10 Tools Content Creators Shouldn’t Live Without
If you’re planning on becoming a blogger or already have a blog then this article is great for you. Within this article we have determined 10 tools we think content creators shouldn’t live without, in order to make your blog to the highest standard possible.
Design
When creating a blog it is important to appeal to all types of readers, the targeted audience and differing technological levels. When considering these factors, having a blog that shows beautiful design, relevant imagery or visual aids and easy navigation with a clear layout. While this may sound like a lot of boxes to tick, it is easily achieved and makes a huge difference, because it all honesty we do all judge a book by its cover! Here are some tools to get the inspiration flowing and broaden your knowledge in the area:
Pixlr Express
Pixlr Express is an application that is a web based photo editor that allows you to edit images easily. This tool is ideal for photography based blogs or even if your blog contains a lot of imagery.
Thing Link
Thing Link is an innovative idea that allows for the users to annotate images or video content with links, notes and even sharing onto social media channels or other blogs. This great idea will make your blog more visually appealing and depth to basic images. Addtionally, the social media feature is a great way to gain hype and a wider audience.
PicMonkey
PicMonkey is a creative tool that assists you in photo editing and graphic design, in order to have an end result that looks professional and beautiful on your blog posts. This is an online based company that delivers in customer experience and opportunity to create imagery that reflects your style and personality.
Gratisography
Gratisography is a free tool that allows for high resolution pictures to be at your finger tips to use within your blog posts. Beautiful, high quality images are added weekly so there is always a vast amount of fresh variety of choice, to find the images that best suit your blog. Additionally, by using such high resolution, beautiful imagery this will make your blog posts look more professional and elite.
Research, Reading and Writing
This is arguably the most important aspect of a blog – what the audience is reading. If done well this can be a great experience and result in a large audience. However, if done badly, this not only reflects badly on the whole blog but also makes the effort put in with design (see above) wasted. Research is essential within this field to really establish yourself as a blog writer and refine the skills needed to write an article to be enjoyed by many.
Feedly
Feedly is an RSS reader that allows you to select from many sites to refine your search to find inspiration from thousands of article ideas. Once more, once you’ve found your inspiration you can save them to Pocket. Essentially, Feedly is a one stop place to access blogs, news, and magazines.
Pocket
Pocket is a very versatile tool that is perfect for those that enjoy their IFTT short cuts. Within Pocket you have the ability to save all your articles, blogs, magazines etc to different personal folders and then access it anywhere on any device. Once more this diverse tool is free to use and has so many added features to play with.
IFTT
This great looking tool shows confidence with their moto being ‘put the the internet to work for you’ and that is exactly what it does. IFTT allows for you to connect different applications, settings, sites and services to benefit the user.
Content
Without taking away from the importance of text within a blog, content does the all important job of engaging and networking the blog itself. Content allows for visual aids, social media links and results in a more rounded blog, more respect from the audience and more opportunity to become established within a wider audience through promotion within social networking. Here are some tools to get you started:
Hemingway App
Hemingway is a super helpful app when it comes to the level of accuracy, use of grammer and word types within a written piece. This app effectively delivers a service to help make the reading experience a lot more easy and enjoyable. Additionally, this app is perfect for a blog context as it highlights when sentences are too long and dense, which is a great tool.
TimelineJS
TimelineJS is a free resource that enables you to build a timeline. However, this is not just any timeline but it allows for it to be composed in 40 different languages, to be visually pleasing and therefore a great visual aid for readers.
CopyScape
CopyScape is a brilliant resource that will prove to be valuable to all users. This website helps eliminate plagiarism within your blogs, helping to keep your personal content authentic and protected. This website is easy to use and delivers a reliable service without a large fee.
