As with every other online profession, there are levels to the blogosphere and there’s a ladder to be climbed along the way. As you become more advanced in your blogging abilities and your blogs start to expand into popular websites, your list of daily duties will inevitably expand. You’ll be writing more blog posts, reading and editing posts submitted to your blog by guest authors, coming up with headlines, doing keyword research, performing search engine optimization duties, and all sorts of other activities that come with managing a busy blog or a network of blogs.
To help you simplify your role as a blogger or blog owner, you’ll want to use a collection of software to streamline and organize everything within convenient interfaces. More specifically, here are 5 kinds of online tools that every advanced blogger should consider using:
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1. Project Management
Being an advanced blogger means that you’re not just managing a single blog and working on your own posts anymore. Instead, you might have a team of bloggers working around the clock to keep your website growing exponentially. In that kind of situation, using conventional email conversations and spreadsheets to keep track of everything might be slightly more difficult than centralizing your interaction and correspondence inside of a project management system. To see an example of what project management can do, check out this list of the advantages of Agile from Kanbanize – one of the leading agile project management systems on the market.
2. Trend Tracking
As a blogger, one of your main jobs is to stay on top of what’s going on in your niche. While subscribing to the RSS feeds of various industry-leading blogs is one time-tested and proven approach, there are even more convenient and effective ways to discover and track the latest and greatest trends. Most advanced bloggers wind up using a tool like Google Trends to quickly take notice of trending topics on the same day or sometimes even in the same hour that they start trending. You can also use a social media dashboard to stay in-tune with your social network and sync all of your activities into a single control panel.
3. Grammar Checker
Even if you’re a great writer, there’s a chance that you could be overlooking basic mistakes in your haste to keep up with your blog’s ever-growing content to-do list. A grammar checker like Grammarly can help you quickly spot those oversights that might otherwise affect the overall credibility and integrity of your writing. Since many blogs are written in casual tones, there are many advanced bloggers who aren’t even skilled technical or academic writers, but they still manage to get by through the use of grammar checking tools.
4. SEO & Competitive Analysis
If you’re blogging without considering the impact SEO could have on your blog’s overall exposure and traffic, you’re probably missing out on its true potential. These tools have been specifically designed to simplify the process of creating content strategies around popular keywords and search terms.
They can help you create blog posts that are more likely to rank for the specific keyword or niche that you’re targeting, while also helping you boost conversion rates through more targeted content and ad campaigns. In addition to using an SEO tool like Market Samurai to conduct research, you should also do your due diligence in this area by taking an introductory course on SEO through a learning platform like Udemy.
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing is the unsung hero of the internet, as many old-school marketers will confirm. Collecting email addresses and sending out mass emails might seem like a lot of effort and a potential waste of time, but it can actually be done very easily and effectively within an email marketing tool like MailChimp. Within minutes you could be setting up auto-responders, targeted mailing lists, and automated weekly newsletters within a user-friendly interface. Most bloggers start without thinking about having a mailing list and then eventually reach that point as they become better at generating brand awareness and monetizing their blog.
If you want to automate the work flow to send bulk personalized emails to your subscribers, you can use a marketing automation software available in the market.
Using All of the Above for a Multi-Faceted Strategy
If you’re a novice or intermediate blogger, there’s a good chance that you haven’t started using all of the techniques mentioned in this guide. By taking the initiative to start working each of these approaches into your overall blogging routine, you’ll be climbing the ranks and becoming part of the elite group of bloggers who earn more and have higher search engine rankings than most of their peers. If you really want your blog to become an authoritative presence in its niche, you need to tackle the challenge from every side. With a mixture of project management, SEO, email marketing, trend tracking and grammar checking, you’ll be well-equipped to stay competitive.
