5. Feedly
•• It is a popular alternative to Google Reader
•• It is very similar to Google Reader.
•• It has a cleaner interface and more options than
Google Reader.
•• Moving from Google Reader is a painless
process, offering a synchronization option.
7. Trapit
•• You can “trap” various topics.
•• It aggregates articles from around the web on
these trapped topics.
•• You can discover new blogs and trends within a
niche.
•• You can trap very specific topics.
8. Pulse
•• It is very similar to Trapit only without the
opportunity for specific subjects.
•• It seems to get the majority of its content from
more of the major blogs/publishers, so you
won’t have to sort through some of the lower
quality blogs like you do in Trapit.
•• It is a great source of trends within your industry
or niche.
9. Google Trends
•• You can enter a phrase and Google will show
you how it is trending on their search engine
and other related keywords that are “rising”.
•• Use this in combination with previously
mentioned tools (discover trends, then use this
tool to see more opportunities) to stay on the
pulse within your niche.
10. Google Alerts
•• It will help you discover some of the trends
within your niche.
•• Start using it right now.
•• Use this tool to get constant alerts on terms
and sites of your choosing to see what other
bloggers are writing about.
11. Talkwalker Alerts
•• It is another perfectly good replacement for
Google Alerts.
•• It is so similar to Alerts, if you visit their website
(save for the minor design differences) you
would think you were setting up an alert using
Google.
13. Inbound.org
•• This is a website/tool that unfortunately is
exclusive to issues of SEO, digital marketing,
content marketing, etc.
•• Try to find a similar website in your niche that
you can get inspiration for content from.
•• This is useful because if you visit it enough, you
may start to notice which topics your niche
finds most valuable.
14. Reddit
•• There is a subreddit (or topic/subject/niche) for
everything you could possibly think of – and
then some.
•• Find a relevant subreddit, see what people are
talking about/upvoting, and get inspired.
16. Evernote
•• You can keep track of just about any thought,
link, or image that you want into an organized
system of notes.
•• Use it to keep track of content ideas that you
come up with, articles that you come across
that you love, and just about any other thing that
you need to remember.
17. Wunderlist
•• It helps you create lists.
•• Its delightfully minimalistic approach makes
creating and organizing lists a breeze.
•• It helps to increase your productivity.
18. Google Calendar
Use it to create editorial calendars (especially
useful for the blogs with multiple authors), keep
your future blog posts organized, and keep you
on track for publishing.
19. SelfControl
•• Use it when you really need to get something
done and cannot risk the temptations of your
favorite distractors.
•• You can blacklist any website you want for a set
period of time (for up to one day).
•• Make sure you really want to blacklist it,
because once you hit the start button you will
not be able to reach that website in any way on
any browser until that timer runs out.
20. Focus Booster
Use it to effectively utilize the Pomodoro
Technique to maintain productivity throughout
the day.
22. Google Docs
•• If your blog or website has multiple authors or
editors, it is an excellent tool for collaboration.
•• You can use it to begin writing a post and have
any other person that the document is “shared”
with to contribute on it in real-time.
•• It is especially useful for real-time collaboration
with remote employees.
23. After the Deadline
•• Install the browser extension and activate it
whenever you want instant contextual spell
checking, advanced style checking, and
intelligent grammar checking on the blog post
you are writing.
•• It acts as an additional defense against
grammar and spelling mistakes.
24. Plagium
• If you manage content for a site, this is a
great (and free!) tool that allows you to quickly
check if a block of text was already published
elsewhere on the web.
• With a recent spike in guest blogging, it is highly
recommended to use this if your blog frequently
accepts guest blog posts in order to avoid
accepting plagiarized blog posts.
25. SourceBottle
It provides journalists and publishers with sources
for content that they are writing and experts on
a topic an opportunity to be a source, which is
great if you want to build authority within your
niche.
27. GIMP
•• It is the best open source image editor available.
•• It is easy to use open source.
•• It offers a considerable amount of support and
documentation for a free product.
28. pixlr
•• It is a free image editing solution.
•• It offers three different solutions: Pixlr-o-matic,
Pixlr Express, and Pixlr Editor.
•• It is a great solution for bloggers who want
to quickly edit images without starting up RAM
heavy image editors.
29. thinglink
•• You can “create rich images with music, video,
sound, text and more.”
•• You can tag images with touch points that give
more life and context to the image.
