Feeling lazy? Stuck in a blogging rut? Need some help with motivation, inspiration, or organization? Instead of throwing your hands in the air, use these tools to help with each step of the process. From coming up with solid blogging ideas, to creating headlines, and managing your time, there’s something on this list that can help you increase your blogging abilities and create terrific content.
So here's the list of 20 ultimate tools that can help you to manage things up in your lazy times.
Coming Up With Creative Content
Feedly - Feedly is a collection of news articles all on one place. The site lets you personalize your content so you only see articles that are relevant to your interests.
Pocket - Pocket is a handy tool for when you find an article that you really want to read, but you don’t have time to read it. Use Pocket to store it for later. The app can store websites, tweets, videos, or anything else you find online.
Alltop - Alltop is a collection of news articles from all across the web. News articles are divided into categories, as well as by their original website. If you’re looking for pop culture news, you can either use a keyword search, or link directly to Buzzfeed.
Blog Topic Generator - Stuck in a creative block? Use Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator to get a week’s worth of blog ideas. You can enter up to three keywords, and the generator will give you a list of headlines.
Google Trends - Google conveniently compiles all of their trending articles in one place. Head to this website when you need some ideas.
Headlines
CoSchedule - Evaluate the strength of your headline on a scale of 1-100%. Type in your headline, and then tweak it until you get the highest score possible.
EMV Headline Analyzer - EMV is similar to CoSchedule’s headline analyzer, but it determines the Emotional Marketing Value of your headline. A great headline will score well on both websites.
Time Management & Organization
Toggl - Toggl is great for people who multi-task frequently. The website lets you switch back and forth between projects and creates reports that color code the time on each project. Use it to re-prioritize your time or find areas that are taking too much time.
Tomato-Timer - This simple online tool uses the “Pomodoro Technique,” to break your workload into small, manageable chunks. It also encourages you to take short, frequent breaks.
Wunderlist - Everyone loves a good list. Wunderlist lets you keep all of your lists in one place. You can share the lists with other users or email them to people without an account. Start a “blog ideas,” list, a “headlines” list, or a “references” list.
Evernote - Kick your organizational skills into high gear with Evernote. This one-stop office provides a platform to take notes, set reminders, store emails and important documents, set alarms, and plan every aspect of your life.
Images & Graphics
Haiku Deck - Use Haiku Deck to integrate stunning slideshows into your website. Use them as a compelling visual to enhance your content, or add on as a background for your main page.
Quotescover - Create beautiful quotes of your own, or select from a selection of existing quotes. Set them to your chosen background, and choose a style for the font.
Canva - Canva is a social media image tool that offers images of varying sizes depending on the platform you are using.
Image Suite - This WordPress plug-in searches 9 search engines to find non-copyrighted images for your blog or website.
Editing & Proofreading
EssayMama.com - Avoid any messy mistakes by leaving the editing to the pros. Essay Mama’s team of writers can edit or proofread your finished blogs before you post them.
PlagTracker - Find any instances of plagiarism, and replace them with original content from PlagTracker.
Marketing & Sales
Tweriod - It’s important to make the most of your marketing efforts. Tweriod will analyze your Twitter followers’ activity and tell you when to post for maximum visibility.
Buzzsumo - Use Buzzsumo to determine which social media platforms are best for your content. Type in a keyword, and learn how many times that topic is shared on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest.
QuickSprout - Enter your website’s URL address for a full evaluation of your site’s SEO results. The page is on the spendy side (you can spend over $4,000/ month on some plans), but the payoff can be tremendous. The owner claims to have sent over 8 million qualified leads to his clients’ websites.
Hopefully, this list has given you a few new tools to help with the writing process. You might find that some of them work better than others for you. Try to choose one from each category to get started. Add more each week, or as you feel comfortable. And get ready to see your blogging take on new life!
Author: Kenneth Waldman is a freelance writer and content creator. He draws his inspiration out of the traveling. Get in touch with him on Linkedin.
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