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Secrets to Time Saving Blogging: Part 1 Content and Research

L&H Shh, It's a SecretBlogging is extremely important to the Inbound Marketing methodology. Good blogs are updated frequently with dynamic content that attracts customers to your marketing and sales funnel. Great blogs are very time-consuming and can drain you as a writer. So how, how can a busy individual like you blog easily?

What are the secrets to time-saving blogging? Well, you are in luck I’ve just found a brilliant post by Pooja Lohana – bloggingwizard.com with a couple clever little FREE tools to boost your productivity. Check out these great tools for easy Content and Research.


“As a blogger, you have an unending list of things to do in a day. Be it coming up with article ideas, curating content, researching keywords or writing a blog post; it seems like bloggers are always super-busy and some are rather burnt out with the process.

Thankfully, there are tools that come to your rescue and ease the process, making it a breeze without costing you a fortune.

Blog Topic Generator

Birthed by the smart guys at HubSpot, this tool does what it’s called.

The tagline goes: Don’t know what to blog about? Let us think of ideas for you.

All you have to do is fill in the form fields with nouns in your niche (or the broad topic you’d like to cover in your post), and the tool churns out a “week’s worth” of posts for your editorial calendar.

The test:

Just to test out the tool (and for fun), I input three nouns as below:

And the results were:

There’s a tried and tested formula at play that seems to work well especially for list posts. There is nothing perfect in the list above, but it can have potential.

[X] Quick Tips About [Noun]

[X] Things About [Noun] Your [Noun] Wants To Know

If you’re smart about your niche, you can collect some nice topic ideas from this tool. Now, of course, I’m not saying you use the ideas spit out unedited. You will have to make some changes here and there for your topic to make sense. You can also attach your own nouns to the titles.

From the above list, the first topic idea could be modified as “10 Quick Tips to Use Garlic in Your Health Drinks.”

A word of caution: That said, I think overuse of the automatic tool can make bloggers lazy. A good rule of thumb is to collect ideas when you’re brain is too tired to come up with creative ideas. But don’t make it a habit or give up on solid research.

Remember you’re writing for humans, not bots. Balance it out by keeping a tab on what your readers really want. Some ways you can do this are by asking for feedback, monitoring comments from competitor blogs and scouring social media channels for hashtags.

Price: Free.

Hemingway

Hate grammar but want to make sure your posts are readable? Try this simple yet beautiful tool.

Hemingway points out the following in your post:

The number of paragraphs, sentences, characters and words

Adverbs

Sentences that are hard to read

Sentences that are too hard to read

Words or phrases that can be simpler

Passive voice

You can turn each of the above tests on or off. The app gives you a readability score – the lower your score, the easier your sentences to read.

The test:

I passed a portion of one of my recent posts on Problogger. Here are the results:

Not bad! The tool gave me a score of 5 (lower is better) and also pointed out instances of one wordy sentence, adverb and a passive voice phrase.

They have also released a desktop version recently, so if you don’t like to jump online every time, that’s pretty neat.

Price: Online version free. Desktop version for Mac and PC at $6.99.

Atomic Reach

This is an advanced tool I’ve only recently discovered. Atomic Reach is all about creating great content for real people (aka your audience). It works best if you have at least 100 posts on your blog.

They're free tool Atomic Insights is aimed at three types of users: Bloggers, Content Marketers, and Publishers.

Every brand has its own unique atomic score. The tool scores your content based on whether it’s a match with your audience. If your audience is categorized as “Genius” but your content is “General”, it isn’t aimed at them correctly, and your atomic score will reflect that.

The test:

It’s going to take a while for you to set up your account because the more you’re connected with Atomic Insights, the more accurately they can score you. So attach your social media and content (RSS) platforms with it first.

Plus the fact that it works once you have a substantial amount of content on your website makes it useful in later stages of your blogging. That said, it’s in depth and worth a try!

Price: Atomic Insights is free. Paid tools also available to help you with your content targeting."

 


Don't miss Part 2: Design & Graphics where I will provide you with information on how to create free visual content for your blog. Subscribe  to Sociallyin's Insider Blog today.
 
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Jonathan Reeves

I am an experienced nonprofit professional, skilled in Fundraising, Marketing, and Development. When it comes to advancing your organizations mission and outreach, I go the distance, using every networking tool available to reach the target demographic. When not working for a nonprofit or other business, I use my skills to advance historic and genealogical research for individuals, organizations, and anyone looking to know more about the past.

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