{"id":9806,"date":"2012-09-24T08:00:48","date_gmt":"2012-09-24T12:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.shareaholic.com\/?p=9806"},"modified":"2014-05-13T11:14:51","modified_gmt":"2014-05-13T15:14:51","slug":"5-tools-to-help-your-blog-stand-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/5-tools-to-help-your-blog-stand-out\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Tools to Help Your Blog Stand Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

With 200,000 Shareaholic publishers alone, you guys know that you need to go above and beyond to stand out. Optimizing your blog posts for SEO or even blogging every day aren\u2019t enough anymore because there are thousands \u2013 if not millions \u2013 of others just like you doing those same things. But the good news is, there are some tips, tricks and tools that will help you.<\/p>\n

Here are six incredibly easy-to-use tools make your blog stand out from the pack:<\/p>\n

1. Remind Me buttons<\/h3>\n

Astrid<\/a>, a fast-growing task list management software, has released a new reminder tool that helps you make blog posts actionable with Remind Me buttons that directly add action items to your readers’ task lists.<\/p>\n

This is especially helpful if you are writing how-to posts \u2013 especially great for helping your readers follow a recipe, a craft project or even for technical blog posts. This way, your readers can remember to implement the steps at a later time.\u00a0You can create Remind Me buttons for your blog posts using\u00a0this tool<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2. Infographics (Make Your Own)<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Infographics are an awesome way to spice up data, and they don’t need to cost thousands of dollars to create. As\u00a0people are more likely to engage with branded photos online<\/a>, this is a great tool to use to engage with your visually-driven audience. To see how easy this can be, take a look at our infographic above. This took us an hour or so and is much more shareable than a wall of text with stats hidden inside.\u00a0For easy tools to create infographics, take a look at\u00a0Visual.ly<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Piktochart<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3. Create a tools list<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

BestVendor<\/a> recently released a new Lists feature that lets you consolidate all your favorite tools or vendors\u00a0around a particular idea.\u00a0It’s a quick, effective medium for making recommendations about what tools your audience should use. Pretty meta to say, but if you find yourself recommending a lot of tools within a blog post, collect them in your best vendor list for your readers to easily reference later.<\/p>\n

4. Engage New Visitors With Related Content<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The ever-increasing prevalence of social media means more new visitors and referral traffic for your blog. With Shareaholic\u2019s related content tool<\/a>, you can engage those new visitors from the start. This tool allows you to show visitors content that’s closely related to a specific blog post. It’s a great way to engage visitors right off the bat and get more pageviews on your evergreen content.\u00a0The Smarty Pants Vitamins blog<\/a>\u00a0is using it and loves it so far.<\/p>\n

5. Slideshare<\/h3>\n

If you have produced PowerPoints for client meetings or media kits–you might as well upload one or two to Slideshare<\/a> and get some added value. Not only will you benefit from the added exposure to the Slideshare community (an awesome place for B2B communities), but it’s also super easy to pull the embed code and paste into your blog posts. Readers will love to interact with the slides directly on your blog and they can even download them to check out later.<\/p>\n

Going the extra distance with you blog is crucial to attracting and engaging your readers. These tools are a step in the right direction–now go forth and spice up your blog!<\/p>\n

What tools do you use to make your blog stand out? Share your favorites with us in the comments!<\/p>\n

Josh Krafchin is the founder of Clever Zebo, an\u00a0<\/em>online strategy<\/em><\/a>\u00a0agency.<\/em><\/p>\n

Featured image by Mike Bitzenhofer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Shareaholic<\/div>\n

What is one can’t-miss tool for your blog? Shareaholic.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With 200,000 Shareaholic publishers alone, you guys know that you need to go above and beyond to stand out. Optimizing your blog posts for SEO… 
Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":10045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[606,521],"tags":[295,358,581],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9806"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}