100 Useful Blogging Tools

Via DailyTekk:
Some awesome-looking new blogging platforms, tools that can help optimize blog content creation, ways to engage readers and encourage loyalty, tools for enhancing blog performance and security, creative ways to embed media in your posts and much more.

NEW & EMERGING BLOGGING PLATFORMS

1. Jux - Your pictures and words fill the page edge to edge.
2. scriptogr.am - Converts markdown text files in Dropbox into a blog.
3. Svbtle - The essence of blogging.
4. Hoydaa - Lightweight and scalable blogging service for Google Apps users.
5. Compendium - Content marketing software (blogging for businesses).

OPTIMIZE BLOG CONTENT CREATION

1. Zemanta - Blog publishing assistant (recommendations and related items).
2. List.ly - List making made easy, fun and social.
3. DivvyHQ – Spreadsheet-free editorial calendar application.
4. SourceBottle - Connects expert sources with bloggers for free.
5. Webdoc – Enables you to create rich media posts in seconds.
6. ScribbleLive - Cover news in realtime with LivePage and LiveArticle.
7. StoryCrawler - Information-gathering engine. Find unique and meaningful content.
8. CurationSoft - Meet your new content assistant.
9. Listiki – Make lists, share lists, read lists.
10. HARO - Help a Reporter Out. Get qualified sources when you need them.
11. Demolistic – Create, manage and discuss lists.
12. Editz - Allows readers to post corrections (grammar, spelling, factual accuracy, and more).
13. Listography – Create a collection of lists and try the list topic generator.
14. After The Deadline – Spelling, style and grammar checker for WordPress.

ENGAGE BLOG READERS & ENCOURAGE LOYALTY

1. socialbungy - Next-generation social content builder.
2. Livefyre - Supercharge your outdated comment system. Go realtime.
3. BuddyPress – WordPress-powered social networking in a box.
4. Wibiya – Boost your website with interactive features.
5. Zooshia - Create your own social widget.
6. E-MAILiT - Helping social syndication happen better.
7. Disqus - Comments platform with awesome features and powerful tools.
8. Gremln - Professional social media tools (starting at free).
9. NewsPin - Become a social media rockstar. Coming soon.
10. Shareaholic - Social bookmarking and sharing plugin.
11. blogfrog - Communities and conversations for bloggers and brands.

BLOG PERFORMANCE & SECURITY

1. Akamai - Web app acceleration and content delivery.
2. Yottaa – Site speed optimization and website monitoring.
3. AlertBot – Website and service monitoring.
4. CloudFlare - Protects, accelerates and keeps your blog online.
5. VaultPress – Automattic’s official WordPress backup offering.
6. Load Impact – Website load and performance testing.
7. GTmetrix – Website speed and performance optimization testing.
8. Blog Metrics - WP plugin that calculates raw author contribution/conversion rate.
9. Pingdom – Uptime and performance monitoring made easy.
10. Which Loads Faster? – Have two sites compete head to head to see which one’s faster.
11. Site Trail - All-in-one free site analysis tool.
12. XCloner – Website backup and restore (PHP/Mysql).
13. blogVault – WordPress backup service.
14. BackupBuddy – Easily backup and move WordPress.
15. Tynt - See what gets copied/pasted from your site.

EMBED MEDIA IN YOUR BLOG

1. Pixlr - Like Photoshop but free and online (fast and no registration required).
2. SoundCloud – Share your sounds.
3. Skitch – Annotate, edit and share your screenshot and images… fast.
4. Screenr - Instant screencasts (just click record).
5. Blip.me – Turn your mobile phone into a voice broadcast network.
6. Curate.Us - Share screen clips everywhere.
7. Cinch – Create and share micro podcasts, images and text updates.
8. BYOAudio – Put audio and video on your website.
9. Aviary - An awesome photo editing solution for web/mobile.
10. Odosketch - Very cool web-based sketching tool.
11. PodSnack – Flash MP3 player.

