Facebook Pixel
Join our Facebook Community

Five Apps to Help You Manage Your Blog

Posted By Guest Blogger 1st of October 2015 General 0 Comments

Five Apps to Help You Manage Your Blog on ProBlogger.net

This is a guest contribution from Cassie Phillips.

If you’re here at ProBlogger, I’m betting you already know writing a blog can be a useful endeavor for a number of different reasons. A blog can help you journal your life or collect ideas from other people’s blogs that will be useful in your life. It can be a powerful tool in helping you keep in touch with friends and family, or you can use it to meet and interact with strangers. It can be something personal to you or something used for your business. Whatever your reasons are, though, you might find it’s a bit tricky trying to keep on top of things and churn out relevant and interesting content to keep your readers satisfied. Never fear, though: there are plenty of apps out there to help you keep organized and on track with your personal goals on the go. Here are five apps you’ll want to remember to have:

1. The Platform App

Of course, the first app you’re going to want to have is the app for your platform, be it WordPress, TypePad, Tumblr, or whatever else. Even if you don’t plan to do most of your blogging from your phone or tablet, seeing your app there on your device can be a useful reminder to either get to work on the next blog or get it posted. On top of that, most better-known blog platforms have pretty great apps these days, making it easy to post from wherever you are, whenever you have a few minutes to kill.

2. The Taskmaster App

I don’t know about you, but for me, remembering when I should be blogging gets difficult sometimes. We have so many obligations in our day-to-day lives that remembering to write things up and post them can sometimes be a challenge. Even if you feel like you’re on top of everything and there will be no problem, it never hurts to have an app to set reminders for when you need to have things finished by. Wunderlist will allow you to make task lists for yourself, set reminders for when things need to be done, and generally just keep on top of everything you have to do, all in a clean, user-friendly design.

3. The Social Media App

If you’re trying to direct people to your blog—even if you’re just trying to get your mom’s attention and let her know, hey, there’s a new post!—you’ll likely want to turn to social media. The thing about blogging is, people aren’t always going to remember to check back to each of the dozens of blogs that they follow. But people often check in on what’s going on on social media sites. It can be a pain to update your status and tweet and go on Google+, etc. each time you post an update. But Buffer will allow you to post the same thing to multiple accounts at once. You can even schedule posts to go out at a later time and track interest in that post. This means it frees up some of your social media time and allows you to do more of the fun stuff of blogging.

4. The Web-Traffic App

Even if you’re not running your site for the purpose of creating revenue through clicks, it can be nice to know how many people are looking at your site. If nothing else, it’s a bit of an ego-boost, right—people actually want to see your site! But if you’re creating a revenue-producing website, it’s important to see how many people click on your site and where they’re coming from. Dashboard for Google Analytics does this in an especially sleek way, and it’s pretty cheap as well.

5. The VPN App

If you’re blogging on the go, you’re likely connecting to public Wi-Fi, whether at a coffee shop, on the bus, in downtown, or somewhere else—oh, the joys of modern technology! Grab the Wi-Fi Finder app to help you out with locating the nearest hotspots. But don’t forget to grab a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to protect your information and make sure you’re safe from potential hackers. Actually, there are a lot of things you should be thinking about when you’re connecting to public Wi-Fi. A good VPN will give you a more secure connection that better ensures that what you do stays private.

Although managing your blog may sometimes feel a bit overwhelming, given the right apps, you’ll find that you have no problem balancing your blog and the rest of your life. Whatever you’re using your blog for, you’ll find that these apps will integrate neatly into your workflow, allowing you to keep doing what you’re doing, in a more productive way.

Cassie is a technology and internet security enthusiast.

About Guest Blogger
This post was written by a guest contributor. Please see their details in the post above.
Comments
  1. I’m using Tumblr platform and it’s a great for me. Also, the Buffer is helping me a lot.

  2. Hi Cassie,

    I’ve fallen in love with a VPN because I blog from all over.

