Isulong SEOPH Contest

Isulong SEOPH Marketer: 10 Essential Blogging Tools

Okay,
now what? Add the ten essential blogging tools listed below and you
will also be well on your way to creating and promoting a blog that is
a powerful marketing tool.

Feed Reader

The
best way to learn about blogs and blogging is to read, or at least
scan, lots of blogs. One of the wonders of blogs is that you can have
every new post from every blog you want to read delivered to your
desktop or to online location via RSS, so you can easily read and scan
the posts of many blogs in a very short time. Newsgator is a good
online choice for feed reading and also has a version that integrates with Outlook. I use a frëe online service known as
Bloglines.

Subscriber Center

You need to make it easy for your blog visitors to subscribe to your blog's RSS feed – so they can read your blog in their
favorite feed reader. The best way to do this is to go to FeedBurner
and burn your own RSS feed there and use the tools they provide to set
up automatic subscriber links so people who want to use Bloglines,
Google Reader, MyYahoo or Pluck, for instance, can clíck on one button
to subscribe. Tech types can figure this out without the buttons but
why not make it easy for anyone to figure out.

Side note: Subscribe to each of these yourself and you will force some blog spiders to visit your site.

Email Subscription Option

A
lot of people will nevër get the whole feed thing, but everyone gets
email. Create an option for people to subscribe by giving you their
email address – they will simply receive your blog posts like an email
message. FeedBurner offers this service for frëe. FeedBlitz is another option or, if you already have an autoresponder email list service
they may offer this service. AWeber offers this and helps me integrate these blog email
subscribers into my other mailing lists.

Blog and RSS directories

There are hundreds of blog and RSS directories and getting listed in many can be a good thing. I use a piece of software called
RSS Submit , but you can also visit
Robin Goode's frequently updated list and submit your blog and feed by
hand.

Hint: Subscribe to the RSS feed he offers and you will be notified when new directories are added.

Ping Service

Pinging
is a term used for letting the various blog and RSS directories know
when you have posted new content. Again, FeedBurner offers this as an
automatic option called PingShot and you should activate it. PingGoat
and Ping O Matic are other options but they require that you visit and update your record each
time you post new content.

Bookmark Manager

As
you surf around the web or hop from blog to blog you may find sites
that you want to point out to your readers. Online bookmark managers
allow you to bookmark and categorize web and blog pages as you collect
them and are a great tool for managing all of the stuff you find on the
web. I use del.icio.us but BlinkList
does a fine job as well.

Blog Stats

I
like to track a few key stats in real time because it shows what other
blogs might be linking to you or posting about your blog. A lot of
people just like to track this kind of thing for fun and frequently
visit sites like Technorati. I like to track it for networking opportunities. I use a tool called
MyBlogLog because it allows me
to see where traffïc is coming from but also tracks what links on my
blog visitors are clicking on. It's amazing how this data can help you
write more effectively. (MyBlogLog also ranks your links so visitors
can see which links on your site are the most popular.)

Desktop Posting

With
most blog software you must go online and post using a set of tools
provided by the blog software. Many bloggers like to use a desktop
application to create and submit their posts as it gives them some
extra tools and allows them to more easily integrate content and files
on their computer.

I use w.blogger but also like Performancing,
Qumana and ecto (apple folks) (w.blogger also doubles
as a really simple HTML editor.)

Tell A Friend Script

My
blog software (pMachine) has a feature that allows a reader to clíck a
link and send the post to a friend. This tactic brings me lots of
readers. You might try looking here for some simple scripts that do
that same: http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script2/tellafriend.shtml

http://www.stadtaus.com/en/php_scripts/tell_a_friend_script/

Republish Your Feed Headlines

The
ability to republish your blog posts on other web pages, sites you own
or sites of strategic partners is a great way to expose folks to your
blog content. One more time we turn to FeedBurner for a painless way to
republish your blog post to any web page you choose with something they
call BuzzBoost.

posted by RB2 @ 1:00:00 PM