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This article was published on December 8, 2010

7 Easy-To-Use Tools To Start Blogging Now


7 Easy-To-Use Tools To Start Blogging Now

We often hear from people that they just don’t have enough time to blog. People are busy running their business or taking care of their daily lives and blogging is something that fits in way down the list of priorities. But it doesn’t have to be like that. Up until a couple of years ago blogging used to involve serious coding and design knowledge but these days the tools are out there to help you get great content online in minutes. The following list are some services and tools that enable you to create great compelling content in less than 5 minutes and have a web presence that people will find interesting and keep coming back to. There is no excuse for you not to start blogging now with this list of 7 great tools for blogging in less than 5 minutes.

Tumblr

This is possibly the easiest tool to use on this whole list. If used correctly you’ll actually be able to get blog posts up in less than 30 seconds (photos, videos and links). Tumblr is essentially somewhere between Twitter and fully fledged blogging. You can add any sort of media including audio and video. One of the best uses is to install the Tumblr app on your phone and you can be publishing within seconds of finding great content. Works especially well for people who are not great writers and would rather just use rich media content. Tumblr gives you a choice of simple themes and colors to personalize the look and feel of your blog.

Audioboo.Com

Podcasting used to be reserved to the geekiest among us who had the nous to set up complicated hosting and iTunes accounts. Luckily for the rest, in stepped Audioboo. This is a great tool that lets you capture audio within a couple of clicks through either the website or their apps and the real beauty is that they host the file and allow you to embed it in to your blog or website in a couple of seconds. Again a perfect tool for people who don’t feel comfortable writing and you don’t need any editing or fancy equipment to set up your own podcast and embed it in to your blog.

Youtube Instant Video

People think that to start your own video blog you need tons of fancy equipment and the ability to edit your own footage. The truth is that with the Youtube webcam you can have your own video show up and running in less than 2 minutes. All you need to do is hit the record button, look into your webcam and capture the content that you want to feature on your new video blog. Once the video has processed just embed it into your blog or Tumblr–a 10 second process– and repeat that over and over again. Having your own video blog (or vlog) has never been this easy.

WordPress Post By Voice

Picture the scene as you walk out of a pub after a long night of drinking when a thought pops in to your head for a new blog post. No longer will you have to risk losing that thought forever because now all you have to do is pick up aphone and call in the blog post. The instructions are all on that blog post but essentially once you call the number it creates a voice file which uploads to your blog automatically and can even be customized with RSS feeds etc.

WordPress Apps

You are not going to be able to write your life story from WordPress mobile apps but they do allow you to post blog posts on the go. It’s perfect for creating short posts. The fact that you can post photos direct from your phone means that it is perfect for posing short blog posts while you are on holiday or traveling. The app is simple to use and available on the larger iPad.

Posterous

Of all the different tools on the list this one is probably the easiest of the lot. You get great content (text, photo, audio, video etc) and send it to the guys @ Posterous (by web, email or mobile) and they will publish it to a lovely clean webpage and then share it automatically based on your preferences. This really is blogging stripped down to the basics, allowing you to focus on nothing but the content.

Ping.Fm

Once you have your lovely blog content you will have to move on to promoting it. The big problem with that is that it takes time and by the time you get around the various social networks and profiles that you want to share your link on you’ve wasted 15 minutes. Luckily with Ping.fm set up correctly, you’ll be able to push blog content out to all the different places it needs to be with one click. You can even get smarter than that and use RSS to make ping.fm publish your content to all your social networks automatically.

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