Sharpen your blogging skills with helpful tools

This is why it's essential to have the right blogging tools, and know how to fully use them in order to improve your organisation. Let's face it, even the biggest brains need at least some help.

As professionals, it's essential to use the most efficient tools to help you work proficiently to ensure that what you put out on the Internet is your best all the time. There are plenty of blogging tools to choose from with some being better than others.

The following are some of the most beneficial blogging tools to have:

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WordPress editorial calendar

This blogging tool is especially helpful for those that are visual. Looking at what you do and do not have scheduled in the current month is a very simple aide in the blogging world, and very effective. It will allow you to plan and fill in what you need to do, as much or as little as you want. If you're a go-getter and like to get blogs done before they're due, you can choose when they'll be posted, and view it on the calendar. If a due date changes, you may drag and drop your blogs on the calendar to change when it will be posted. Additionally, you'll be able to manage the posts of multiple authors from this trusty WordPress calendar tool.

Here are just some of the beneficial ways you can stay organised with a WordPress editorial calendar:

• Keep track of all your posts, and when they'll be posted to make sure you're always on track with your list of blogs to do. You can even utilise the intuitive drag and drop to change post dates.

• The title you initially choose isn't always the title you want, but you can Quick Edit titles, contents, and times with the editorial calendar.

• Use it to capture ideas with, as it has a draft list option. It may be a title, or a couple of lines, but you can save your idea right on this calendar.

WordPress is the standard for web hosts, according to Who Is Hosting This reviews, and this tool should be a standard for advanced WordPress bloggers.

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Dragon dictation

The dragon dictation application beats Siri, hands down. It's a voice-recognising application, created by Dragon Naturally Speaking, a company that usually does something similar for computers to help those that are visually impaired for hundreds of dollars. Luckily, dragon dictation is a free application. It will allow you to talk for as long as you wish so that you can capture your ideas on the go. In addition, you can also dictate updates for your social media, including Facebook and Twitter, and text message your friends.

This is also a very useful tool for bloggers that do interviews, as they do not have to transcribe messages from a normal voice recorder anymore. Turn on the dragon dictation tool, fire away your questions, and gather the data in text so that you can pull from it later on. It saves time, and you can concentrate on forming your thoughts.

In using dragon dictation, you're going to want to customiae the vocabulary for smoother experience. All you need to say is "edit vocabulary" and you'll be taken to the vocabulary editor. Scroll through default list to see the names of places, people, businesses, products, and more, in addition to common phrases, abbreviations and words.

Many of the entries only have a written form, but some also have a spoken form to go along with it. Open the display drop-down, which is located at the bottom, so you can choose "words containing spaces" and browse that list as well, containing words with digits, capitalisation and other special properties. Edit the list or add entries to personalise dragon dictation for your use.

Here are some tips for quick voice formatting:

• Deleting a specific text= "delete "or "delete from " or "delete through "

• Cut a specific text= "cut" or "cut from to " or "cut through

• Copying a specific text= "copy" or "copy from to" or "copythrough"

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Evernote

Take notes, snap photos, create lists, record reminders, and share them as you wish with Evernote. It's the perfect organising tool for any blogger, so if you don't have it, I recommend that you add it to your utility belt.

With Evernote, you'll be able to search by tags, keywords, and even handwritten text within images. Keep track of all of your projects so that you can stay organised and in charge. Here is how Evernote can help you in your blogging adventures:

• Take snap shots of inspiring visuals or scenes that fit the story for your blog.

• Take notes down of a story or information you want to blog about.
• Save webpages easily to reference them later.
• Collect files to help you blog with more accuracy.

• Record audio if you happen to interview someone.

Looking at more advanced ways to use Evernote, you can set reminders. This can be a text reminder, smartphone notification or even an e-mail reminder. Just tap on the alarm clock icon, and set a date and time for the reminder to start or complete one of your blogs. There will be an in-app alarm, and an optional e-mail reminder. You'll also be able to change the order of the reminders by simply dragging and dropping them. Once the task is complete, you just have to swipe it away.

Another way to utilise Evernote is by creating note links. This will allow you to access other notes you've created through hyperlinks, and it's very convenient since it allows you to access multiple notes from one landing page. Even if you create a note link from a desktop version, you'll still be able to access it from all your other devices. Create a note by right-clicking and selecting a "copy note link."

You can even link your Evernote to your Twitter, and tweet to @myEn with a link to an article. Evernote will create a new note for that link and remind you to read it later. Follow @myEN and the instructions for linking your Evernote to Twitter will be sent.

With Evernote, you can encrypt pieces of text. If you plan to share notebooks or sensitive information, you'll need to encrypt certain parts of the text through Evernote. You can do so on your Mac by performing the following: hold Command + Shift +X. On Windows: hold Control + Shift + X. Evernote will then tell you to create a passphrase, and a passphrase hint.

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BlogJet

This tool claims to be more advanced than the rest, and it's exactly that. It has a WYSIWYG editor, so that you don't have to go through the hassle of learning HTML. The tool is very quick, and gives you the opportunity to add Flickr images and Youtube videos to your blogs with ease. There's also a trusty word counter and blog statistics, along with post management specifications. It pretty much has everything you'll need to blog better.

Use the blog statistics to keep track of the consistency of your blogging. You'll be able to see the number of posts you have, the average length of your posts, and the number of posts you've done in a week. These statistics will help you keep up with your blogs. Another cool feature about BlogJet is that it will let you edit pages on WordPress, TypePad, and Movable Type blogs. This way, if you're inspired you can blog on the spot because sometimes jotting a note down just isn't enough.

Here are some of the features:

• Auto replace: If you have a specific product, service or unique phrase that you want to have specifically formatted or if you want to use short keys for specific phrases, Blogjet 3 allows you to do that. It gives you the option of specifying a keyword and automatically converts it into the proper format.

• Post management: Blogjet 3 can cache your posts, allowing you to access them in no time to make the edits you need to make or to use an old post as a reference. This can be done even without a connection. There's also an added "instant search" that shows results as you type.

• Full Unicode support: This tool now comes with Unicode support so that you can write in any language. For select bloggers out there, you can even write in mixed languages.

These blogging tools will sharpen your blogging skills, keep your blogs organised, and allow you to produce quality content.

Check out the reviews for these tools to find out more about each one, and download one, a few, or all of them to enhance your blogging experience.