Ultimate Guide to time saving for Bloggers - Tips and Resources
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to receive the latest updates. Thanks for visiting!
Blogging has become your hobby, or is your profession. You’re loving it, yet you’re getting too little time to focus on content. Time management is a good thing to do, and here go some time saving tips for you:
Desktop Blog Clients
Desktop blogging clients like Windows Live Writer and BlogDesk can save you quite a lot of time in fact. You no longer need to wait for your admin panel WYSIWYG writer to load. In fact, you can blog painlessly inside your offline client’s editor - do the usual stuff - write posts, categorize, insert and upload images, and save drafts for publishing later.
I just fire up my blogging editor right when I return from school, and start writing. I no longer need to wait for web page loads. It’s all easy and effortless.
Some blogging clients come with even more powerful features - like integration with your Browser, an inbuilt RSS reader etc.
Overall, blogging clients save you loads and loads of time
Firefox Extensions
Split Browser add-on splits Firefox’s viewing screen into fragments such that you can view more websites at a time. You can easily copy links and access references between different pages. (Via Lorelle)
Speed Dial extension can help you quickly access the sites you use most often. For example, you can add your site analytics page to speed dial for speedy landing.
Page Addict monitors the amount of time you spend on Web Pages. It can give you a detailed summary on the time you’ve wasted lavishly on pretty useless pages
Leech Block can block web sites for particular time periods, preventing you from getting getting distracted from your main jobs (via Amit).
Greasemonkey Scripts
If you’re an avid commentator and share your views across many blogs, you may feel lazy to type in your name, blog URL and email. This script does the job for you. It auto fills fields in comment forms. (Via Freakitude)
If you know of any more Greasemonkey scripts, please inform others in the comments. Highly appreciated.
Reduce your Instant Messenger Usage
Over a short period of time, most bloggers find their Instant Messenger buddy lists overloaded with too many contacts. That isn’t bad. Building up a community around you is an essential part of blogging.
What’s wrong is the amount of time you spend for chatting and other such stuff. Too many people buzzing you over your IM is terrible.
Plan a good schedule, allocate a reasonable amount of time to connect with people. Help newbies, offer some guiding tips - spread the knowledge. This will help in building your online personality.
Use Screen Capture software
As a blogger, you may need to create a lot of screen captures for your blog posts. It’s a bit of a time consuming task, so what you can do is install some nifty screen capturing tools that make the job terribly easy for you.
Amit recommends FastStone Screen Capture and other such tools that have special features built in. These may actually save some minutes of your precious time.
Many of these tools have the ability in-built to convert and save images in a variety of formats as well.
Organize your email
Once your blog gets quite active in terms of visitors and comments, your email inbox is inundated with lots of mails. Cluttered.
The best way to tackle this is to organize your emails. That involves labeling mails, or using folders to organizing them.
Most people now use Gmail, so you could label your messages. To set up and use labels on Gmail, refer to this guide.
Also, periodically check your account and delete unneeded emails. That would de-clutter things.
Learn the Shortcuts
Shortcuts are one of the most efficient ways of saving time. They can greatly reduce the time you take to get things done on your computer.
Learning the basic shortcuts of programs are essential, and mastering those of softwares that will aid in faster completion of your tasks.
Most people use WordPress, so here go a list of WordPress shortcuts as compiled by TipMonkies:
Bold: Alt+SHIFT+b
Italics: Alt+SHIFT+i
Link: Alt+SHIFT+a
Blockquote: Alt+SHIFT+q
Code: Alt+SHIFT+c
Read More: Alt+SHIFT+tUnordered List (ul): Alt+SHIFT+u
Ordered List (ol): Alt+SHIFT+o
List Item (li): Alt+SHIFT+l
A complete list of available Firefox and Internet explorer shortcuts is here
Smashing Magazine has drawn together a very useful list of shortcuts of some popular applications in this post.
Are you following too many blogs?
As a Blogger, you must have subscribed to a lot of post on your reader. The list gets bigger and bigger. Check your feed reader periodically and unsubscribe from blogs that you do not want to follow.
This action will considerably reduce the time you spend on your feed reader, and will give you more time to spare for your own blog.
Statistics, and Design Addiction
Quite a number of bloggers get addicted to checking their blog’s statistics, checking their stats too many times a day. Also, people like me tend to make some modifications to their blog design quite often, ending up in pretty much nothing great.
