The Tools & Technology for Successful Blogging

I've been writing about what's needed to set oneself up for success in blogging.  Most of these decisions made at the front end apply to most online content.  Now, we're almost there, nearly blogging!  If you've been following, there was the foundation of your purpose and ongoing inspiration, setting the direction of your blog, and creating the time for your blog.  

A final element is setting up your tools and technology to make sure your blog makes sense, is easy to find and read by your visitors, runs smoothly, handles comments, and contributes to SEO.  A blogging ecology of success!

First, if you haven't yet, set up a platform for blogging.  I hesitate to make product recommendations, but I can tell you this blog was started on a simple to use, drag and drop platform which I chose because it was really easy.  The goal is to move the blog to my own domain and download the Wordpress.org platform.  The benefits are that it's a common platform, it's easy to maintain, and it has a lot of available plugins, or small software components that add functionality to the platform, like accepting payments, or integrating with social media.  There's a lot more to selecting a platform, hosting, SEO considerations, etc.; do a Google search or email me if you have questions. (By the way, I have no connections to WordPress, or any products mentioned here.)

Part of getting found by visitors is your blog name and your domain name. In most cases these days it's best to incorporate your blog with your business, but that's not always the case. If you are just starting or you're re-energizing your blog, then it may be good to consider a new or integrated name and domain name.  Do a name search, a domain name search, a trademark search, and don't forget to check Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and/or any other relevant social media sites for availability of a profile with that name. 

Here are some other tool ideas to consider for your blog:

• Are you going to send emails as part of your blogging empire?  It's a good idea.  Look into integrating an email marketing system like Mailchimp or Constant Contact into your blog.
• Make sure your blog can help you manage comments and spam.  Disqus and Kismet are two WordPress plugins to look into.
• Look into your keywords for SEO.
• Use something like the All in One SEO plugin for WordPress so that you can easily identify the Meta Title and Description for each post.
• Check out this great list of tools (July 2012) from the Social Media Examiner.

The final thing you want to do is set up a way to measure your goals.  In step one, you identified where you wanted this blog to go and that will indicate what to measure. Google Analytics is free and popular, and there are others that will help you measure more.  I will address this more in a future post. In the meantime, consider one of your measurements to be the stories you receive...like this example which exemplifies the Storycology perspective.

To learn more, read my e-book "5 Decisions: Creating a Blog;" email me to request a copy or with your questions.  I hope I inspired you to keep blogging!