Wednesday 29 August 2012

2012’s List of the Best iPhone Apps for Bloggers


I’ll start off with a question: when on-the-go, what’s the one thing that’s better than managing your blog on your laptop?

The ability to do just that on the phone!

And why wouldn’t you, given the plethora of impressive apps available on the iOS platform for this purpose. Here is a list of the best 7 iPhone (and iPad) apps for bloggers that make managing each and every aspect of your blog, on the go, a really simple and easy process. It is not an exhaustive list by any means, and while there are quite literally an unlimited number of blogging apps on the iOS platform, these 7 are ‘must-haves’ for any blogger out there!

Best iPhone Apps for Bloggers


1. Wordpress (official iPhone app):

An absolute must-have, especially if you manage one or more of your blogs on the Wordpress platform!

The official Wordpress app makes managing each element of your Wordpress blog(s) simple. Wordpress successfully manages to bring a lot of the features of the web-based interface to the table with this app.

For starters, you can add multiple blogs to the app – as many as you want. Once done, each blog can be managed independently. You can create new posts, edit the posts, add images or videos, and publish it right from your phone, without the need to log into Wordpress from a desktop or a laptop. You can even view basic traffic stats for a blog right from the app.

The app comes in pretty handy when you’re travelling to cover an event, for instance, or if inspiration strikes at the worst of times. Simply fire the app up and write away!

If you have an iPhone, I highly recommend that you keep this app on the phone at all times. It can be downloaded free of cost from the App Store.

2. HootSuite

HootSuite remains my social media management app-of-choice. The service lets you add and manage multiple social media profiles – including Facebook, Google Plus, My Space, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare, to name a few. Once you have the service set up, you can manage all your social media profiles from a single window – send out (and schedule!) tweets and updates, track trends, check your mentions, and of course, get statistics on your social media profiles through the built-in analytics.

HootSuite can also be integrated with your Wordpress blog, and can then be used to send updates and generate traffic for your blog from all your social profiles.

The HootSuite iPhone app lets you do all this, right from your phone. Instead of opening each app individually (Facebook app, Twitter app, etc) and signing-into different account to send out an update, use HootSuite instead to share and send any and all updates straight from your blog to all your social profiles in a single go. Saves you a ton of time and hassle, and makes the process of getting traffic off social mediums all the more simpler!

HootSuite is a free download on the App Store.

3. Pocket

Pocket, formerly known as ‘Read it Later’, is another great free app. The app should be an essential part of your blogging-on-the-go arsenal, especially if you do a lot (or even a fraction) of your internet browsing and surfing on your phone.

The concept is pretty simple. Let’s say that you were browsing on the internet and stumbled upon something funny or interesting. Perhaps even something that could immensely help you with that piece you’re thinking of doing on the weekend for one of your blogs.

Or maybe you’re busy doing research for one of your blog posts, and find an article that you find interesting and might want to go over in detail later.

Pocket lets you save that webpage or the article, and easily view it later. The best aspect about this service is that it seamlessly synchronizes the saved article, webpage, video or just about anything on the internet across all your devices (in Dropbox-like manner) – including your phone, tablet, desktop or laptop so that you can view it no matter where you might be. Once an article has been ‘pocketed’ you won’t even require an internet connection to view it!

The Pocket for iOS app integrates with your phone, allowing you to ‘Pocket’ or save from Safari, Opera or about 300 different apps and browsers on the platform! It comes with great search functionality as well.

Once again, it is a free download on the App Store.

4. Blogger

If Blogger (or Blogspot, as it is sometimes referred to) is your blogging-platform/CMS-of-choice, the Blogger for iOS should be an essential part of your phone.

The app itself is similar in functionality to its Wordpress counterpart – you can create new posts, edit and update new and existing posts, add multimedia and of course publish them on your Blogger blog… the whole deal. You can also edit labels and location information. If you have multiple Blogger blogs, you can add them all up to the app, and switch between and manage them from the app.

The app has a great inrerface, is quick, powerful and is a free download on the App Store. For Blogger fans, it doesn’t get any  better than this.

5. Evernote

Evernote is a brilliant service – with Evernote, you can capture, record or save just about anything – online or offiline. I’m talking about stuff like ideas, images, webpages, sounds, to-do lists, interesting statuses or tweets, scanned images, documents, maps and a whole lot of other stuff!

The service then syncs everything you saved ‘on the cloud’ (Dropbox/Pocket-style) and makes it accessible from anywhere where there’s internet access.

This alone makes the app totally worth it, however it also comes with a set of other features. Apart from the fact that you can use it to remember things, save stuff off the internet, and then access your files from anywhere, you can also use Evernote when researching for an assignment or a blog post, and use it to collaborate with colleagues, friends or of course, your blog co-authors and publishers. The possibilities with this app are quite literally, endless!

I strongly suggest keeping Evernote in your phone at all times, and actually using it to organize your thoughts, and of course crafting that next best blog post for your blog.

6. WhatTheFont

How many times have we come across a fantastic-looking font on a webpage, in an article, or somewhere else, only to find that there’s just no way of knowing which font it is, or what its called.

Until now!

Now, there is a way of knowing the exact name of any great font you might come across, and it comes in the form of an iPhone app called WhatTheFont.

The app will assist you in recognizing any font that you come across by taking a photo of a word or a sentence, and running it through the service’s database. And voila! It will recognize the font and give you a name.

With this app, you now have the freedom of using just about any font that you might come across on your blog. Font remains one of the most important and essential aspects of any blog, and you can now easily improve the appearance of readability of your blog by simply copying a great-looking font off another source!

The app is a free download on the iTunes App Store.

7. Analytics App

Analytics for iPhone is like having a fully-functional Google Analytics dashboard on your iPhone. Setting it up is pretty easy and straightforward, and once done, you get full access to your Google Analytics suite right on your phone.

Also available on the iPhone, Analytics provides instant access to all data and statistics that are available to you on the web service – no matter where you might be – such as the main dashboard, visitors and traffic information, content overview, and the like. Each main category opens up further sub categories, just like the browser version. You can therefore access 55 different reports on your phone using the app!

Needless to say, an excellent app, and an essential one to have on your phone, for every website owner, blog owner, webmaster and of course internet marketer!

Personally, I think the app is so good, I rarely log into my browser-based dashboard now! Even when on the desk, firing away the Analytics app on the iPhone is much more convenient. And the app provides you with one-touch access to a plethora of different reports.

The Analytics app is a $6.99 purchase from the iTunes App Store.

2 comments:

  1. Great information provided. I appreciate your work.

    Best Iphone Apps

    ReplyDelete
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