BLOG DESIGN & THEMES

1. WooThemes - Premium WordPress themes and plugins.
2. PageLines - Drag and drop web design for WordPress.
3. Blogic - Instantly creates a WordPress theme that matches your website.
4. Headway Themes - Drag and drop WordPress design tool.
5. StudioPress – Premium WordPress themes and design frameworks.
6. Graph Paper Press - WordPress themes for creatives.
7. Theme Forest - Premium WordPress themes, web templates and mobile themes.
8. Elegant Themes - Premium WordPress themes.
9. Themify - Awesome WordPress themes.
10. NewWPThemes - Free WordPress themes.
11. RocketTheme - Joomla templates, WordPress themes, Magento templates and more.
12. WTS - WordPressThemeShock. WordPress themes and web design sets.
13. Mysitemyway - A new breed of WordPress themes.

AD NETWORKS FOR BLOGGERS

1. SAY Media – Digital publishing company that works with the best editorial voices online.
2. Skyscrpr – Advertising, simplified. Sell advertising directly to buyers.
3. iSocket – Self-service advertising and direct sales tool for publishers.
4. BuySellAds – Makes buying and selling ads incredibly easy.
5. The Deck – Self-described as the premier ad network for creative culture.
6. Yoggrt – The creative ad network.
7. Carbon Ads – A premium, invite-only ad network.
8. InfluAds – The quality-only advertising network.
9. Fusion Ads – Making advertising beautiful.
10. Advertising.com – Get more return for the same inventory.
11. adBrite – The largest independent ad exchange.

BLOGS FOR BLOGGERS

1. ProBlogger – Blog tips to help you make money blogging.
2. Copyblogger – Content marketing and copywriting articles.
3. Blogging Tips – Daily blog tips plus info on themes and design.
4. TentBlogger – Blogging for fun and profit.
5. BloggingPro – News, plugins and themes for blogging applications.
6. Spice Up Your Blog – Blogger tips, blogging gadgets and design tutorials.
7. For Bloggers By Bloggers – Helping you make your blog the best it can be.
8. The Blog Herald – News, information, tips and commentary on blogs.
9. Daily Blog Tips – Tips for bloggers.
10. Blogging Without a Blog – Your blogging classroom on the web.

OTHER & MISCELLANEOUS

1. dlvr.it - Feed your blog to Twitter and Facebook.
2. OnlyWire - Automated submission to social media sites.
3. Scribe - Simple SEO software from Copyblogger Media.
4. Stribe - Link your website to others to share social interactions.
5. Plinky - Inspiration. You have answers. Plinky has questions.
6. Tagaroo – WordPress tag suggestion plugin.
7. Ping.fm - Update all of your social networks at once.
8. Penzu - Write in private.
9. TestSize.com – Test any website in any browser size.
10. Behappy.me - Inspiration. Receive an inspiring, happy quote in your email daily.
11. MarsEdit 3 – Desktop blog editing for the Mac.
12. Ping-O-Matic – Pinging search engines so you don’t have to.
13. timekiwi - Create beautiful timelines from your blogs/social media.
14. Blog2Print – Print your blog.
15. CoveritLive - Easy to use, scalable live-event platform.

7 Surprising Ways to Grow Your Business on the Twitter Vine

By James T Noble at KISSmetrics Blog:
It’s been hailed as Instagram for video – and that’s a pretty big accolade – so the big question is…

Can Twitter Vine be leveraged for business?

Well if we’re going to find out, first of all we need to cut through the buzz and take a closer look at what Vine is really all about.
The Background on Vine

Twitter unleashed Vine at the end of last month, and since then it has shot up the popularity charts. Vine is an iPhone app that enables users to record looping videos of up to 6 seconds and then easily share them with their Twitter followers.

The app will record for as long as your finger is on the record button, which means users can create video in a single shot or tap the screen at intervals to create a stop animation style video. Six seconds is NOT a long time – but this promotes intense creativity by necessitating you to get to the point quickly.

