I’ve been blogging for some time now, most of what I have learned I have taught myself. Through a lot of trial and error I have learned what is great and not so great aspects of blogging. Some of the greats include apps, websites, etc. that help doing my blogging a whole lot easier.

Woopra

Along with tracking searches, one might also like to know how their site is fairing day to day. Woopra has been the best analytics tool I’ve used to date, and trust me I’ve gone through my fair share in the last 5 years. With woopra my favorite feature is perhaps the referrals. I want to know where people are coming from, what top links are linking to me, and what my most searched keyword is.

Lijit Search Engine

Knowing what readers are searching while visiting my site is a great way to help me, as a writer, to produce more content that readers are looking to find. Lijit.com offers a great service and wordpress plugin for website owners to see what their top rated search terms are for their blogs. You want people to come to your site and find what they are looking for. So if someone is looking for a good “chocolate chip cookie recipe” and you don’t have one posted on your site yet, then with that single search term you have another post to add to your blog.

Wibiya

If you are a long time reader of the website you might have noticed a new little toolbar displaying at the bottom of the window whenever you view my site via the web now. This toolbar is by wibiya and it rocks in my humble opinion. I got a beta invite just today and already have fallen in love with the toolbar. You can view the most recent posts, go to a random post, view our facebook fanpage, chat on twitter, view our photo gallery, or update your own facebook profile right from the toolbar itself without even having to leave the site. Also their will be notifications for changes to the site, giveaway announcements, etc. that will be displayed whenever something needs to be announced. So despite the short term use of this new application, I’ve already fallen in love and hope to see nothing but good things from this website from here on out.

Facebook Fanpages

It took me the longest time to take the leap to creating a facebook fanpage for my blog. What took me so long I have no idea but once I just sat down and got everything set up it was a piece of cake. Fanpages are great, an exciting way to connect with your readers on a different level. Offer special behind the scenes info., chat in real time, all the fun stuff. And if ever anything goes wrong with my website I can always hop onto the fanpage and let my readers know what is going on. I love the idea of fanpages, I also see it as another way to subscribe to the blog.

Feedburner

Like site analytics and search results, feedburner helps you keep track of how many of your readers subscribe to your site. Yet another useful tool that occurs behind the scenes to help bloggers keep track of their info. With feedburner you see how many people are clicking on a particular article in your feed, how many prefer email updates, stuff like that. Basically feedburner helps me see which articles are hot on that particular day.

Are you a blogger? What are your favorite tools/websites for bloggers?

Disclosure: although I’ve been blogging for a little over 5 years now, I still do not consider myself to be an expert in this field at all. There are other bloggers out there that are more skilled and studied in this area than I am. I do however like to share what I have learned over the past several years. Blogging is about learning from each other and I’m happy to share what I know with you.

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