    Gotta have one handy in certain lands. Example; when I traveled to India I needed to log in through a VPN to access financial sites. India is a red flag country. Financial institutions and payment processors flag any transaction being made with certain IP addresses. Even with the VPN I was flagged when logging in to some websites. Perhaps because I’d tried to log in without the VPN. Oh well. Definite must have.

    Ditto my countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka. Spending time in these spots taught me that bloggers need to pay a few bucks each month for these services. Whatever the reason, be it scammers or whatever, certain sites will flag you and lock you out if you log in with local IP addresses in flagged lands. That changes quickly if your IP address is San Fran or NYC. I was able to log in to Facebook in a place like Vietnam – Communist spots sometimes ban social sites – which was way cool. Otherwise I’d be sitting in some back alley cafe just to log in for a few minutes.

    The platform makes the blog. In most cases at least. I went with WordPress from Day 1 and even though I added blogger blogs from time to time I ran most of my online business through my self hosted WP blog. Branding 101. Own your real estate. Don’t squat. Don’t rent. You can be evicted at any time and for any reason if you use free platforms. Pay the $100 or so for WordPress and move forward from there. Love that piece of advice. So glad you shared it, because more bloggers should be aware that hatching your blog from a self-hosted WP platform makes your blogging life SO much easier down the road. Own your brand. Increase functionality. Build a professional-looking, trusted blog and brand. Own it.

    I am not a tools guy but then again I am. Don’t depend too much on more than 2 or 3 but I’d say it helps to manage your blog if you’re willing to use premium or even free versions of some blogs. Just a little bit of scratch and added functionality can help to accelerate your blogging success.

    Add: don’t become reliant on tools. These are add ons, not must haves. Your blogging driver, your content and the connections you make help to grow your blogging. Tools can make your blogging life easier but if you rely on these things to succeed with blogging you are in for a rude awakening. The tools are the window dressers – save that WordPress blog – and your content, connections and community is what really makes your blog go. Create. Connect. Blog to free yourself and to free your audience. Slowly add tools that save you time and that helps you to connect with your ideal reader.

    Thanks for the helpful share Cassie.

    Ryan

  3. Thanks Cassie for these much needed apps especially for an on the go blogger like myself. :)

  4. Amazing article, I manage 3 blogs and it’s a pain having to remember all the time to blog. I love these app suggestions!

  5. We need to manage everything to get best results.Same applies when it comes to blogging, no matter a person is having one blog or more, he should manage blogs properly to keep them on track. Your app suggestions are really unique and helpful.

  6. These 5 apps you’ve shared here are extremely useful.

    Thanks for sharing this with the community.

    Cheers

    Dan

  7. For me, it is not just one app that work but a combination of different apps. Sure top apps providers are great, but they don’t always have all the options that I need. So a combo of apps always saves the day for me.

  8. @Admin

    Hi
    The platform app is the best app to manage blog.
    All apps are good.

    Regards
    Priyanka

  9. Very useful information thanks for sharing it with us!
    For social shares i could add scoop.it as a good place to share your articles and find new writers:)
    and HARO (help a reporter out) if you love to write!

    have a great day everybody!

  10. Hi Cassie,

    Sometimes you read the posts of different authors, and himself to inspire!

    Thank you for the useful post!

  11. Apps are always good for blogs and website to help syndicate extensive reach of content to new audiences without resorting to a paid app service.

  12. Thanks for this blog , i am going to use these app in my future blogs.
    One more thing which app should i use for security purpose(login).

  13. This is a helpful list. In my case, I integrate the social media app and the web traffic app using Tapanalytics reporting tool. It helps me save more time.

  14. Nice app you listed in this post. I already have WordPress, Tumblr, and Google Analytics installed. Its been great as this apps make blogging easier on the go.

A Practical Podcast… to Help You Build a Better Blog

The ProBlogger Podcast

A Practical Podcast…

Close
Open