Essential tools when creating a successful Blog

Surely it has crossed your mind to have a blog. The ease with which you can create one, coupled with the desire of people to lead a lifestyle commensurate with his dreams, has led many to consider the option to engage in the digital world.

True, there are many other alternatives on the web to start a business, but today I want to talk to one, me in particular, I love.

Blogs, beyond being a means to express what you feel, have become a dissemination tool which has access to anyone with an Internet connection.

In other words, from your blog you can create change in the world (and I invite you to do it!)

Based on this, I want to show you 10 tools that I consider indispensable in creating your blog, and that without doubt will be routed to create a successful digital business:

1. WordPress:

WordPress blog platform where you live. It is an extremely important tool as it is where you edit, publish and share your content. While there are many other alternatives such as Blogger, Tumblr and Medium, which I like for ease of use and versatility it is WordPress. Now, there are two alternatives within this:

• WordPress.com: This is the simplest and easiest option to handle; and in minutes you can set up your blog for free and have it “live”. However, this is rather limited because there are not many essential features for the growth of your blog.

Note: wordpress.com is a good alternative if you want a blog as a hobby, not as a business model.

• WordPress.org: It is the most complete option is free, but requires some work and dedication. This is a content management system, in other words, is software that you download on your computer, and which must be installed on your server. There are several services such as Bluehost and Hostgator are fairly simple to set up.

My recommendation is to choose WordPress.org, because although some work and requires programming skills, in the end, their benefits and features have no point of comparison in your digital business model.

Read also: The success of a website starts with good analysis

2. Mailchimp:

Some people think that email marketing will disappear, this due to mismanagement that have given certain brands to their databases. However, I think that a well-designed strategy for this channel represents a very interesting source of traffic for your blog.

This channel seems interesting, because unlike other channels such as social networks and search engines, which operate on an algorithm (which is constantly updated), emails reach their destination without being affected by any organic or scope due to the use of keywords.

This slight difference implies that (if properly use your database) you send emails have a high conversion and quality of your visitor is much more profitable.

MailChimp is one of the best alternatives. This is emails marketing providers that offers the service for free as long as your database is less than 2,000 subscribers and send less than 12,000 monthly mailings.

Once you exceed, you should pick a payment of them starting from $ 20 dollars a month, which represents a good investment because the return on your database plan.

3. Buffer:

Social networks have become an important source of traffic for different websites. Whether you have a blog, an e-commerce website or your company.

Communities that are generated there are a very attractive audience for your site, in addition to this; they can become an interesting audience to offer your products or services.

The most important thing is to define, from the outset, in which you will engage social networks and how you’ll do it. This is important because Facebook has a very different purpose and Twitter the same happens in Instagram.

Now, as regards the management of social networks, Buffer is a tool that helps you schedule ahead publications you do in such networks.

This is helpful because you’ll have time to focus on other more important as it is to generate content for your blog aspects.

Buffer allows you to connect your social networks, whether Facebook, Twitter, Google+, among others. Its free version allows you to publish a number of weekly tickets when you wish.

If you want to get other, more complete functionality Buffer, they offer their “Awesome” version which has a cost of $102 per year.

4. Canva:

No need to be an expert in Photoshop or Illustrator to create professional images to your blog and social networks. In my blog I use Canva, a tool that allows us to design images, add text and define certain sizes for different media.

How so different sizes? It happens that the image you use for Facebook is a different size for your blog post, and so does your post on Twitter.

There Canva accounts with different dimensions, filters, and texts for a professional touch to your images. This simple aspect will differentiate you from many other sites that massify your images in order to “reach out at the same time” to their communities.

Best of all it’s free and you can download the images to your computer. Additionally you can buy some images and icons that are priced at $1 and you have 24 hours to use that resource.

5. Google Analytics:

This is the most important tool of web analytics you can count on your blog. There is no other. Rather, if you have a blog and you are not keeping track of your page, you are not doing anything right.

In other words, if you’re not using Google Analytics to measure your visits, know the countries from which you read, the age of your readers and many other statistics that offers this tool, you will never grow better and have a better blog.

Google Analytics becomes the balance sheet and income statement of your blog.

