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Essential Blogging Apps for 2012
Keep your blog flourishing while you’re out
A fresh stream of high-quality content is essential to your blog’s success. These apps will help you make good use of your down-time to produce great content at the doctor’s office, on the subway ride to work, or anywhere else you might find a minute.
1.Tumblr for Android
Microblogging is ideal for on-the-go updating, and Tumblr is one of the best microblogging clients on the market. This app provides a slick interface to post photos, links, quotes, text, or video to your blog in moments. Posting things you find on the move can also give your readers a richer, more authentic experience, since you’re presenting things from out in the world, rather than what you Google or dream up from your home office. It’s also ideal for skimming your favorite Tumblr blogs for inspiration at any time.
2.WordPress for Android
WordPress’s sophisticated blogging client is elegantly pared down for the mobile app. You have access to the same posting options as you would from your home computer, but in a tight mobile format. Obviously you are still limited by the difficulty of typing from your phone, but a phone with a high-quality touchscreen like the Samsung Galaxy can make posting much easier. Just like at home, you can use your smartphone or tablet to track your blog’s traffic, edit posts, and check other WordPress blogs.
3.Nobody’s Reading My Blog
This 9-part ebook by Robin Nixon provides tips on creating an engaging blog that will keep readers (and advertisers) coming. Nixon’s advice covers both the creative and business aspects of blogging, including tips on creating stimulating, controversial, and trustworthy content, as well as getting your blog linked and noticed by somebody besides your mom. It’s free to download, contains no ads, and is a great resource for beginning bloggers. Intermediate or experienced bloggers may find something they haven’t considered, but this is more of a primer than an advanced text.
4.Posterous Spaces
Posterous Spaces is a less-known microblogging client that allows you to post within “spaces” whose readership you control, much like the “Circles” feature in Google+. This is a good option if you have friends or family with varied interests, or if you want to keep blogging audiences separate. Most blogs allow you to customize the privacy level of your posts; but if you know exactly how you want to draw the content line, and you want a fine-tuned, quick interface, Posterous may be the client for you. Tumblr has a larger readership, and the privacy settings obviously limit who sees your stuff, so it may not be the choice for a blogger looking for mass appeal.
5.Blogger for Android
Blogger is one of the biggest and oldest names out there, so if you have a BlogSpot domain, this app will help you maintain it. In terms of features, the app itself is vanilla—you can post like you would on their website, but not much else. Still, it’s free, and if you use Blogger, it’s the easiest way to mobile post.
This app allows you to record, publish, and upload videos and text from your Blackberry to an expanding collection of blogging and social networking sites. It has a simple, no-frills interface that allows you to post to Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, MySpace, Google Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Live Spaces, and eBay in seconds. This ensures that whatever you have to say can be broadcast to as many people as possible, in seconds. If the developers can iron out this app’s design flaws, it could be the only resource you’d need for mobile blogging—but the reported issues are serious enough that you probably shouldn’t rely on VideoSpin alone for your mobile blogging.
Bio: Jane Johnson is a writer for GoingCellular, a popular site that provides cell phone related news, commentary, reviews on popular providers like T-Mobile.
According to Website Magazine, the number of social media accounts in 2011 reached 2.4 billion.
- Facebook: 800 million
- Twitter: 225 million
- WordPress: 70 million
We just launched a website for Earl Johnson, CPA, a local accountant. Earl chose to do a Starter Website, a good choice for folks who just need a 4-5 page brochure website with no added features or functionality.
Mr Johnson’s going to have BeauCreations set up and manage a Google Adwords campaign – a good use for the money he saved on the website. Hmmm. Maybe that’s an idea for a “package” we could offer: “Starter Website and Adwords Campaign“… ?
This is one of the best marketing messages for our industry that I have seen. I’ve taken excerpts, and linked to the author.
“MORE is a full service graphic design, public relations, and marketing firm created out of the belief that in order for you to reach your full potential you must be noticed. ….
…. At MORE we believe in listening to our clients and working with them to achieve their objectives. For us, a job well done is defined by exceeding our clients’ expectations.
We have found our passion, and our goal is to serve as your firm’s graphic design, public relations, and marketing departments giving you more time to concentrate on what drives you.”
I’m please to launch a new website for Anne Chandler of the Chandler School of Etiquette. Anne is a terrific person to work with and she walks her talk, professionally, ethically and personally. We think the website really reflects her style; elegant and gracious but with warmth and wide appeal.
