Get your blog up and running with these essential (and free!) resources.
Starting a blog has never been easier than right now. It can, however, be overwhelming. With so many sources on the internet—blogs on blogs—it’s understandable to delay starting your very own. First, hop on over to Alexis’ blog post for some straightforward reasons why you need a blog. Now let’s go through some essentials that will get your blog up and running in no time.
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WordPress
At Infomedia, we like WordPress—it is user-friendly and reliable. There are many templates available for creating a blog that you’ll love. Elegant themes are a great price point for new bloggers and more robust than the free theme options floating around online. DIYthemes is another great option. Also check out our blog post on WordPress superpowers if you need further convincing that WP rocks!
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Hootsuite
Monitor your social media accounts for your blog all from one place with Hootsuite. The best part of this free app is the scheduling feature for those of us who’d rather plan out status updates than manually posting every day.
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Blog-Friendly Web extensions
Our team uses a variety of extensions and apps to get things done on our blog. Here are a few all-stars! Grammarly will help you edit your content. Google Calendar can help keep you on a schedule with reminders and help with planning out your content. Evernote Web Clipper is a great resource for bookmarking articles that you’d like to cite in your blog.
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Google Analytics
This can be a game-changer—if you take some time to learn how to us it. Google Analytics is a free service that will help you receive feedback on who’s visiting your site and what they are clicking on. After a few posts, you may find that people are gravitating towards one specific post. That’s great! Experiment with why they clicked and you’ll find a way to focus your readership and find your niche.
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Your camera phone and stock photo sites
Images are important elements to any blog. Users are more likely to click on a post with pictures (preferably ones you’ve taken!) than not. Cameras on our smartphones have become so good that you don’t necessarily need an expensive camera to start shooting. Not a shutterbug? Here’s our latest round-up of free stock photo sites.
Want to get even better at blogging? Check out this month’s Lunch & Learn on Thursday, April 20 at Innovation Depot: “Be a Better Blogger: The Surprising Magic of Content Calendars”
Still not convinced? Let Leslie tell you “5 Reasons to Come to April’s Lunch & Learn.”
What are you waiting for? Get out there and blog!
