Archive for the ‘Blogging Tools’ Category:
3 Powerful Social Toolbars For your Blog
In case you haven’t noticed, many bloggers are now adding social footer bars to their blogs to let their visitors communicate and connect with them more effectively. Whether you have a Facebook fan page or just a Twitter account that you want your blog visitors to take notice of, social app bars can help you get more people to pay attention to your other online presences. Social toolbars have been around for a while. I was never a big fan of them as I found to be detrimental to my sites’ usability. But the latest wave of blog toolbars are much more user-friendly and don’t slow sites down either.
If you have multiple social profiles that you want to promote on your blog (in your footer section), here are 3 blog toolbars you should consider:
Wibiya: Wibiya is my favorite social media toolbar. It’s not only very easy to install no matter what platform you are using to run your blog, it also comes with a ton of apps that you can use to promote almost anything on your blog. Read more »
How To Track Your Clicks with ClickMeter
Whether you are posting affiliate links to your blog or want to make sure how many clicks your banners get, it’s always nice to have a tool that lets you know exactly how many clicks you have gotten, and how many of them are possibly fraudulent. ClickMeter is an innovative service that is designed to help you figure out just that and more. If you have a URL that you want to track more closely, ClickMeter has you covered.
You can essentially think of ClickMeter as a URL shortening and management tool. It allows you to add your own links to your dashboard easily and track unique clicks and possible fraud clicks at all times. Once you have added your URL to the system, you can use the links on your dashboard to upload your link to social networking website or just map their links (see above image). Read more »
Draw Diagrams and Collaborate Online with Cacoo
As someone who is online for hours everyday, I have gotten used to working with others online and collaborate with them without having too many face to face meetings. But there are times that you want to share more than just e-mails with those who work with you in your projects. That’s where Cacoo comes in. Cacoo is a very useful diagram tool that lets you create diagrams for your clients, develop ideas, and collaborate with your colleagues. Since the service is online, you don’t need much to get started. Besides, you will have access to your diagrams at all time.
Cacoo is a complete online collaboration tool. Not only it allows you to share your own diagrams with your colleagues, it also lets you organize and view those that have been shared with you by others. You can create folders to better manage your work, which is quite useful for frequent users.
The design interface is pretty intuitive and easy to use as well. Whether you want to work with lines, draw diagrams, or even chat with your colleagues, Cacoo allows you to do that easily. Once you are done with your diagram, you can export it to a PNG file and share it with others. Read more »
5 Ways To Add Enhanced Comments On Your Blog
So how do you measure success when it comes to your blog? One way to do that is by determining whether you are reaching out to people and getting them to engage in conversations on your blog. A weblog that does not get any comments is not necessarily a failure, but it’s certainly not a success either. If your posts don’t make people want to comment and participate in your community, then you’ve got trouble. In that case, you want to make sure you do more research and address topics that people want to hear about.
What if you are already getting a decent number of comments on your blog? If that is the case, you should try to provide your readers with even more tools to comment on your blog. Whether it’s allowing them to leave you a video comment or rate other people’s comments, giving people more tools can only help take your blog to the next level. If you are looking for ways to enhance your blog’s comment section, here are 5 services that you should try:
Disqus: one of the most flexible services around that takes over your comment section on your blog and makes it possible for you readers to post video comments, connect to your blog via Facebook connect, and do a whole lot more on your blog. It works with the most popular blogging platforms which is a plus.
JS-Kit Echo: one of the best third party comment systems around. It not only comes with an advanced comment editor, it allows your readers to post more dynamic comments to your blog. The service is growing fast and has a bright future.
Intense Debate: a nice alternative to Disqus and Echo. It’s currently being used by a lot of Wordpress bloggers. The fact that the developers have opened up the platform to others means you are going to get a lot of enhancements through third party services.
Backtype Connect: a social media and conversation search engine that lets you know what people are talking about (based on your URL or article). You can install it on your Wordpress blog to let you users find out about the conversations going on about your content in the social media.
Facebook Connect: if you don’t want to mess with your blog and add services such as Disqus to enhance your comments, the least you can do is add Facebook Connect capability to your blog. The service can help you build a more solid community and take advantage of Facebook to go viral with your content.
These services may not improve the quality of your content, but they certainly do improve the quality and quantity of conversations on your blog. What more can you ask?
Find a Blog Domain with Nomaine
These days it’s very tough to find a blog domain that is easy to remember and brandable. Most straight forward domains seem to have been taken. After all, there are a lot of domainers out there that take pleasure in registering all kinds of domains only to sell them for huge profits in a short period of time. But there are tools out there that can help you find those hidden gems of domains that are still available. Nomaine is one of those tools. It’s a theme-based domain finder engine that can find you a decent domain (depending on your niche).
Nomaine is very easy to use. All you have to do is choose from the selection of themes available, define min and max limits for your domain and add your prefix and suffix words to optimize your results. The engine will go to work for you and searches for domains that are still available for pick up. The advantage of using this tool is that it can find you a general domain that applies to your niche. Keyword-based engines can be frustrating to work with and are often not that effective. With this tool, you can save time and find domain names that usually wouldn’t find with other tools.
