I love talking about blogging, so I welcome the emails and they previously inspired me to launch the Blog Talk Tuesdays series that popped up on the blog several months ago. (In case you’re new around here, I previously published a bunch of blogging-related posts with tips and tricks related to everything from how to start a blog to increasing blog readership and balancing blogging and real life, which you can find on the Blogging page underneath the Favs tab.)
Though I still consider myself very (very!) far from an expert when it comes to blogging know-how, I figured a roundup post that included information about some of my favorite everyday blogging tools might answer questions for some of you out there, especially those relating to adding text to images and editing photos since I’ve received more and more requests to specifically address this on the blog.
If you’re tech savvy or have been blogging for a long time, these tools may be old news to you, but if you’re late to just about every techy thing that springs up like I am, maybe something will pop out at you!
I’ve learned about most of these tools from other bloggers or through many, many Google searches that I’ve done when I’ve become frustrated with something and searched for a shortcut!
Everyday Blogging Tools
This website is a dream! I use PicMonkey to add text to photos, edit images and more.
I created the following images by uploading a photo to PicMonkey and playing around with the various editing options on the site:
(In case you are interested, if you click the above images, you will be directed to the original post where they were first featured.)
This is my favorite website for quickly editing photos. It is free to download and makes editing pictures a breeze. Picasa’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button that I mentioned in my previous blog post about photography and photo editing is my best friend.
Original photo:
After “I’m Feeling Lucky” editing:
You can also add text to images with Picasa, but I prefer the font options offered by PicMonkey.
Picasa text:
I personally find that PicMonkey has more options when it comes to adding a little flare to photos.
As a huge fan of Pinterest, I love it when bloggers make pinning recipes, workouts and other photos really easy. I try to remember to add the Pin It button below recipe or workout images for my fellow Pinterest addicts. There are plugins you can use to automatically add a Pin It button to your website, but I prefer adding it right after a specific image and use the coding created by the Pin It button that you can find on Pinterest’s Goodies page. Pinterest provides detailed instructions that will walk you through how to embed the Pin It button into your blog posts.
Windows Live Writer is recommended by bloggers over and over again and I have to reiterate this recommendation. It is a free downloadable program and makes every aspect of blogging easier for me. When I first downloaded the program, it easily cut the time I spent blogging in half. I no longer had to wait forever for photos to upload and utilized the program’s user-friendly features. (Note: Windows Live Writer is compatible with PCs. MAC users typically recommend Ecto, though I’ve heard mixed reviews about Ecto.)
Back to basics, baby! I use Excel to create a lot of the treadmill workouts or interval workouts you see pop up on the blog. I’ll create a spreadsheet with all of the speeds, inclines, etc. in Excel and will either use the image as is after changing background colors like you can see here and here, or I’ll upload it into PicMonkey and add fun text and color to the image, like you see below.
For that image, I typed up the minutes and resistance level in Excel, took a screen shot of the image and uploaded it to PicMonkey where I added the colored text.
Question of the Afternoon
- If you’re a blogger, what blogging tools or programs do you use most often?
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These tips are so helpful, thank you!!! I started my blog this year because of reading PBFingers. I learn so much from you every day! Thank you again. 🙂
Hi Julie,
What do you use to store the images you post to your blog? So when you upload images off your camera to put into Windows Live Writer, where do the images ultimately “live?”
OMG thank you so much for shaaaaaring!!!!! I just went on PicMonkey + had a BLAST!!! I’m sooooo going to start using this on my blog! You rule!!!
I’m somewhere in between new and old on blogging. I’ve done it for awhile but just really getting into making it a consistent thing. Trying to build followers and use it as not just my personal venting post but a way to inspire others through my own journey to health and fitness. This is absolutely wonderful and helpful for me to see! Once I start adding more things into my blog these sites are going to ROCK my world 🙂
Thanks
One of my friends just forwarded this to me. I’m super new to blogging, so this post is amazing! I’m going to start using Pic Monkey!
Try adding NewsAssist to your list of tools? NewsAssist is an open source Firefox add-on that provides an editor (blogger, journalist) all necessities for News Searching, Editing, Publishing, Content distribution to social media. It is a powerful tool and a great working environment that is fully integrated with Firefox. It is aimed to increase the productivity of blog and website editors without having to leave the web browser.
“blog search tool”:http://www.newsassist.org
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I just found your blog tonight via a link from Carrots N Cake. The tips you offer just may be what I need to crack the secret code of creating consistently good content. What can I say, I’m late to the party! 😉 I love seeing your success and your transparency – that you didn’t really know what you were doing when you started either! Thanks so much!
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Honestly wish I would have found this post last night! Spent about 2 wasted hours on something this summed up for me. Just discovered your blog and I love it! 🙂
Thanks, Erin! Glad you found me. 😉
I was looking around for a new photo editor for Pinterest and got directed to your article from socialmediatoday – looks like PicMoney is now my go-to tool!
Thanks for the heads up and the great examples
I love Picasa! Great tips here. Question for anyone who knows. This Windows Live Writer mentioned. It sounds rather wonderful. Right now I write my posts right in Blogger, and pull my photo’s in from Flickr and videos from you tube. This can be time consuming and which is the cause of my not posting as often as I’d like.
My question is, if I use Windows Live Writer, in the off chance I don’t care for it, what happens to my blog if I uninstall it or take it off from blogger. So if I did 5 posts while using WLW, then decide not to use it, are those posts affected?
Thank you. I really appreciate it.