•• It is a great, fun and unique way to further
engage your readers.
30. Aspect Ratio Calculator
•• It is a very simple tool that is dedicated to only
one thing.
•• You can use it to quickly find correct
dimensions of an image that you want to scale
using HTML markup.
31. Page Ruler
•• It is a simple tool.
•• It is available only to those with Chrome.
•• You can quickly get the width or height in pixels
of whatever is on screen.
•• It is a good way to see what dimensions would
look best when you are previewing your blog
post which can save some time by not having to
guess and test.
32. Color Picker
•• It is a Chrome extension.
•• You can quickly see the hex code for any color
that is on screen.
•• It allows for quick CSS markup or it can save
you the time of taking a screenshot, opening
that in an image editor and then discovering the
color from there.
34. Google Keyword Tool
•• It is a must-have tool for any blogger.
•• You can enter search phrases (or parts of a
potential blog post title) and see how much
search traffic it gets during a month.
•• It offers other keyword suggestions.
•• It is very useful to see what terms are worth
optimizing on your site and the competitiveness
for each one.
35. Übersuggest
•• Are you having trouble thinking of a blog post
title even after using Google’s Keyword Tool?
•• Do you have a good title but it isn’t as relevant
as you would like it to be?
•• Enter key search phrases or any other ideas that
you may have using this tool and get hundreds
of similar search phrases.
36. soovle
•• It is similar to Übersuggest.
•• It returns you the most popular search terms
that are most closely related to whatever you
enter. It is not exclusive to Google. It also
provides results from Amazon, Yahoo, Bing,
YouTube, Answers.com, and Wikipedia.
37. Yoast
•• It is easily one of the best SEO plugins for
WordPress users.
•• It makes it easy for a typical blogger to optimize
their post for SEO and see how their blog post
will appear on the search engine results page.
•• After you choose a focus keyword, it shows you
where it may be useful to include that phrase
(mostly in the meta data) and reminds you of
basic SEO best practices.
38. Majestic SEO
•• Use it to see how many backlinks your posts
are getting, where they are coming from, and
a plethora of other information that is useful to
anyone engaged in search engine optimization.
•• It is free with registration for the basic features
but requires a membership for anyone who
wants more information.
39. Open Site Explorer
•• It is similar to Majestic SEO, but offers fewer
features to the blogger on a budget.
•• It offers the site’s domain authority and the
page’s page authority – something that Majestic
SEO does not do.
41. sproutsocial
It is a social media monitoring tool:
•• get a quick overview of all of your accounts on
the dashboard
•• check out your smart inbox
•• see how your tweets or updates to your
timeline are doing
•• schedule your messages
•• get full reports
42. MailChimp
•• If you are considering email marketing, look no
further.
•• It is one of the best and most frequently used
by amateur bloggers and SMBs alike.
•• It offers you e-newsletter templates to choose
from. You can customize every little thing and
make it exactly how you please.
•• The reporting features that are offered are very
thorough and they make A/B testing your emails
easy and fun.
43. Lucky Orange
• It provides unique analytics about your site that
you may not see in Google Analytics – all at a
fairly reasonable price.
• Two of the most notable features are the mouse
heat maps and the visitor recordings.
44. Wibiya
•• It places a bar at the bottom of the browser
window encouraging visitors to make a certain
action.
•• There are several options available as of now,
including social buttons, discount offers, and
recommended readings.
•• This would be a great way to increase site
engagement and place your social buttons in an
easy to find location.
46. Zemanta
•• Related Posts
•• Editorial Assistant
It helps you increase user engagement, increase
traffic from other related sites, keep track of all
this using our real-time analytics, and optimize for
mobile.
48. Polldaddy
•• It provides surveys to get customer and reader
feedback.
•• You can create unique surveys which you can
then turn into blog posts that your audience will
be interested in.
49. Odosketch
•• It provides a canvas and a set of cool brushes
and lets you go to town.
•• You can share these sketches and see the
process that the artist went through in creating it.
50. Quickmeme
•• Using memes in your blog posts can be a great
way to show that you are in tune with popular
internet culture.
•• You have to know how each meme is used, and
you have to have some good copy in mind.
51. Brought to you by
Tin Dizdarevic, Publisher Development Director, Zemanta
E: tin@zemanta.com, T: 646.207.4636
Let us know how we can help you