Discover and Share Content with ToolMeet
As a blogger, I am constantly on the look out for tools that can help me develop ideas, find what other people are looking at, and discover what the hottest properties are on the Internet. Toolmeet is a cool tool that lets me do just that. Toolmeet is a toolbar that install on Firefox. It sits on the top of your browser and lets you connect with your friends and find out what other people have had to say about a specific website.
10 Best Android Apps for Bloggers
I admit I haven’t been a big fan of Android platform so far. I have not dismissed the platform as it has a huge potential. According to many experts, Android phones will have more market-share than iPhone in a couple of years. The Droid is one of the few Android phones that can hold up its own against the iPhone. It’s not enough to make Android more popular by its own, but it’s a great tool for those of us who have been waiting for someone to come up with a decent phone for Google Android. What I love about the Droid is the fact that it makes it possible for bloggers to get some value out of it, even though the number of apps available for it are limited. Mobile blogging and vlogging are the future, and the Droid certainly has the capability to handle them. Google just needs to catch up in the apps department.
If you happen to own an Android phone, here are 10 Android apps for bloggers that could help you get more done on the road:
FBabble: a cool little app that lets you stay in touch with your Facebook friends right from your Droid.
Astrid Task/Todo List: a free app that lets you manage your daily tasks and stay on the right track at all times. Todo Lists are a blogger’s best friend, and you can manage them on your phone thanks to this app.
Note Everything: a little note taking app for your Android phone. You can now note down your ideas on the go without having to carry a notebook.
Quickpedia: an easy to use app that lets you search through Wikipedia pages and do some quick research on the topic of your choosing.
Market Samurai – Part I: Intro
Mainstream blogging is not for everyone. Not everyone is suited to talk about the latest political news or latest gadgets around. You should always try to blog about what you are passionate about. That way you won’t have to torture yourself to come up with new blogging ideas when you have already reached hundred posts. But before you start your blog, you are going to plan ahead and do a keyword research to find out whether your niche is broad enough and viable for you to make a living online (unless you want to just blog for fun). There are plenty of tools that you can use to conduct your keyword research online. I have already gone over a few in the past few months (e.g. SpyFu). But if you want a desktop application that simplifies the job, you should look no further than Market Samurai.
Market Samurai has been around for a while now, and it’s one of the better keyword research tools out there. It’s been specifically made for those who are looking to build up their niche blog or portal. Unlike most top keyword research tools on the market, Market Samurai is an Adobe Air desktop (PC or Mac) application that lets you conduct comprehensive keyword research (including but not limited to keyword discovery, traffic research, competitive analysis, and more) without having to purchase multiple premium keyword research services. So in essence, it does give you a lot of bang for your buck. Read more »
Deep Blog Analytics with Woopra
Recently, I got a note from the good people behind Woopra that their beta program was coming to a close. In case you are not familiar with the service, Woopra is a deep website analytics package that helps you figure out where your visitors are coming from, where they are going, and how you can change things around on your website to increase your visitors, get them to stay more often, and even find out how to plan your future posts.
If you have used Google Analytics before, you are probably familiar with how an analytics program works. These programs show you where your visitors are coming from, and where they are going. You can easily find out which pages on your blog are performing poorly, and why that’s happening. You can also find out on which pages your visitors are spending their majority of their times on. Woopra offers you all this information and more. You can find out which country your visitors are coming your website from and what operating system and browser they are using. Read more »
Blog SEO: Research Keywords Like a Pro with SpyFu
Driving traffic to your blog should not be your only priority but should be a big part of your overall strategy. You can have the best content in the world, but people are not able to see what you have to offer, you are not going to achieve the success that you deserve. I know a lot of people want to believe in those Cinderella story when you blog for years and finally get recognized for your work. I hate to break it to you, but unless you take time to promote your blog, you are not going to get the appreciation you are hoping for.
One way to drive passive traffic to your blog is by optimizing your blog for the search engines. I am not talking about creating splogs but rather using relevant keywords that people are searching for in each post. Many bloggers choose to go after those generate keyword phrases, but there is a lot of traffic to be gotten if you target those long-tail keywords in your posts. The good thing about long-tail keywords is that you don’t have to sound like a robot to use them in your posts. The traffic per keyword may not be much, but if you use enough of them, your traffic adds up.
SpyFu is one of the best tools to dig up those long-tail keywords for your blog. It may not be as famous as WordTracker and Keyword Discovery, but it provides you with a wealth of features to help you optimize each and every post for highly-targeted keywords. For starters, SpyFu allows you to spy on other blogs and websites and find out what keywords they are using to generate traffic. You can also take a look at their ads, their PPC keywords, and even their estimate advertising budget to find out what your competitors are focusing on.
SpyFu Kombat allows you to find out which channels other bloggers are focusing on and what you can do to match or better their efforts in those channels. You can always download the keywords that other blogs are using and find out which ones you can use in your future blog posts.
If you push your blog using Google Adwords, SpyFu has you covered in that area as well. But I personally have used SpyFu to come up with blogging ideas, find out what my competitors are doing, and find keywords that people are interested in talking about. Ultimately, SpyFu is an affordable premium service that can help you write more targeted posts and get more passive traffic in the long run.
Note: SpyFu is a premium keyword research service and while you can use the free version to get some research done, to take advantage of some of the above mentioned features, you will need to become a paying member (thanks @searchguru).
