10 Tools You Need to Create a Blogging Empire

In this post you are going to learn how to build a loyal  and perhaps even hungry audience for your blog.

I enjoy writing. There’s just something special about putting pen-to-paper that has kept me blogging through thick and thin.

But writing quality articles for your blog can be time-consuming. And at times frustrating. When I first started, I would spend 10 hours trying to write amazing content to share and grab someone’s attention. Try as I might, I’d get a measly 125 visitors.

Even at $20 an hour, that means the article cost me $200 in time costs or $1.60 per visitor. Most of whom I would never see again. You’re working full-time, raising up a family, all while maintaining a social life. If blogging is something you squeeze in when you can, just writing is not an effective use of your time.

So I went back to the drawing board to figure out how to crack the content marketing code.

How Jon Morrow grew his blog to over 13,000 subscribers.

While I was clawing my way to 125 views, Jon Morrow had over 6,000 visitors to the first article he wrote. How did Jon accomplish such a Herculean feat?

First, he put together a valuable incentive for anyone who signed-up for his initial launch. Then by actively contributing to authority blogs and driving traffic to that landing page, he received over 13,000 subscribers.

And he did it all in just six weeks.

And there are others who have also accomplished this with amazing results.

• Danny Iny used this strategy to become the Freddy Krueger of blogging.
• Leo Widrich got 100,000 users for BufferApp by writing 150 articles in only 9 months.
• Kristi Hines has written more than 400 blog posts on over 60 publications, with content generating more than 300,000 social shares.

Guest blogging is no big secret. Yet very few seem to do it well. But if you want to get on top of your game, why not start with this huge list of guest posting opportunities (180 to be exact).

So if you too want to effectively implement this strategy, here are…

Psst! If you read carefully, you’ll find a couple other great tools to help you grow your blog hidden in a couple of the sections.

1. Organize on Trello

The first step is to setup a system for your articles.

I created the following lists on my Trello board: To Do, Blog Ideas, Outline, Email Pitch, Headline Creation Station, Grammarly, Hemmingway, Formatting/Pics, Publish, Promote, and Thank the Author.

By doing so, I know exactly where an article is in the process and what needs to be done to move it to the next stage.

But how do you find quality topics to write about?

2 & 3. Find Quality Topics with Buzzsumo and Quicksprout

What if you could duplicate the success of your favorite websites? With Buzzsumo and Quicksprout, you can do exactly that.

When I plug MadLemmings.com into Buzzsumo, I find out Ashley’s top 5 articles are:

10 Pinterest Pros Tips Share Their Best Tips and Tools
15 Experts Share their Worst Blogging Advice Ever
Multiply Your Email Subscribers Like Rabbits (with this simple trick)
WordPress Landing Pages – Plugins, Page Builders & Themes
The Power of Pinterest Group Boards

Now I can use these articles to generate ideas for my own blog. For this article, I used 39 Blogging Tools to Help You Work Faster, Write Better, and Land More Readers, which has over 11,500 shares on the Buffer blog. Not too shabby.

Since Google frowns upon duplicate content, I create an outline based off of the article by writing out

• the title
• a brief blurb
• an outline of the article
• and the conclusion.

I then modify the outlines and give the influencer the option between 3 possible posts.

Here is the exact template I gave to Ashley to land this article.

80% of people judge the value of your article based on the title alone. So if you want to make an impression, you need to…

4. Spin up some wickedly effective titles with the Portent Title Maker

Before the success of Boost Blog Traffic, Jon worked as the associate editor for Copyblogger. In this position, Brian Clark required Jon to write 100 headlines a day. Which is why his free eBook “52 Headline Hacks” has been a great resource for me to this day.

Even still, sometimes I get stuck (or lazy), so I turn to the Portent Title Maker. Just give it a subject and the tool starts producing some powerful headlines you can use to woo the perspective blogger (and, of course, the readers of your article).

You’ve got a handful of headlines to work with. How do you know which is the best to use?

5. Empirically prove your headlines with the EMV Headline Analyzer

If there’s a will, there’s a way. The guys over at the Advance Marketing Institute created a tool to let you know how effective your title will be. It does this by checking for the emotional marketing value (EMV) of your words.

We all know that no tool is perfect. So how do you decide which title to use?

When you use the Thrive Headline Optimizer, you don’t even need to make a decision! Using magic worth $79, this tool automatically rotates your headlines to find the perfect match. Just set it, and forget it!

6. Find the blogger’s email with ContentMarketer.io

There are a couple ways to pitch a blogger for a guest post:
1. Use the contact box
2. Find their email and pitch to the right person immediately.

Using a contact box can be very limiting. Especially if you would like to write on a site with multiple people working there. Not to mention, they are not always available.

With email, you can track if they open your email and schedule a time to best send it.

Content Marketer is a great and simple tool to uncover someone’s email. Simply insert the web URL and in seconds, the app lets you know every email attached to the site.

7. Take the guesswork out of email outreach with Crystal Knows

You’ve found the blogger’s email. How do you write in a way that the influencer respond? A recently released product, Crystal Knows gives you the exact insights you need to do this.

Crystal has over 64 personality profiles. By using various information on the web, Crystal gives you feedback about what resonates the most with the person you are emailing.

Alright. You’ve sent the email and you’ve got the opportunity to guest post.

8. Write faster with Google Docs

For the longest time, whenever I sat down to write and article, I went straight to my blog software (Blogger, WordPress, Ghost, etc.). After sitting down to write, I kept wondering off to grab various links to articles, photos, and snapshots.

Instead, I go straight to a Word document and write. Just write without a care in the world.

Or as Brian Clark put it:

Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.

9. When you need the power of an editing team without the cost, use Grammarly

Grammarly’s free tool uses more than 250 advanced grammar rules to proofread your writing. They increase it to 600 if you upgrade to the premium paid version.

Grammarly has caught errors that Microsoft Word or my web browser have missed. What’s better, it also proofreads just about any place you write on your computer.

10: Create a clean HTML article in 3 minutes with Word2Clean HTML

Wouldn’t it be convenient if you could convert your Word document immediately in HTML? With Word2Clean HTML, you can do just that.

While the W2C system isn’t perfect in getting all formatting, it saves you a lot of time when transferring from Word to HTML. By cleaning up your HTML code, it also increases your pagespeed load time and consequently, boosts your revenue.

Now you’ve got your article written and fully edited. It’s time for the guest blogger to hit publish and for you both to begin promoting the post.

Over to you:

What tools do you use when writing an article?

After leaving me a comment below, be sure to share this article with another writer you know who would benefit from saving time.