Blogger PCHere mentions in his post on 10 common time wasting habits of bloggers:
Leave the Template Alone - Would a link color of #0033cc look better, or maybe #0066cc would seem more blended. Maybe the sidebar could be wider, or footer look better in gray. Making your blog look better and SEO is a never ending process, so I convinced myself to not waste blogging time daily. Instead I decided to set aside a particular time slot in the weekend.
Beyond Statistics - How many people are on your site right now? Is it really necessary to check stats every minute and see which site referred the last visitor. Now I check the traffic stats only once a day. Not only does it help get a broad idea of your daily traffic, but see how your SEO is working.
Summing it all up, trying to cut the time you spend on such things and focusing on producing quality content to your readers will make you a blog better, and you a better blogger.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Extremely useful guide for bloggers. Thanks for the mention.
Great tips!!..
Thanks for sharing
Awesome tips Shankar.
I use WordPress default code writer for now, I use some 14 Firefox Extensions, 2 GreaseMonkey scripts. I am very active in instant messaging, it gives me 70% of my sily ideas. I use SnagIt and Jing for screenshots and casting. I have 15+ labels and some 20 filters in my default Gmail inbox. Frankly, I cannot remember any keyboard shortcut, I follow some 400+ blog feeds in my feedreader which I shared OMPL with AjayDSouza. I hardly check my blog’s statistics.
Another thing I would like to recommend is make a TOP LIST OF BLOGS you track in Firefox so that it can be easy for you to get updates!
Awesome tips. Post Dugg & Stumbled.
Excellent tips! Bookmarked it for future reference.
A very useful bunch of tips indeed, Shankar. Good Work!
Whoa! Extremely informative post. Very useful stuff in there. Does BlogDesk have seamless integration with WordPress? Can you select categories and make them too within it?
I’m just starting out at blogging and it’s very enjoyable…so far! Right now…I check stats constantly hoping for new visitors.
I really need to learn to stop tweaking design…just obsessed…
Dugg…
Most useful posts!!! stumbled
WOAH! what huge article. Pillar post!!! Stumbled. It deserves all the fame. Awesome work shankar!
That is some fantastic tips… if I implement all of them… I will never have to worry about any form of rankings.. but just keep pace with good quality content.
one of THE best post on your blog for sure
Oh, Gosh! That’s Amazingly Great! Stumbled!
Windows Live Writer: Avoid System hang/excessive resource usage…
Windows Live Writer is one of the most popular offline blogging software. This is rather unusual - with the exception of operating systems, most Microsoft products are either useless or have better competitors.
However, Windows Live Writer stands out a…
I loved speed dial in Opera and never even thought to look for it for firefox, I’ll have to download it and see if I still like it as much as I used to.
Great article, Shankar.
thanks for the useful firefox extensions
Great post…. Sadly fastcone is not a free software any more.
Informative post as usual. Will definitely be checking out the desktop blog clients.
Thank you very much for your comments, guys. Great to hear from you that you loved the article.
Thanks to all those valuable stumbles and diggs.
@Nirmal: Welcome.
@Rishi: LOL, You seem to be a productivity junkie.
@SlickMeister: YES, BlogDesk integrates very well with WordPress, and you can do all that stuff - categorizing, etc… Mostly all blogging clients have that basic feature.
Good luck with your blogging venture
@Michael: Do tell us if you love speed dialing on Firefox
@Shivranjan: Thanks for dropping by.
@Kenny: Sure, you gotta check them out.
really such a nice post shankar! your blog is rocking.
and let me tell you i organize my email , buzzed my buggers in IM etc all the facts are listed here !
but i am poor enough to be routine yaar. we Sagittarius man would hate being routine and so i can’t follow time table or schedule for anything. we always expect changes. this is applicable in all areas of my life..
[...] Author Comments In Wordpress by Techdeep Easy to Remember Secure Passwords by Jake Ultimate Guide to time saving for Bloggers - Tips and Resources by Shankar Ganesh 5 Ways to Send Large Files through Email by Nirmal Web log analysis software and [...]
[...] Ultimate Guide to time saving for Bloggers - Tips and Resources Shankar Ganesh highlights several tips and tools to help speed up your blogging life. [...]
good work Shankar
These are extremely useful, thanks Shankar!
This is one of the best post i ve seen from you Shankar…great work.
Hey Shankar, this a great useful post. Maybe one of your pillar articles, is it?
Thanks for all the tips.
[...] Time Saving: Shankar has a post with tips and resources to save time while blogging. It includes desktop utilities, Firefox extensions and email hacks. [...]
