One of the goals I set for myself this year was to blog more consistently. We used to rely on Facebook to share our work, but ever since they changed their algorithm and our posts no longer reach our fans like they used to, we’ve decided that the more consistent we are in posting new content to the blog, the better it is for our readers. This way, our readers know when to expect new content. After a few months of testing out a weekly blog schedule, I’m happy to say that a Monday, Wednesday, Friday blogging schedule has been working well so far this year. I’m excited to share all the posts I have planned! All this leads me to the topic of this post. In trying to develop a good blogging system, I have been using a few tools to help me and they’ve made a huge difference. Since I know blogging regularly is often challenging for photographers, today I thought I’d share my Top 5 Blogging Tools for Photographers. These tools definitely make blogging regularly possible and I highly recommend them to any photographer.
Evernote
If you want to blog regularly, the first thing I suggest is to have a place to write down your ideas for blog content. I love using Evernote, an easy-to-use note-taking tool. In Evernote, I organize my thoughts and ideas for future posts into notes, notebooks, and stacks. I can easily access my notes from my computer, iPad, or phone to quickly jot down my ideas. You never know where you’ll be when you get an idea for a post so it’s nice to have a virtual place to write them down. When I sit down to write a blog post, all I have to do is pull up my Evernote for blogging ideas.
Ellebook Planner Blog Calendar
I love my Google Calendars but when it comes to a blogging calendar, I’ve found that the Ellebook Planner Blog Calendar works best. I just love the printables from the Elle & Company Library because they allow me to visualize exactly how much I’m varying content for our readers in any given month. At the end of each month I sit down and plan what I’ll be posting to the blog during the next month and use color-coded washi tape to schedule the posts. This way I know I’m not posting similar content in the same week. If I have to postpone a blog post I can easily do so by just moving the washi tape to another day.
BlogStomp
This is a game changer for blogging and it’s an absolute must-have for any type of blogger, but especially for photographers. BlogStomp allows you to batch resize (and re-name) images, create collages, and even post images directly to your blog! Thanks to BlogStomp, I don’t have to export images from Lightroom in different sizes for web use. Instead, I export the high resolution images once from Lightroom and then re-size and re-name the images in BlogStomp using the settings I’ve saved in my preferences. I have also uploaded our logo to BlogStomp so that it appears on the images I post on social media. If you’re not using BlogStomp yet, definitely check it out. I promise you will love it!
Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin
Photographers, if you’d like to appear in Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) then this should be a no-brainer for you. The Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin allows you to optimize your posts for a specific keyword and then checks each post to make sure that it includes all the essentials for a correctly optimized blog post. This plugin makes it possible for your blog posts and website to rank higher in Google so it’s essential for all photographers in this day and age!
CoSchedule
If you want your blogging to be consistent, automation is a must! I’m so glad I discovered CoSchedule, a content marketing and social media editorial calendar for WordPress. CoSchedule allows me to not only pre-schedule blog posts days, or even weeks, in advance with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop feature, but also pre-schedule social media posts all in one spot! That’s right! You can post to Twitter, Google+, and Facebook without even leaving WordPress! I love that I don’t need to be at my desk for posts to go live and for our fans and followers to find out about new content. CoSchedule posts and shares our work without us even being at our computers.
And there you have it! I hope that our Top 5 Blogging Tools for Photographers are helpful to you.
