When it comes to blogging you’re not alone. Any issue you may encounter, any add on you’d like to include or program you’d like to connect with most likely has a plug-in to help you. Blog tools are plentiful in today’s growing community of bloggers and they can really help you set up a professional and successful business blog that meets all your expectations.
While there are far too many to mention them all, here’s a few of our suggestions of what should be considered the most important blog tools to keep in mind when creating a business blog.
1. HubSpot Blogging Software
Why not begin with our favorite blog tool and the one we use most often. HubSpot’s blogging software is built with business blogging in mind and has tons of great features that prove valuable to people looking to promote their business and drive traffic to their website.
Not only can you create, preview and publish all from one spot but it also has SEO tools built right in so you can make sure your content will rank high in organic searches before you put it out there. As you enter content it keeps a tally of how many keywords your post contains and makes suggestions on what titles would have a better SEO ranking when necessary.
Other capabilities include:
- Calls-to-action and landing page templates that allow you to include offers in your post to drive traffic and convert leads.
- Create and customize emails to your subscribers.
- Track page views and comments so you can determine what topics generate the most traffic among your readers.
- Your content is automatically optimized for mobile viewing.
- Choose what social sharing buttons you would like to include and position them on each of your blog posts so it’s easy for your readers to share your content.
- Offer your readers subscription options so they can choose how often they receive blog updates from you.
2. DropBox for Business
We’ve all learned the lesson about backing up your files, so why should you be taking chances with your blog content? Share your blog posts with DropBox so you can recover deleted files and roll back to previous versions of your blog as far back as you’d like with the unlimited version history.
You can also easily share data with other team members that are contributing while ensuring you are using a secure network. DropBox shows its users just how secure they are by offering a remote wipe so if someone’s computer is lost or stolen you can remotely erase the DropBox from that particular hard drive instantly.
And don’t be worried about not having enough space. All DropBox accounts start with 1000 GB that increases as you grow, but should you find yourself in need of more room in the cloud contact the company and they will increase your space for free!
3. Trello
This free project management software is another one we utilize over here at New Breed. Its super simple interface makes it an easy blog tool to start using. Just organize your projects into columns, than you can assign posts, add comments, and set deadlines with alerts for each team member. We created an “In Production” board to manage blog posts that are being worked on. As the post moves along in the process it can be dragged and dropped into the next board, “In Review”.
Does it get any easier? We don't think so.
4. Survey Monkey
It’s important to engage with your audience. Getting feedback from your readers is what keeps you on top and ensures great customer service.
Survey Monkey makes it fun and easy for people to give feedback. Customize survey questions, design a look that fits your brand, run an A/B test to find out what gets the best response, and the best part? You can view the responses to your surveys from within your contact list and then segment your contacts based on their responses. Segmented mailing lists have never been easier!
5. Google Keyword Tool
It never hurts to get a little help when it comes to SEO. With this blog tool from Google you can get insights from the experts. It allows you to search phrases or parts of a potential blog title to see how much traffic those words generate. This tool will also offer you other keyword suggestions and show you a ranking of the competitiveness for each keyword.
The possibilities with blog tools are limitless and new ones are being released daily. They can really help you step it up when it comes to your business blog and get the most out of what blogging can do for your sales.