To talk to all the benefits of Google Analytics and all you could do with it would need an item, and even a full blog, to make it deep. Since we do not have that possibility here, I will mention the most important:

• It is a free tool (like everything from Google)

• If your blog is installed on WordPress, its configuration is quite simple. You just have to access the options of your template and insert the script code there that you give them.

• Aspects such as hours of publication, location of your readers, most visited pages and traffic sources must become your evidence when deciding on your blog.

• Learn how to set your bounce rate because many times this does not reflect the reality of your blog.

• You must review the referral traffic your site as often are visits generated in Analytics and not in your site, and ultimately negatively affect your figures.

• The theme of filters is important because it allows you to omit page visits do not constitute the reality of your blog (referral traffic). Since the filters you can “remove” invalid visits not include your own views by putting a filter on your IP.

In short, Analytics is essential to your blog. Install it today. Here they teach you how.

Read also: Earn With A Blog News, Technology or Other

6. Google Adsense:

The question that everyone makes when creating your blog is whether this can monetize and how to generate revenue from it. This is a very valid question, since earnings are an indispensable element in any business model; However, in a blog, you should be aware that it is possible, but in a medium term to long term.

The blog as a business model does not require high investment, but their revenues are projected to medium and long term.

It is very unlikely that your blog starts to generate interesting revenues to be released immediately; because like all projects and business ideas, it needs investment of time, effort and money before you start generating dollars in your account.

However, there are many ways to monetize a blog: there advertising programs as it is Google Adsense, referral programs as Amazon and many other systems as referenced links you generate income.

All you promise great income and commissions, some of them tell you to earn up to 10% of sales, while Google love you saying that there are many bloggers living in your system.

The bad news is that this is not going to live, so you should look for sponsors and companies that are willing to work with your community, not just the typical Google banner anyone interacts with it.

Important note: You must be careful when launching Google Adsense on your blog, because many times, thinking you’re going to generate more revenue, invite all your friends to give clicks on banners. I’ll give two obvious reasons for doing this:

• Google knows everything. This “oracle” by the cookies history of its users know when a person is generating more clicks, known as invalid clicks. If this happens you will draw them immediately to your program and you will never again receive (they say on their website).

• The reason of your blog should not be that people from getting to just click on a banner, but to generate content and talk about something you’re passionate about, something that creates a community which can offer big brands.

Finally, you should keep in mind that these advertising systems tend to disappear or change. Adblock became enemy No. 1 of invasive advertising, and many users are using it to block banners and enjoy content without interruption.

Remember: Google Adsense will not be your financial salvation.

7. Bitly:

As I had said, it is extremely important to bring a record of your activities on the blog; you identify what are the best times to publish, what titles and themes like best, from what social network you visit, what are the characteristics of your users … this is important because you will know which areas to invest your time and energy and which do not.

Bitly is that kind of tools that can help you identify where to focus, and its function is to keep track of the number of clicks it receives specific URL and shorten it.

For example, if you publish an article you can take the URL of this and paste Bitly, which not only shorten its length (something optimal for social networks like Twitter, for aesthetic and number of characters), but will keep a record of how many give clicks, from which countries and at what times of the day.

What it is? If you want to carry a banner metric of an image on your site, or a specific item, Bitly is the easiest way to do it.

8. iMovie or MovieMaker:

Personally I use iMovie, because my computer is a Mac. Whatever software you use, the important thing is do not let go of the audiovisual content.

This has been becoming more content consumption in the world; companies like Google and Facebook are deeply involved in their dissemination (and if not tell your timeline of Facebook with automatic reproductions of videos).

Many people, myself included on this list, they think that video production is complex and you need an expert to generate. True, a video quality requires technical knowledge or an investment to produce them. However, this does not mean you cannot learn something basic, you cannot generate simple checkpoint videos you learn something new, and discarding a content that is leading the digital world.

For example, I believe this simple video through iMovie and a tutorial on YouTube, and despite not being the most complex if it allowed me to share with my community different content type.

If you are not able to generate the video on your own, and yet you are interested in having some, I invite you to seek freelancers on the internet, which is our next point.