One of the main complaints I hear from many bloggers is that “I want to blog, but not getting enough time”. Yes, it is a fact – researching, writing, and promoting all these takes a lot of time. So, how we are supposed to find enough time for blogging? Yes, there is a way – by being more productive, by doing more things in less time. In this post I am listing 10 tools which will help you to be more productive, and at the same time without any loss to the quality. And the best thing – all tools are absolutely free!
1) Buffer App
You might be thinking of the Tweet Scheduling functions of Hootsuite, Tweetdeck or SocialOomph. However the Buffer App is quite different. I am a person who like to read a lot of blogs in the morning (through my Google Reader), and when I find a post worth sharing I hit the tweet button. But this wasn’t much appreciated by my followers because so much information was published in such a short period of time. And the worst thing is that I don’t have anything to tweet for the rest of the day. Then I came to know about this buffer app.
Buffer App comes with a different approach: you drop your links into your Buffer account and the app queues them for future publishing. In this way you can still enjoy your spontaneous tweeting without filling your Twitter stream with so many updates within a short period of time. With Buffer, you set your schedule once and then let all your tweets get published based on your schedule daily
2) GeeTeeDee
GeeTeeDee is a simple, light weight, friendly and effective task management and planning software. It supports the GTD (Getting Things Done) concept and allows you to create custom categories to organize and classify your task. You can drag and drop items between categories, review completed tasks and set due dates. I use GeeTeeDee to save my ideas for blog posts. I created a group called blog post ideas and whenever a topic struck in my mind I will add it as a task. So I never have to waste my time hunting for topics, when I am in a mood to write I open GeeTeeDee and start writing with a topic listed there.
3) Focus Booster
We all know how hard it is to just sit down and get to work when we could be doing something much more productive such as… browsing facebook. So, how to stay productive and work without distractions? Have you heard about Pomodoro technique? The Pomodoro technique is a time management system that is supposed to help take away the anxiety of deadlines and time and instead help you focus in short bursts of 25 minutes at a time on one task. This technique takes your work load and breaks it up into 25 minute increments with 5 minute breaks in between. Every 4 Pomodoro you take a 15-30 minute break and repeat. Focus Booster is a free tool for implementing the Pomodoro technique and designed to help you eliminate the anxiety of time and enhance your focus and concentration. It provides a nice visual representation of the remaining amount of time and switches the color when the break session starts.
4) Google Docs
Google Docs is a popular tool and almost all of you may be familiar with it. As a blogger or internet marketer how can you use Google docs for increasing productivity? I mainly use docs to store the details about my affiliate products. So when I write a review post or while recommending a product to someone, there is no need for messing around looking for banners, affiliate links, or the link of a review post which I wrote some time ago. Also I try to keep a document containing information’s of the related blogs in my niche, the links of sites using CommentLuv etc.
5) Rapportive
As a blogger you will get lot of emails each day, most of them from the people you don’t know. It would be nice if you can get more details of those people, isn’t it? Rapportive is a free browser plugin (available as both a Firefox add-on and as a Chrome extension) for that replaces the adverts in Gmail’s sidebar with useful information about your contacts: a photo, bio and links to social media accounts (Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr etc). Not only does it get rid of the ads, it replaces them with something pretty useful, a contact profile of the person who sent the email you’re reading, based on public profiles. And for the most part, it installs and runs very smoothly
6) VirtuaWin
For some people multitasking will be more productive, but a cluttered desktop will not looks good and it can be frustrating if you have a lot of different programs open and not enough screen space to accommodate all of them. VirtuaWin is a virtual desktop application which creates up to 20 separate virtual desktops. On each desktop you can have different windows open so you can organize your windows into categories, and view then separately. For example; at work I always have MS Word, Firefox and social networking applications like TweetDeck, AIM etc., the taskbar gets very cluttered and hard to find what I’m looking for. With VirtuaWin I now have one desktop for MS Word, one for Firefox, one for TweetDeck and AIM, and one for WMP, with my music list. So I can have all my programs open and maximized, without taking up tons of room on the task manager.
7) LeechBlock
LeechBlock is an extension for the Firefox web browser designed to block those time-wasting sites that can suck the life out of your working day. For bloggers who lack the self-discipline (like myself) not to check the weather, score, stocks, or social networking sites when they should be focusing, it can be a real help. The idea of the extension is that you can block groups of sites for specified periods of time – either an amount of time per hour/ day/ week (eg you can access the sites for 15 minutes an hour) or between certain times of the day. Just type in the website URLs you find hard to resist, and enter the maximum length of time you want to spend on them.
8 ) Skype Screen Sharing
This is an incredibly useful tool if you are offering any services and work with your clients frequently. This tool will help you in eliminating the usual phone calls where clients try to describe things on their screen and you have no idea what they are talking about. Once logged in to Skype you simply click the share screen button and you are able to see either the whole screen of the person you are talking to or the portion of the screen that they select.
9) TeamLab
This tool can be very helpful if your blog or business have a support team and if you are looking for a way for collaborative working. For example I run some other niche blogs and service firms and I have designers, content writers and SEO’s in my team, but all from different locations of the world. Is it good if there is way all of them can work together? The content writers can get help from SEO’s to write an optimized article, or designers can ask their advices while creating a new SEO optimized design.
TeamLab is free online business collaboration software designed to make your project managing experience better and easier. TeamLab is a completely web based service and there is no need for additional installations. With TeamLab’s project management features, you can manage all your projects online. You can assign tasks to team members and track the progress of each task to make sure all the members are working properly. Another great feature is that you can directly create, save and edit documents on your TeamLab portal. If you use other document sharing tools like Google Docs you can import the docs on your TeamLab portal from those websites. Apart from this the abilities to create posts in forums and blogs, share wiki pages, bookmarks and pictures and the group chat facility makes this tool a different experience.
10) OnlyWire
There are hundreds of social bookmarking sites spread around the web. Hence bookmarking in many sites can become a tedious process and downloading all the toolbars can be madness. Fortunately there are some tools which automate the bookmarking process and thus save lot of our valuable time. The OnlyWire on of such tools and it is my favorite. You can save your time by only having to submit your pages to the program, and their in-house software will then take care of submission to all of the social network sites that you belong to.
The OnlyWire program uses four main tools. First, and most important, is the submission browser button. You install this as an add-on into your favorite browsers, and when you are on the web pages that you want to submit to your various social networking sites, all you have to do is use that button.
There is also a “Bookmark and Share” button that you can put on your websites and blogs, which will allow your visitors to share your page on their social networking sites. This is a great way to make your websites and blogs more viral. The third tool is a tool that will automatically submit your blog or website to your social networking sites whenever you update them. Last but not least, there’s a general account management tool within the program so that you can keep track of what you’re doing.
These are some great tools which I use myself for staying productive. I strongly recommend you to try these tools (you have nothing to lose, all are free) and to experience the change yourself.
