Preparing Yourself For Blogging: Offline & Online Strategies Part II

In the first part of this post, I explained how to prepare yourself for blogging offline, where I went over doing simple stuff like eating something or working in a clean work area to help you blog better. Now this is Part II, and I will share some tips for preparing yourself for blogging through online activities.

So people say that staying in front of your computer for too long is bad for your concentration. While I believe that to be true, there are some things on your computer you can do that aren’t so bad at all for your thinking.

Always keep in mind, you should limit yourself to how you prepare yourself online, because regardless of what you do I still find that you can lose your train of thought by spending too much time on your computer (don’t let [intlink id="3423" type="post"]obsessions[/intlink] occur either).

Online Strategies

“Online”, meaning that you are in front of your computer doing some kind of activity. Like browsing the web, using an application on your computer, etc. Always remember to take breaks when you’re online.

Simplifying blogging with Blogging Tools

Blogging tools range from a variety of different topics. Most blogging tools out there are Editors where you can write and publish blog posts from your desktop. Then there are other kinds of blog tools, like notifiers and some productivity tools. I want to share with you a few tools that I sometimes use, or know of.

WordPress Notifier for Mac OSX

Sorry to all of you wacky Windows users, this tool is only for Mac. What this tool does is it notifies you of comments you get right from your desktop. It sits in the Menu bar at the top, and updates every time you get a new comment held into moderation.

It’s so great, because with this plugin you really won’t need to have those pesky emails sent to your inbox constantly every time you get a new blog comment. Saves you some time too, and saving time is all the part of blogging convenience.

Download WP-Notifier (Freeware) »

Ecto Blog Editor

I think people are skeptical when it comes to using 3rd party blog editors because they don’t offer everything that their blogging software does. However, there is one in particular I find to have a lot of great stuff.

Ecto is a great blog editor for your desktop. It’s very convenient to use, and has most of everything the standard WordPress Editor has. You can use Ecto on a variety of blogging platforms suchs as Blogger, Drupal, MovableType, TypePad, and of course, WordPress.

Ecto is free for the first 21 days (as a trial with full features), but after those days you have to buy it for a measly $19.95.

Try/Buy Ecto »

Backpack Organizational Tool

This is a very cool tool for keeping everything organized. You can store notes and files in there, so it can be great for post planning and planning anything else for your blog. If you run a co-authored blog, you can keep up to date and assign tasks for each of the blog admins to do. There are a ton of features for Backpack, and there’s no way I would be able to explain them all here.

Like Ecto, it does cost money. However, you get 30 days free to test it out and see if you like it. This is a tool that is insanely helpful, but is really for bloggers who are drop dead serious about blogging.

Sign up for Backpack »

Other Useful Blogging Tools

• Windows Live Writer

A great blog editing tool for Windows. Covers various blogging platforms, and is absolutely free.

• ScribFire

A Firefox plugin that allows you to blog within your browser, on a specific web page. So, if you are reviewing another web page, you can do it all on that page and publish it to your blog.

• Bloglines

Organize your feeds in your browser without downloading or installing any software. This is great, because a great way to prepare for blogging is reading (will be talked about later in this post).

• AutoCopy

Select text and it’s automatically copied to the clipboard. Like Linux or mIRC. Great if you use quotes in your posts a lot, or have to copy and paste the same things repeatedly in your post (Firefox Extension).

• Site Meter

A great, easy way to check your blogs statistics.

All of those tools I listed above are meant to make blogging mroe convenient and easy to use. Some of these tools make tedious tasks easier for you. When you can break something down and simplify it to it’s lowest form, then it just makes blogging so much easier.

Planning & Brainstorming Ideas

Something I hate to do is sit around and try to think about what I want to write. It can really eat up a ton of time that could have been better spent taking action on something.

Get some brain exercises in

Brain exercises are when you are doing a certain activity that requires a level of “critical thinking” to get your brain working. One thing I have just started doing (as in, today) is to play some puzzle games that take critical thinking to achieve. I played on this one game site called Games for the Brain before I started writing up this post, and I would say that it has helped me to do the following:

• Helped me concentrate to write up a lengthy post such as this one.
• Opened my mind up for more ideas off the top of my head.
• Gets me into a “working mood” where I will want to go above and beyond what’s normally expected from me in a post.

So I would have to say that doing one or two little puzzles on that Games for the Brain website before you start blogging will really get you thinking harder.

Online Reading

Nothing beats reading a tangible book, but I do find that reading online helps you too. You could read about the stuff in your niche, or something totally unrelated. Reading can have the equivalence of those brain games, because of the level of thinking that’s involved because it puts you in an easy going state of mind and allows you to think better.

But what is there to read from online? Some things you can read from:

• Blog RSS Feeds
• eBooks
• News Articles
• Forum Posts
• Twitter Conversations

Let me explain this one. Some people use Twitter like an Instant Messaging service back and forth over and over again. Some pretty intelligent Twitter users do it with other intelligent Twitter users, so there’s bound to be some useful conversation going on, especially if the conversation is about your niche.

Putting Offline + Online Strategies Together

If you haven’t read Part I with my offline strategies, you may want to briefly skim over it really quick and come back to this spot when you’re done. If you already did, keep reading.

I put in my best ideas of being able to prepare yourself for blogging into these two posts. After seeing them, can you think of any way you want to prepare yourself for your blog? Maybe you can do some offline preparations, or some online preparations, or even mix the two. While it may be time consuming, or too overwhelming, you should at least give it a good and honest shot.

Hopefully these tips have made you think before you start to work on your blog. Maybe how you prepare for blogging right now is working for you. If so, just ignore both articles and keep doing what you’re doing. I will never ever write a post forcing you to do something, just posts where I can give you ideas.

Good luck, and I hope you find out what works best for you!

Tagged as: blogging offline, blogging online, post inspiration