Starting out on a whim as a new blogger was tough, I started out on blogger and now have both blogger and wordpress dot org. I thought that was the only tools available to me to use for blogging, I thought I just had to log into google navigate to blogger and that was that. As I mentioned in Starting Out networking helped me learn a lot about blogging and over the last 18 months I have realised there are so many apps out there to make blogging easy as well as networking and promoting your posts. Today I wanted to share 5 apps that I used daily for blogging which have made my life easier. I have two phones (Iphone for work, HTC personal) and on those these phones Apps act differently, at least for me.
Blogger & Wordpress Apps - These are my little haven Apps, when I get an idea and do not want to jot it down I use these two Apps to write the posts. Sometimes the ideas are short and sometimes it's a complete post written at the spur of the moment. What I love about both Apps is even when I am traveling on the train underground and I do not have internet connect the post is saved as a draft local copy - this means that if I logged onto the computer and fired up Blogger or Wordpress these posts will not yet be on there because they are local copies but this is easily fixed by going back into the mobile version, refresh and save (provided you have 3G or wi fi) and it syncs up. Once you refresh the site on the computer it will show up. Of the two operating systems I have (Apple and Android) for Blogger and Wordpress Apps I prefer to use them on Apple as they are more user friendly and are easier to use than on my Android, this could be just on my HTC and not Android in general.
Facebook App - This is a no brainer, I am sure everyone with a smartphone has the facebook App especially bloggers. I had mentioned in Starting Out post the importance of utilising facebook as a tool to promote your blog and content. It is not easy to start out but once you find blogger groups which support blog interactions you're good. My facebook group the Lovely Bloggers is just starting out but it is a platform I have opened for fellow bloggers so we can grow together. I prefer to use the Facebook App on my iphone than HTC as for some reason facebook links do not work.
Twitter & G+ - There are so many bloggers out there who underestimate the power of twitter and google plus groups. Over the last 18 months my twitter stats have rocketed and my G+ stats are making there way. When I started my twitter account I had 5 friends who are real life friends and that was it, I followed a few brands I like and few youtubers I was aware of and that was it nothing more. When I started blogging I was not sure about posting on twitter until I so one of the bloggers I followed posted a post on twitter which got interaction that made my resolve for using twitter and same applies with G+ they are very important in building up your blog and getting interaction. Other experienced bloggers can explain the impact of a twitter tree I have tweets that have an outreach of over 12k you can imagine it is a lot. Supporting each other as bloggers, retweeting, favoriting all this leads to such outreach and even great interaction on posts, tweets and blogs in general
Bloglovin - When I want inspiration or have long journey ahead of me this is where you will find me. I follow over a thousand blogs on bloglovin and I have no idea how many I check out, one time I made it my business to comment on over a 100 blog posts from bloglovin when I was traveling on my 4-hour journey. I managed to do it plus more, what I saw was not what I was expecting I got back interaction on my posts that week my website visits rocketed and I was amazed. I was doing this to show support and not to get support back, I was doing what I call the blogging deal of the day - do something for fellow blogger without requesting anything in return.
Hootsuite - I love this App especially if I have lots of posts scheduled in advance and I want to schedule tweets, facebook posts and even G+ posts to go out when I want them to. I will say I do not always use it but when I do I love it. I am currently using the free version of it but you can always upgrade to get more features. I am happy with the features I am using it for now, but in the future for example when I will be really busy and want to schedule posts for my new
blogger facebook support group then I will upgrade it but for now I am good.
Instagram - Not many people realise the power that Instagram harbours, as a blogger or just people who love instagram you post a lot of pictures of what you like, could be your kids or foods or places you visit etc. One thing you should use instagram for is blogging, you can share the main picture in your post and add the blog post link in the comments or better yet in the profile. This I have seen has helped to drive traffic to my sites and my blog in general so definitely recommending to all.
What are some of your favourite blogging Apps? Do you use any of the above mentioned?
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Labels: Blogger Support, blogging
