A Few Must Have Blogging Tools

I still consider myself a newbie blogger even though I have been blogging for over a year. Every day I am learning about new tools and resources to use when blogging, so I thought I would share a few that I recently came across:

1. Gravatar; Have you ever noticed when someone leaves a comment their photo or logo appears right next to their name? Ever wonder how they did this?

WordPress uses a third party company to make those cute little images which is based off of your email address. It is very easy to make. Simply visit the website, select your email address and photo/logo to use. Viola! you have a gravatar!

Biggest benefit of using this service; branding yourself and your blog.

2. Picnik;  It is a photo editing tool that allows you to touch up the photos and even add a watermark or text to them. I always wondered how everyone would add their website as a watermark to their photos {great way to protect yourself from others reproducing them} and then I came across this dandy little site.

Again super easy to use and you don’t even need an account. Just upload your photo, start editing and you are done!

3. Flickr; Suppose you are writing a blog and you want a photo to help attract readers.  Where do you find one? On Flickr you can search their creative commons-licensed photographs for free photos to use on your blog.

Under Advanced Search click “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content” and “Find Content to use Commercially”.

4. TwitterFeed; If you are using Twitter than you definitely want to check out this site.  TwitterFeed is a free service that automatically posts your blog posts directly to your Twitter account.

I know sometimes it is hard for me to keep up with announcing my new blog posts so this is a great service to use and will give you one less thing to do!

5. Tweetdeck; This is a free software program that allows you to manage your twitter account{s} easily and efficiently.  I was having trouble keeping up with managing my two Twitter accounts {@otherhoodllc & @lifewithoutpink} and someone had suggested using Tweetdeck. Oh my god has it changed my whole twitter experience!

Benefits:

1. You can customized the columns and set up groups to follow. This helps keep you very organized and you’ll never miss a tweet while the program is running.

2. You can minimize Tweetdeck while you do some other work on the computer. I have it set up so new tweets pop up on my screen with a cute little ding noise.  I love it because I can still stay in the loop on what’s going on but at the same time I can get some work done. I have to admit though it can become a distraction and at times when I need to be productive I turn off the notification. But its easy and simple to do!

3. You can manage multiple accounts which I am totally loving! I have both of them up on my screen at all times so I can bounce back and forth between the two. This really has been so helpful managing the two accounts.

So here is just a few easy to use tools when blogging and if you have any to add I would love to hear about them!

Meet Life Without Pink

I'm Tina, a wife and mother of two very active little boys. I'm the Co-founder of Girls' Lunch Out {GLO}, a marketing company that hosts networking events for women in social media. I'm also part of the BabyCenter social media team and the Family Expert for P&G's Have You Tried This Yet? Trend Trio.

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Tagged as: Blogging, blogging tips