simple to set up. You can find several tutorials on YouTube if you need help, as well as on the MailChimp blog. Though I no longer use MailChimp for most of my emails, I suggest every new online entrepreneur start with them.

To download my in-depth report of the Top 10 Email Marketing Services, click here.

Buffer

Buffer is a really cool company. Their software, found at Bufferapp.com, allows you to build a “buffer” of social media tweets, posts, updates etc. that will post at a later, predetermined time. Load it up in the morning and your updates will go out during the rest of the day.

SumoMe

(Integrated) I used to recommend Buffer's plugin DiggDigg, but I now use and recommend Share by SumoMe. This is the sliding, social-sharing tool I have on the left side of my page. *You should be able to see it just to the left of this paragraph. Share makes it easy for your readers to share articles, pages, and posts they enjoy. If you like this list, share it!

Hootsuite

Another social sharing tool, Hootsuite allows you to schedule updates far into the future. You can also use their “autoschedule” feature to send those updates at the optimal times. The only downside is their algorithm for determining optimal times is their secret. Not much of a downside if you ask me. One of the best aspects of Hootsuite is the social monitoring. With that you can monitor your personal brand when it mentioned on Twitter and other places.

Disqus

(Integrated) The comments section built into WordPress is pretty basic. While it gets the job done, Disqus does it better. You can track your comments and updates across the entire web wherever Disqus is used as the comment system. You can even moderate comments via email on your cell phone. If you use Google Analytics, you can even see how many people find your site by clicking your name in the comments section of other sites. That's a neat way to see the positive effects of you being social with other bloggers!

If you're a podcaster and aren't using Disqus, you need to read this.

HTML Color Codes

Sometimes you just need an HTML code. This site allows me to use the HTML code for colors, (Ex. #fafafa for a gray-ish color) and find ones that work well together. Or, if you see a color code and want to know what it is, paste the code into that site and it'll show you what color the code is associated with. This is a blogging tool for the more technical people.

WP125

(Integrated) Allows you to easily sell 125×125 pixel ads on your site, usually in the sidebar. All you need is a link to the image and where you want the link to go; the plugin does the rest. You can set expiration dates for the ads with reminders, and track how many clicks each ad receives. Easy-peasy.

Paint

While not technically a blogging tool, the Paint program that is built into every copy of Windows is something I use every day. I often use it to do a “print screen” and pasting the image into Paint to edit the image. You can see several examples of that here as well as in this very article. When I find a picture I like, I save it to a folder, right-click the image and click “edit.” Then, in Paint, I adjust the image to a lower resolution for use on my blog. This speeds up page loading times and creates a consistency in formatting. I always save two copies: Image original and Image cropped.

Pictures

Pictures catch the eye much better than text alone. Find a good picture site where you can grab images from. I generally use this site because most of the images are free to use. If an image has any requirements, make sure to follow those and give credit where credit is due. If you find a cool picture today, save it to use tomorrow! See “Paint” for additional ideas on this.

Want more picture sites to search? Click here to read my post about finding high-quality images you can use.

Google Analytics

As I mentioned here, search engines keep a record of everything. Google Analytics is one of the most popular blogging tools for tracking behavior on your site. You can track visitors per day and over time, where they came from, how long they stayed, and more. Analytics is also a great way to see which social media sites are leading to the most visitors (See Bitly Shortlinks). Additionally, if you're looking to monetize your site, this tool will give you reader demographics to show potential advertisers.

Google AdSense

AdSense is almost the default way to monetize. You can choose what types of ads you would and would not like to display, choose the size of the ad, and copy/paste the HTML code into a widget on your sidebar. If you don't like their fairly ugly text ads, you can select image ads that are generally much more visually appealing.

ClicktoTweet

Make it easy for your readers to share quotes from your blogs. Head over to ClicktoTweet.com, type in the quote you want people to share, plus any hash tags you'd like in there, and they spit out a link. Embed the link, and with one click, your readers share your content Twitter. Click here to try it!

Bit.ly Shortlinks

(Integrated) Get a Bitly account now. Go do it! Bitly allows you to shorten and track all of your links. You can see how many people clicked each link and when, allowing you to track their results. Create two links for a blog or page, put one on Twitter and one on Facebook; Bitly stats will show you which link was clicked more.

Bitly also allows you to use your own custom shortlink. I bought ellory.us and told Bitly to track my domain with this plugin; now all of my shortlinks look like ellory.us/123ABC instead of bit.ly/123ABC. Another easy and cool way to brand your links.

Amazon Affiliates

Amazon sells almost everything. Sign up for their free affiliate program and Amazon will pay you 4% of the purchase price whenever someone uses your link. Just be sure to disclose your affiliations, it's a federal law. If you'd rather just shop on Amazon, you're more than welcome to bookmark my affiliate link! Their affiliate program works with gift cards, Amazon Prime, and everything else on Amazon.

Yoast SEO (formerly WordPress SEO by Yoast)

(Integrated) Yoast's plugin automatically grades each post for search engine optimization (SEO), and provides feedback for improvement. It count's keyword usage, and analyses your page. Below is my grade for this post. I fill in all these boxes before publishing each page and make sure I have a much “green” as possible.

Bluehost

I moved my website over to Bluehost in June of 2013.  I wrote about it here. They offer great monthly rates (as low as $3.95/mo), U.S.-based support, and they even called me to when I signed up with them. Having their servers located in the United States, they're able to load my webpages faster than if they were located further away. In addition to being easy to use, they offer several YouTube training videos I've found helpful. If you think you might like to try them out, here is my Bluehost affiliate link.

Haven't started a blog yet? Click here and I'll show you how to start a blog in 8 minutes or less.

 

So, there you have it.

These are the blogging tools I use and recommend. I hope you're able to get as much out of these blogging tools as possible and help your brand shine online! Want more information about building your personal brand? Check out my e-book!

If you liked these tools, would you help your fellow bloggers by sharing this article with them? If you're looking for tips on the cloud, I wrote a guide here too.

Question: What blogging tools do you use?