So if mobile video content trends are moving in the direction of short and social, can entrepreneurs like you and I take advantage of this for enterprise?

Let’s take a minute to remind ourselves about Instagram. In the early days (yes – I know it’s still a relatively new platform) businesses approached Instagram with more than a little trepidation.

However with a dash of creativity and a pinch of smart thinking thrown into the marketing mix, the app really began to take off for those who were brave enough to try it… and it tasted sweet. Now Instagram is a widely accepted content marketing method, and companies like Redbull and Starbucks have demonstrated how to leverage the app for maximum effect – hell, even Obama wielded an Instagram account during his 2012 campaign.

So why shouldn’t Vine be a similarly potent marketing tool? It certainly has the potential, after all dynamic video content has about the highest engagement level around.

The app has taken off quickly. It has an intuitive interface and is already being used by major news outlets and some big name brands. None of you will be surprised that no small part of Vine’s initial success is due to its integration with Twitter – the second biggest social network worldwide. This is great for SEO as videos posted to the app will appear in relevant search engine results, and as Vine supports search hashtags can be used to maximize potential.

Everything looks good for Vine… so how can you use it effectively?


1. Involve Your Audience

Because of its simplicity (there’s no high-tech equipment or clever scripting required, users can just click and create on their iPhone) Vine is ideal for audience participation.

This ‘no-hassle’ aspect keeps the fun factor high, making Vine a perfect platform for high-engagement interactive content like contests.

For example you could ask your audience to submit video clips of them utilizing your products or services in the most imaginative way and offer a prize to the most creative. This will get your Twitter page (and your business) a lot of new attention whilst simultaneously re-engaging old contacts. Use hashtags to boost awareness of your event.

Inflight internet provider Gogo takes it one step further by incentivizing users to take part in their contest by showcasing the prizes up for grabs.

2. Build Narrative

Not only does Vine allow users to upload individual videos, it also allows them to create a series – a bit like a simplified YouTube channel.

This is great for building engagement rich narrative that captures attention. For example all your videos could be distinctly different stories yet come under a single umbrella theme tying them together. Doing this has the advantage of being able to appeal to a much wider audience, and as inevitably one video will prove more popular than the rest, it will allow the others to ride that success and attract more traffic overall.

British company EEUK put together a series of cute Vine videos for their recent Valentines campaign.

3. Social Proof

Nothing endorses like a testimonial from real people – and nothing else motivates an audience to commit like one either. Vine is a great platform to highlight video testimonials.

You could either showcase your most powerful individual testimonials, or you could ask your clients and customers what word they would use to sum up their customer experience and collate these clips into a fast-paced, dynamic and engaging video.

Remember: Don’t forget to include a call to action!

Fashion retailer ASOS invites positive Vine video customer testimonials.

4. Education

People are naturally curious creatures, and they like to know how stuff works – in fact ‘how to’ videos are the most widely searched for online. Vine can be used to create a mini campaign involving a series of ‘how to’ videos to demonstrate how consumers can use your products and services most effectively, or how to install your products in a series of easy to follow steps.

Alternatively, you could use a short video series to reveal behind the scenes secrets, such as the creation process of your products. This not only serves to educate your audience, but it also helps build your identity and inspire their confidence by showing you are open and honest.

Bacardi have put together a ‘six second cocktail’ series with each video demonstrating how to make a different Bacardi-based cocktail

5. Fortify Identity

Companies like Apple and Coca-Cola are the masters of identity awareness and branding, but just because you aren’t quite in their league yet it doesn’t mean your image is any less important, and Vine can be an excellent tool to develop it.

Do your research and set the tone and style of your videos to match your own unique image. Choose your style of and language of expression carefully to most resonate with your target audience… And don’t be afraid to show personality and humanity – it will only work in your favor. Simple techniques you could try include introducing your logo in a vibrant new way, or create a video focused on conveying your company mission.

