Your Blog Tools

The perfect webmaster’s dream is to have a blog running on AutoPilot – with smart tools making things ticking away nicely in the background. Leaving a blogger with just the job of churning out posts – Perfect world.

Let’s face it, the WordPress back-end is an interesting place to be.
There is so much to fiddle with, Comments to moderate, Stats to check, Plugins to update, Source code to tweak and so on. But these things eat into your time.

Don’t get me wrong these tasks are essential, but wouldn’t it be better if most of it were automated? That is why I love Askimet spam blocker – one less admin task to do and more time to provide value to my readers.

Blog Tools

Saving valuable time as led me to list 5 of my favorite AutoPilot tools.

WordPress Database Backup

This backup plugin automatically backs up data on a regular basis.

Available options

• Ability to specify back-up frequency

• Option to choose where to save back up file

• Select and choose tables to backup.

• Get it here

Posts

Yes, the actual WordPress post functionality.
Generally, I tend to write a number of posts in one go, so I have them sitting in a queue waiting to be published at my specified time.

Available options

• Schedule a publish date and time.

Update services

Update services is a feature within WordPress that automatically notifies submission directories of my new blog post. – It saves me a lot of time.

To locate,  go to Settings – Writing – Updates Services

Aweber

Aweber automatically handles all my email distributions, campaigns and subscriptions on YourBlogTools.com

XML Sitemaps

This cool plugin automatically notifies Google wherever there’s a new post on YourBlogTools.com Get it here

Which auto-pilot tools are you using?

Do you have any questions about these tools?

How do you effectively stay in touch with your subscribed readers?
Which tools do you use to achieve this?
Aweber handles all my email distribution and campaigns.
If you are really serious about building your mailing list with your blog, then this tool would help achieve this.
It also happens to be the industry leader in Email Management System.
It’s a very simple yet powerful system to use – And more importantly it works.

With very little effort, Aweber email system allows you to send bulk emails to your entire mailing list. You can also schedule these emails to be sent at specific times you want.

Especially for a newly formed blog, it is very essential to start building your mailing list from day one and to maintain a relationship with them.

See it in action

One of the key components of AWeber is its Auto-Responder facility.

Subscribers to YourBlogTools.com would have had a taste of this already.

It essentially handles the following:

• Captures user details from your blog
• Verifies and welcomes new subscribers
• Email Campaigns
• And much more

How I use Aweber

On a weekly basis, I interact with my readers by doing the following:

• To broadcast emails to my readers on the fly with new tips and updates
• To schedule blog post email notification.

Why I chose Aweber

With regards to list building, which is quite important to me, I wanted to hit the ground running. Aweber was able to meet my requirements.

What I wanted

• I was a after a proven system that works

• A reliable system

• A complete Email Management System

What I didn’t want

• An unreliable system

• Emails filtered to spam folders.

Try Aweber here

Do you have any questions regarding this tool?

Are you already using Aweber? Share your experiences here.

Imagine you’ve just checked-in to a hotel, reception have handed you your room key, You open the door, only to find your room in a complete state – bed unmade, towels on the floor e.t.c.
I guarantee you would turn back and find somewhere else.

The same principle applies to a blog. When visitors stop by and find your blog a complete eye sore or of no value, they would simply turn back and go elsewhere.

Let’s ponder on a few things

(1) Is your blog clutter-free and presentable?

Do you have a good theme installed?
How many side bar widgets do you have installed? – Must you really have all that?
Do you really need all those social bookmarking icons? Are your text font / size readable by all?
All these factors constitute to the overall appearance of a blog.

Let’s go back to our hotel analogy – although a blog/hotel may have something of value to offer, if first impressions are negative, chances are, the visitor will not return.

Remember first impressions counts, so take time to plan your blog’s structure.

(2) Is your blog offering something of value?

Once that first impression bridge has been crossed, content is your No.1 product of value.
Either you have a news or an entertainment blog visitors are reading your stuff because you have something of value to offer.

Bare in mind, in most cases, visitors on your blog are there simply for their own interests.

What are your thoughts on this?
Have you recently done a stop-by test?
What would you suggest?

Imagine starting a new blog with no plan of making friends – It’s a bit like drafting a post but never hitting the publish button.
Visitors and potential friends don’t just magically appear, we have to actively find them.

Let’s Interact

Let’s check out some tools that would brag about your blog as well as interact with others.

To continue with our series on “Essentials tools for a new blog“,  Engaging your blog with community is a good thing.

Your blog is always going to be in a world of its own without communication channels or means of reaching out.

There are several ways to create these channels,
however, in this post I shall focus on four social media ones. Some of which have been applied to this very blog.

Twitter (widget)

Let’s face it, as of the time of me writing this post Twitter is the biggest thing out there.  A social networking service that enables you to send and read messages – also known as tweets.
If don’t already have an account – get involved here
And of course there are several third party Twitter applications that would give you a nice tweeting experience.
You can also decide to incorporate your Twitter conversation on your blog in a form of a widget. On this blog I am using Twitter for WordPress

Benefits:

• Freedom of self expression in 140 characters.
• Ability to build a group of targeted followers.
• Ability to update your followers with new activities on your blog.
• Incorporate your Twitter conversation on your blog

Twitter Feed

With Twitter Feed, you can auto-schedule your blog post to distribute to Twitter.
Meaning your followers on Twitter would instantly know when you have a new post.

Benefits:

• Easy way to notify the Twitter world of your blog postings.
• One-time setup

Tweetmeme Button

The TweetMeme retweet button is designed to encourage visitors to tweet your blog post.
This would actually be my first time using this widget.
I am keen to see the effectiveness of it.

Benefits:

• Re-tweeting a post
• Displays the number of tweets

Share Button

It essentially does what it says.
The Share This or Share/Save button encourages visitors to add your posts to social bookmarking sites.
There are tonnes of share this application around. The Share button used here is by Add to Any.

Which tools do you use?