[...] Ganesh has recently create an guide to time saving for bloggers. There’s a a list of some Firefox extensions that are new to me, along with some [...]
[...] Ganesh has recently create an guide to time saving for bloggers. There’s a a list of some Firefox extensions that are new to me, along with some [...]
Software gratis per blogger: Prefill Comments…
Siete stanchi di digitare il nick, poi l’e-mail e l’URL, prima di inserire un commento?
Per chi usa Firefox c’è una semplice soluzione: uno script di GreaseMonkey, appunto Prefill Comments. Basta semplicemente utilizzare la combinazi…
[...] Ganesh has recently create an guide to time saving for bloggers. There’s a a list of some Firefox extensions that are new to me, along with some [...]
@SankarAnand: Thanks buddy
@Rahul, Susan, Shashank, RamKarthik: Thanks.
I am new to make money using Blog. I have done a lot of reading to make money using blog. I understand that the web stats will play a major role for me to know the popularity of my blog, any suggestions on the tool. I have come across GoStats.com , they seem to be good with real time stats and map based representations. Still researching though.
Helpful tips! Hope there’s more..
Very impressive article Shankar! I don’t spend time organizing email since I trust on search feature. May be I should start organizing things.. thanks for the heads up on that!
I’ve saved a tone of time with Autohotkey - just googe it, it’s great!!
Great post, Shankar! I can relate to a lot of tips.. especially about Windows Live Writer and the Firefox extensions!
Stumbled!
Like the tip on the GreaseMonkey script to autofill comment box. Huge timesaver!
That’s a very informative and detailed posting. I too is guilty of too much template modifications that did nothing much actually. Need to spend more time writing. Thanks.
[...] Speed Dial: Add your most visited websites to Speed Dial and get quick access to them in a variety of ways. Hotkeys, Speed Dial in a new tab, a Speed Dial for your toolbar. Assign Speed Dial from bookmarks or by right clicking a tab. I used a bookmark toolbar folder to achieve the same result but this is much easier and intuitive to assign and unassign. [via Shankar Ganesh] [...]
@Ayush: From my personal experience, I’d suggest StatCounter.com for beginners.
@Ajay: Thanks for dropping by. You have a great blog.
@Benedict: You should organize your email
@K-InTheHouse: Thanks for the stumble.
[...] Ultimate Guide to time saving for Bloggers - Tips and Resources - Shankar GaneshMost of us are blogging after our regular work schedule and it does take its toll on our life after work. Shankar has some great tips on how to become efficient. I could relate to a lot of these points as well as gain a few tips myself. [...]
For readers who are thinking of giving Windows Live Writer a shot, I’ve written a short review of it.
Thanks Kenny. Nice review indeed.
[...] Ganesh shares with us the Ultimate Guide to time saving for bloggers. All bloggers should read this article if they are interested cutting down the time it takes to [...]
excellent work.
i am a part of recently launched website ..eyemany.com. it has blog as one of the key feature to showcase expertise and build a complete proffesional profile. I am going spread these tips all over the site .Its a great help for new and full time bloggers.
Sorry no job openings yet but you are cordially invited as a guest blogger and share your expertise.
regards
Saumitra Shanker
[...] Ultimate Guide to time saving for Bloggers - Tips and Resources by Shankar Ganesh [...]
@Saumitra: Welcome.
Great post. I already use some of the tips (Greasemonkey autofill comments being my favorite.
). I’m definitely going to try out the split-screen plugin. Looks great!
[...] Ultimate Guide to time saving for Bloggers - Tips and Resources by Shankar Ganesh [...]
@Michael: Thanks for admiring my article
[...] Ultimate Guide to time saving for Bloggers - Shankar Ganesh [...]
[...] Ultimate Guide to time saving for Bloggers - Shankar Ganesh [...]
Where did you find all these?! Anyway really useful, i didn’t know at least half of them!
[...] Ultimate Guide to time saving for Bloggers - Tips and Resources - Shankar Ganesh [...]
Thanks for sharing these tips..^^..it really is a big help.
Another tip for all you bloggers… you can be a video blogging EJ on Woozyfly.com. A friend of a friend who works there, upgraded me for free and I’ve been doing it for two weeks now.
[...] Ganesh has recently create an guide to time saving for bloggers. There’s a a list of some Firefox extensions that are new to me, along with some [...]
Thats a very good list of to-dos to perform well on the blogging zone. Thanks for sharing them Ganesh.