Moose Tracks Ice Cream use their distinctive mascot and inject some humor:

 

6. Promotion

Perhaps the most obvious way to use Vine, it is nevertheless undeniably one of the most valuable. Treat the medium like the movies and shoot a 6 second teaser trailer for an upcoming new product or event to really entice potential customers.

Make sure you include a link to more information, or better yet – directly to your landing page. You could also use similar tactics for anticipation building countdowns or attention grabbing reminders too, for anything from webinars, events, giveaways, special deals, discounts or contests.

Check out this teaser trailer from Taco Bell:

Top tip: The most successful ‘mini adverts’ will motivate viewers to engage, comment and share – so plan carefully and get creative!

7. Get Personal

You’re not a faceless corporation, you’re a caring, sharing business made up of real people with big ideas – so maximize Vine to get that message across.

Share behind the scenes video snippets of you, your employees, your work environment. Use carefully edited clips of your team at company events or fun workshops. Compile brief interviews with your staff asking them to say how they benefit the most from being a part of your business to convey your company culture.

If you’re a one-man-band show them your desk with the photos of your wife and kids and the view out your window, or tell them what you love about your business. Let your audience get to know you better on a personal level, it will ramp up their trust factor and engage their interest on an emotional level.

In the example below KFox 14 News shows us behind the scenes:

It’s early days, and right now this Vine is only a bud, but if the success of its static counterpart Instagram is anything to go by, the Vine is rapidly going to become a beanstalk – and I for one want to be a giant at the top of it… do you?

About the Author: James T Noble makes small businesses bigger. He’s worked with some of the world’s largest brands and companies to market their products and services online – including Disney, Microsoft, 20th Century Fox, Virgin, Coca Cola, MTV and many others. Find out more and read business growth tips at http://www.JamesTNoble.com

3 Quick Tips for Building a Solid #SEO Foundation With Google Webmaster Tools Data

By Crispin Sheridan  at ClickZ:
Google Webmaster Tools is one of the most powerful tools available to search marketers, as it provides direct insights into how Google views your website; and best of all, it's free! However, if you're not involved deeply in the day-to-day SEO efforts or are not well-versed in some of the more advanced tactics, Google Webmaster Tools can at first be an overwhelming and daunting platform to examine. In this post we'll review five sets of data for quick SEO wins for small, medium, and enterprise-sized sites alike.

1. Crawl errors. The crawl errors report provides insights into crawling/indexing issues that Googlebot encountered while visiting pages of your site. Ensuring that Google can accurately and cleanly access all valid pages of your site while not wasting time attempting to access invalid pages is fundamental in ensuring that it has an accurate picture of your site as a whole. There are various types of crawl errors that may be reported on, including URLs that returned Server Errors, Soft 404 Errors, Access Denied Status, Not Found, Not Followed, and Other. In most cases, you'll want to review the list and determine whether or not they should be indexed by the engines, and if not, where to 301 redirect them to in order to preserve any SEO value and/or user experience.

How to access:
Health -> Crawl Errors. From here you can select either web errors or mobile errors.

2. Search queries. The search queries report provides insights into keyword and URL-level information around the number of impressions received via organic search as well as the number of clicks (and therefore CTR) and the average organic position that your site showed up in. Some excellent optimization opportunities can be gleaned from this data by simply reviewing which keywords are receiving the most impressions and clicks but are not ranking in a favorable position. For example:
- Download your data to CSV and begin by sorting by impressions
- Add a filter if average position is greater than three
- Add another filter to the queries to remove branded phrases

What you're left with are keywords that are resulting in a lot of impressions but do not rank in the top three positions on average. Adding further filters based on click thresholds will allow you to isolate keywords that you may want to focus optimization efforts around. Also, you can marry this data with conversion data from your analytics package to see which ones are actually resulting in KPIs.

