I have a blog on my real estate investment and property management website. Of course, I use WordPress, and my goal is to post 4 blogs per week – a pretty ambitious task, since I am not, by nature, a great writer, nor do I always have the time to post. Fortunately, WordPress finds all of my spelling and grammar errors, gives me a pretty solid idea about SEO and the efficacy of my tags. I have also added plug-ins for the extras like social sharing, so that people who read a blog are encouraged to share, through simple buttons that I can place anywhere I want. I love WordPress, but it does not do a large amount of other stuff that I need to make my posts really great. So, over time, I have done the research and come up with 5 great tools that I use constantly.
- Quora: One of the biggest issues I have is coming up with ideas for content. With this great little program, I can search by keyword or phrase (e.g., rental property, home repair and maintenance, property management, etc.), and this little jewel will generate questions on these topics that people are asking. Answering those questions can be the content for lots of blogs!
- Portent Title Maker: Another issue I have is coming up with catchy and creative titles that interest readers right away. With this baby, I can enter a topic and generate a bunch of sample titles, and refresh as many times as I want for more.
- Trust Essays: Sometimes we all feel a tiny bit overwhelmed with constantly updating the blog, writing newsletters, guest posts and doing social media promotion all the same time. Once I’m starting to feel like I’m losing my sanity, I go to Trust Essays for a little copywriting and editing assistance. Their writers are fab and prices are pretty decent too.
- io: It’s so easy to run out of keywords and keyword phrases, and using the same tired ones over and over is counter-productive. You can use this free alternative to Google keyword Planner and get up to 750 long-tail keywords on any query. This has literally shortened my blog planning and writing more than I can say!
- Death to the Stock Photo: I love this! I never post a blog without some type of visual – it just attracts interest! But I also knew that everyone is using tired stock images. Now, every month, I get an email with new stock photos and images. So far, they have been enough, but, if I want more, for a subscription fee, I can search their entire archive by keywords – unlimited.
These are my top five can’t live without blogging tools that helped me grow my blog from day one. What are your favorite tools? Let me know in the comments!