10 Tools to Manage Your Blog More Efficiently

We all got into the game of blogging because we love to write. What may not have been as apparent was the effort required to manage a blog. A majority of those tasks are non-writing related. In order to be a successful blogger, we need to master those tasks and become extremely efficient. This increased efficiency will allow us to spend more time on producing quality content. 

Here's a look at 10 blogging tools that will help you manage your site more efficiently. The resources listed below are either free to use or offer free basic plans to get you started.

Portent

We have all sat at our desk trying to think of the next idea for a great blog post for a prolonged period of time. It happens to the best of us. Portent is a great tool to get the creative juices going and hopefully help you come up with the next great article in less time. You simply enter a subject and it produces random title ideas. It's a great brainstorming facilitation tool.

Unsplash

How much time do you spend searching for quality images that you are allowed to legally use for your blog posts? There are lots of royalty free images available but they aren't usually the best quality and many have been used countless times by other bloggers. Unsplash releases only stunning images that are high resolution and royalty free. This is a great first source to get images for your next post.

Grammarly

Grammarly is a great app for any writer. It will give you confidence in your writing and save you time pondering grammar rules. It is much more sophisticated in detecting grammatical and contextual spelling errors than Microsoft Word and comes in the form of an easy to install Chrome extension.

TickTick

Life as a blogger gets busy. TickTick is a lightweight task manager and to-do list app that can help you stay on top of different tasks, deadlines, etc. The app works across 11 platforms such as Web, Android, iPhone so you can manage your tasks from anywhere at any time. 

Buffer

We all know what's required of us to promote our content, in part update our social media accounts frequently and stay engaged with current and new followers. Buffer will make your life easier as it allows you to schedule and automate your posts across all of your social media. You simply add your content, set the publishing dates and voila your social media is taken care of.

Hunter

Another time-consuming but important task as a blogger is outreach. We want to build relationships with other writers, blogs, businesses, etc. Instead of browsing the web trying to find the right email address for specific websites you can use Hunter. Hunter is an email search engine, you simply enter the domain name and it will pull up all the associated email contacts for this URL.

SumoMe

You have been working hard at producing quality content and promoting your blog and are now finally getting traffic to your site. To engage and eventually monetize your visitors, email capture is key. SumoMe allows you to capture their emails effortlessly with well-designed, non-intrusive pop-ups. Their starter plan is free and installation only requires adding a small code snippet.

Infinitewp

For those of you running more than one blog, content management can be really challenging. Odds are you are using WordPress so there is good news. Infitewp is a single WordPress Admin panel that allows you to update all of your blogs from one location.  This will save you a significant amount of time and reduce errors by jumping back and forth between different logins.

GetColdTurkey

Creating a distraction free environment is one of the ways to improve your efficiency as a writer. It's so easy to get distracted these days, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter are just some of the culprits. GetColdTurkey let's your temporarily block these type of distractions so you can focus on the task at hand and get your writing done sooner. Once the scheduled time is up you can access those sites again freely. 

PiktoChart

As writers, we understand the importance of visual communication. Trying to create our own visual pieces from scratch is time-consuming however. PiktoChart allows you to design your own professional-looking infographic in minutes. You can choose from over 600 beautifully design templates and edit the content as you please.  Using the right colors is important too. 

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This post was written by Evan Fraser, a web marketer with 10+ years of experience in web design. He helps companies create intuitive user experiences and build memorable brands. When Evan is not hard at work, you can find him listening to some 50's blues or traveling southern Europe.

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