When you start a business blog or begin blogging for your business (by offering guest posts to other sites) there’s so much to think about. Business blogging can be a really great way to build a following, to demonstrate your expertise, keep readers up to date on business related developments and help you to be part of your online business community by contributing thoughtfully to relevant conversations. Coming up with creative, small business blog friendly topics is only the first step. Then you need to create informative, beautiful posts which sell your brand, build your profile,  and keep readers coming back for more.

Blogging can be really fun, but it also can be stressful, time consuming and challenging. The following are tools are resources that I could not blog without. They give me inspiration, help me focus and provide me with important details on the effectiveness of my tactics.

Wisdom, Guidance & Inspiration:

If you’re a self taught blogger (and really who isn’t?) these experts in the field will teach you the essential concepts to make your blogging experience meaningful and effective.

Tim Ferris’s Blogging Tips:

Tim is considered one of the world’s most successful bloggers, and he happily shares his tips and strategies through his blog.His recent post “Blogging by Numbers: How to Create Headlines That Get Retweeted” is a must read and I watch his video “How to build a high Traffic Blog without Killing Yourself” about every 4 months just to keep his ideas fresh in my mind.

Anything written by Seth Godin:

Seth was called “the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age” by Business Week.  His book “Unleashing the Ideavirus” is the most popular ebook ever written downloaded by more than 1,000,000 people His work has been featured in USA Today, The New York Times, The Industry Standard and Wired Online, Ideavirus hit #4 on the Amazon Japan bestseller list, and #5 in the USA. The Big Red Fez, Godin’s take on web design, was the #1 ebook (worldwide) on Amazon for almost a year before it was published in paperback in 2002. The Miami Herald called it one of the best business books of the year. Seth is the Godfather of “permission marketing” the fundamental foundation for blogging as a marketing tool.

Metrics

Blogging for business is about generating measurable results. These tools will help you maximize the effectiveness of your blog writing to help improve SEO and make sure you are staying on topic!

SEOMoz Rank Tracking Tools:

Easy to use tools like OpenSite Explorer and Linkscape help you to monitor how you are ranking for your keywords so you can make sure you are targeting your efforts effectively. Their

Google Analytics:

Google Analytics is the gold standard for analyzing website traffic and marketing effectiveness.  “How to Use Google Analytics for Beginners” is a great intro to all the ways you should be using Google for your business blogging.

Making Images for posts

I’m a visual person, and so I try whenever possible to include rich, interesting and dynamic image in my posts to make them engaging and beautiful!I personally respond better to blogs which include interesting visuals that draw me into the content in the posts and so I try to create useful or interesting images whenever possible.

Mac Screen Shots:

About 95% of images I create myself come from Mac screen shots. By pressing command shift 4 I get an adjustable sized window which I can use to select a perfectly sized image on my screen.

Google Doc Presentation:

If I want to create an image from multiple screen shots, add comments, highlight or insert arrows I place all of the different pieces into the free google docs. Once I have what I need I can either save it as a file or take another screen shot!

Polyvore:

I love this collage interface, it’s so easy to use and has really beautiful fonts to overlay onto my posts. I used it to create this image for my post “Essential Ingredients for Small Business Success“, which I think makes a fun and exciting change from a photograph.

Essential Ingredients for a Successful Small Business