Antony Mayfield tagged me with the 5 favourite social media / blogging tools meme (meme is the cool online term for chain letter ;-).
My top 5 tools are as follows:
1. TypePad
2. Bloglines
3. Feedburner
4. Flickr
5. LinkedIn
1. TypePad, which is the software I use to publish and manage my blog
For independent, non-techies writing professional or serious hobbyist blogs, you need to go for a hosted service, and my personal view having used a few platforms (including Blogger - which I feel is very consumer - and WordPress) is that TypePad rules.
There are plenty of A-list long time bloggers using TypePad and it's a great service.
Affordable, relatively user-friendly, not buggy (however there are outtages), and getting more flexible all the time - which is very important and I feel SixApart who make TypePad are moving just quickly enough to not piss everyone off, but should move faster if they are to retain their full customer base.
Even so, I personally plan to migrate to WordPress, but this is because I am in the luxurious position of being supported by a team of web specialists but I would never have got into blogging as I have without the wonderful, quick to start TypePad offering.
2. Bloglines, which is the web-based service that I use to keep track of all the blogs I read via RSS
I am not a massive fan of Bloglines.
I find it clunky, and am sure it will need to either really really raise its game or get smashed by a better new comer (maybe 37Signals will have a crack at it?).
However, for now, it's comfortable and effective, if a little dull and cruddy looking.
(Note: The blogs I read via Bloglines are here, although the list changes rapidly)
3. Feedburner, which is the service I use to manage and monitor my blog's RSS feed
My admiration for this company's work is documented.
But yeah, I love checking out my FeedBurner dashboard and seeing how my RSS subcribers are growing, which they are...slowly ;)
It's addictive, and useful. For example, many more of my subscribers are International and use Macs than I would've ever thought.
4. Flickr, which is the online tool I use to store my own photos and search and use other peoples
Good blog posts include visual elements to complement text.
Us neanderthal humans are still hugely motivated by the visual, and so I try to include pics on posts whenever I've got the time.
Of no relevance whatsoever, but a nice image all the same - here's a photo from my Flickr of Brighton beach from the other day when I rode my bike to work. Who says British summers are crap?
5. LinkedIn, which is the professional social networking tool I use to stay in touch with people I meet
Blogging is an amazing way to connect with very very cool people. And those connections can be lots more powerful if reinforced in the real-world, I feel, enhancing that online connection that was originally made in the blogosphere. To stay in touch with those people, I like to send them a LinkedIn invite. Some people don't dig this service. I personally love it - I view it as a voluntary, non-invasive way to stay in touch with my wider professional networks, and hopefully at some point turn those people from 'nice people i met blogging' to 'nice people i'm collaborating with on this extremely cool new thing'.
I tag:
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