I’ve no doubt that the Chandler School of Etiquette will be a success, as it represents a culmination of Anne Chandler’s considerable professional experience in education and corporate training, as well as her personal passion to “restore civility”.
Google is experimenting with City Pages. If it takes off, this could be important for small business local SEO. And it’s very mobile-device-friendly. It will be quite reliant on your Google Places listing. So that got me looking at my own listing….
Since I work from home and don’t meet clients at home, I’ve always been reluctant to allow my address to appear online. After all, now that we have ” Street Cam”, Google’s will show a picture of my home to all the world – not exactly my idea of privacy.
But the powers that be seem to penalize you for not listing your address all over the place. The “street address” field is required when you activate or update your Google Places listing. They really really really want to list your address – presumable to verify that you’re legit.
All of which makes sense if you are a brick and mortar business, but not if you’re a home office.
So I tried listing the address of a nearby strip mall. Let them show an image of the local Krogers instead of my house! I know – it’s a bit dishonest, but I figure at least I’m indicating what neighborhood I live in and the region I serve. Like I said, I just don’t want to have my street address on the internet.
To be fair, Google now has a box that says “don’t show my business address” – but they still want my address. Today when I visited my Places listing, I checked that box, and removed the shopping center address. So, we’ll see if I get rewarded for this update.
Why am I wondering about getting rewarded? Well truth to tell, I suspect I’m being penalized. You see, I couldn’t find my Places listing no matter what I searched for. Google just doesn’t seem to know it’s there. Here.
In sum (and without sarcasm), I think maybe I was penalized for listing an incorrect address on Google Places, and so I wouldn’t recommend this strategy. But I still don’t advise giving out your home address on the internet. So, this poses a problem for home office businesses that want to have a good listing on Google Places (for local SEO purposes). Now that Google has the “don’t show my address” button, this situation seems to be rectified. Or is it? I guess it depends on how Google weights those with street addresses in their listings over those of us who work from home.
Video on a website can be either very simple or very complicated!
It’s quite simple when:
- There is NO editing needed
- It can be shared via YouTube
- There is no customization of the player (play, pause, volume buttons etc.)
When you share a video on YouTube, it’s made public on their website, and then you can embed it on your website. So people can watch it without leaving your website, but it still has the YouTube logo, and YouTube may “inject” links to other videos. That’s the downside of using YouTube – they control how it appears on your website. Some people consider this a bit unprofessional and would rather have the video hosted on their own site, where they have total control over the appearance But it’s a tradeoff.
The advantages of using YouTube are:
- YouTube is a free video hosting and streaming service that works in all browsers. This is a tremendous advantage, because if you host the video on your own website, it may not perform as well, and it will not look the same in all browsers. In fact, it won’t work at all in some browsers unless a web designer installs custom coding to make it compatible.
- From the search engines point of view, YouTube video is another “vote” for your company, so you get exposure. Likewise, people are likely to find and view it on YouTube – more exposure.
- People are so used to seeing YouTube videos that they know how to interact with them, and they don’t seem to fault you for using a free service on your website.
So needless to say, if you’re concerned about cost, I recommend the YouTube route.
If, on the other hand, you want control over how the video appears (IE using your logo as the first frame), or how the video plays (IE want it to start automatically), then you need some customization. In this case I would expect you need a web designer’s help to do it right. Since video editing, cross browser compatibility, and custom players are all rather time consuming, it is likely that you’ll spend several hundred dollars.
On the bright side, someday we expect that installing video on your own website will be simple. Someday will come when HTML5 is widely used, when video file formats and players are more standardized, and when browsers improve their support for the various options. Someday could be right around the corner!
Well, this isn’t exactly News, since the site was launched months ago. And it isn’t exactly a new Website, since I simply migrated a blog and re-designed the header image.
But it’s a nice website – a WordPress site, with all the functionality that implies. It goes to show how a simple – and inexpensive – it can be to get an online presence in the form of a website that can be edited by its owners.
The Network of Rural Women Producers (NRWP) in Trinidad & Tobago seeks to provide rural women with access to credit for micro-business projects, to contribute to government policies regards the special needs of rural women producers, and to provide marketing support and training. The NRWP is the Trinidad & Tobago chapter of CANROP - The Caribbean Network of Rural Women Producers, which also includes rural women of Barbados, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica.
But my little write-up here does not do justice to the vibrance of this organization. For that, you have to visit the website, and look at their signature event: the upcoming MANGO FESTIVAL!