How to access:
Traffic -> Search Queries

3. HTML improvements. The HTML improvements report is designed to give you quick insights into improving the title and meta description tags across your website. For enterprise-level sites there is often a wealth of information here that makes identifying problems on a larger scale easier. Included here are listings of:

Duplicate meta descriptions: Meta descriptions, while not visible on-page to visitors, are visible within the search results as the snippet of text below the link. The keywords used within the meta description do not directly influence your organic rankings, but can improve the click-through rates of your result, which can have a positive impact on rankings. Review this data to ensure that all meta descriptions are unique and highly relevant to the content of the page. Duplicate meta descriptions can oftentimes uncover duplicate content issues that you may need to take more drastic steps to correct instead of simply writing a unique description tag.

Long and short meta descriptions: In addition to ensuring that all description tags are unique across your website, it's important to aim to not exceed around 155 characters in length because that's all Google will typically display. While going over by a few characters isn't necessarily going to hurt you, the content will be cut off in the search results. In extreme cases of large blocks of content in the meta description tag, Google may deem this an attempt at spam and devalue the page.

On the other hand, Google will also alert you to description tags that are too short - typically one to three words only. Oftentimes if a meta description is too short or not relevant enough to the content, Google will take snippets of text from the page and use those in the search results instead. Therefore, it's important to make sure you are fully leveraging the 155 characters to get your messaging across the way you want.

Title tags: Title tags are one of the most heavily weighted on-page elements for targeting keywords and achieving higher rankings in organic search. Because of this, it's critical to ensure that you are fully leveraging the tag on every single page of your website while not going overboard and looking spammy. Similar to the description tag, each page on your website should have a unique and highly relevant title tag that includes the keywords for which you are aiming to rank. Within the title tag section of Google Webmaster Tools you can identify where you have missing or duplicate tags, as well as which are too long, short, or are non-informative. If there is only one report that you look at within Google Webmaster Tools, let it be this section, as it's the quickest and easiest way to get the biggest bang for your buck if you have an excessive amount of warnings.

How to access:
Optimization -> HTML Improvements

Beginning your SEO efforts with these three sections within Google Webmaster Tools will allow you to start the process of building a solid foundation for your site's crawlability, on-page optimization, and keyword targeting. However, there is a vast set of data and advanced optimization options offered throughout Google Webmaster Tools that you should spend time examining and with which you should become more comfortable. While these Google tools and data here are great, you shouldn't ignore those being offered by Bing's version of Webmaster Tools either. I think Bing's tools have become increasingly powerful and useful to search marketers over the last six months. Going beyond these three quick tips, which areas of Google Webmaster Tools do you find to be the most useful in your SEO efforts?

Crispin Sheridan

Facebook Finally Adds 'Reply' Option to Comments

By Samantha Murphy at Mashable:
Facebook announced on Monday it is rolling out a new feature so users can reply directly to comments left on their page. Finally.

Followings months of testing, the social network aims to make navigating through conversation threads easier with the new Replies feature. This means that, instead of having to leave a response to a friend's comment way after new ones have been added, you will be able to address each individual comment. Responses will be posted under the original comment too.

The site is also prioritizing comments based on engagement — the most active and popular ones will surface to the top of your posts. This will be especially helpful for pages with thousands of followers.

"You and your readers will have the ability to reply directly to comments left on your Page content and start conversation threads, which will make it easier for you to interact directly with individual readers and keep relevant conversations connected," said Vadim Lavrusik, Facebook's journalism program manager, in an official blog post. "Also, the most active and engaging conversations among your readers will be surfaced at the top of your posts ensuring that people who visit your Page will see the best conversations."

Read the full story at Mashable

#INFOGRAPHIC: The State of Cloud Storage in 2013

In the last year, Cloud Storage Providers (CSPs) delivered over an exabyte of data under contract. This astonishing growth heralds a new era for how storage is delivered and consumed. After months of testing, hundreds of engineer man-hours, and countless discussions with the cloud storage providers, the team at Nasuni is ready to declare one cloud storage provider better than all the others.

This Infographic is Published by Nasuni

The State of Cloud Storage in 2013 infographic by carolcavaleiro.