7 Online Tools That Have Changed My Blogging Life

As I prepared for a consulting session last week, I realized that I've never shared my favorite blogging tools, or "tools of the trade," with you here. Since I know that many of you are fellow bloggers, aspiring bloggers, small business owners, and/or other miscellaneous online-ers, I thought you might find these tools helpful. 

I may have missed the boat here, and some of you may read this and think, "Is she kidding me? I've been using all of those tools for years!" But, in case you haven't, here are some of my very favorite blogging tools--all of which are completely free. Please note that I use many other tools, as well, but these are the tools that I use on a daily (or in a few cases, monthly) basis:

• Hootsuite: People--Hootsuite allows you to schedule all of your social media posts (!!!). Honestly, I've already scheduled tweets that will go out next week. Psycho, maybe. Helpful, yes. For me, it has been a godsend, as I hate feeling like I have to be attached to my phone or computer, and always thinking about tweeting out links to my posts, etc., throughout the day. If you're a blogger, you need to be on social media regularly--there's just no way around it--and this tool makes it a bit easier.

• Alt Channel Classes: I know that I've mentioned Alt classes here before, but I want to emphasize them again now. Alt is the place to go if you want to learn about having an online brand or blog. They offer regular online classes for bloggers that you can just sign up for and pop into from home--they're just $15 and 1 hour long, and they're extremely helpful. I owe a lot of my blog's growth and development to Alt. Big fan!

• Tinyurl: Super simple and basic--it condenses your long links/URLs into unbreakable and much smaller URLs. Wonderful for Twitter ;)

• Google Forms: Oh em gee, I love Google Forms, and I think that you will too. They're found in Google Drive and are basically a way to create surveys, online questionnaires, etc., for free. There's no cap to how many questions you can ask or how many people can respond (unlike Survey Monkey), and they put all of the responses into a handy dandy spreadsheet. I used a Google Form for my recent reader dress poll, and it was fab. 

• Feedburner: Yet another service provided by Google, Feedburner can be used on any blog and is basically a way to make your blog posts available via email. With just a little work on the backend, Feedburner allows people to sign up to receive your blogs posts in their inbox every day. Basic necessity that helps you reach those people who don't like actually reading blogs. [Btw, if you want to sign up to receive Starr Struck this way, sign up in the sidebar!]

• Mailchimp: This is how I send out my newsletter. As far as I know, it's the best newsletter creator out there. It's easy to use and again, it has widgets that allow you to host sign-ups in your sidebar, on your contact page, or on your Facebook page. Super user-friendly and I love it. 

• Gmail Canned Responses: I'm new to canned responses (just learned about them), but wow, am I loving it! Basically, it allows you to save email templates for emails that you find yourself writing often. Then, when you go to compose an email, you can just choose that "canned response" and it's inserted into the email. No more searching your sent mail to find something similar and copy/paste--it's saved! Highly recommended for those who send similar emails on a regular basis. Here are some helpful directions on how to use canned responses. 

What tools do you use on a daily basis? What am I missing? I'd love to hear what makes your online life easier...

Oh, and for my non-techies who feel totally overwhelmed just looking at this list, let me tell you that I am NOT a techie. When I started my blog I had no clue how to do anything related to blogs--no HTML skills, no idea what an RSS feed was, no clue what I was doing. But, you learn over time. You teach yourself, you take classes, and you fake it til' you make it. I basically find a tool, google how to use it/install it, and then teach myself. More time consuming, yes, but cheaper than hiring someone to do it for you!

Also, for those who are curious, I used Weebly to create my website & blog, and I adore it. It's all drag & drop and again, has made things easy for someone as non-techie as me. I also hear fabulous things about SquareSpace. 

Okay, phew, enough tech talk for one day! 

See you on social media later ;)