Seven Tools I Use to Blog in Bursts

Productivity, Technology, Writing 2 Minutes

I tweeted an article a while back that wrote about Seth Godin concerning blogging. Seth Godin is a marketing guru, author, entrepreneur, and blogger.

The article talked about the fact that Seth writes every day. Whether it is drafting, tweaking, posting, or reviewing potential posts, he does SOMETHING every day.

If you’re like me, time is at a premium. It is sometimes difficult to write post after post and still be a present, in-the-moment husband, father, and employee.

With my current schedule, I find it easier to write in bursts of creativity as often as possible, and then to set my blog to post things automatically. Here are some of the tools I use to keep #NoCamo rolling along…

  1. A pen. I carry a pen. All the time. All. The. Time. It has become an inside joke with my wife and me. From time to time, she’ll ask me if I have a pen (OK, it’s not much of a joke, but it amuses me.). The answer invariably is yes. I keep a Uniball Jetstream clipped to my collar all day, every day.
  2. My Moleskine. I keep my Moleskine with most of the time. It is my favorite method of capturing ideas and drafting posts. I got away from using one for a while, until I saw Marcus Sakey, the crime novelist and host of Hidden City on Travel Channel, drafting his novels with a pen and notebook in the middle of a field somewhere and fell back in love with the idea. I’ve heard it said that an idea not written down is a lost idea. There is something about putting pen to paper that commits a writer to the words. I’m not sure that makes sense. It does to me.
  3. My recorder. I resurrected an old Sony voice recorder a few months ago, and have found this to be invaluable in capturing ideas. It doesn’t plug into a computer. It doesn’t have a removable data card. It has an easy-to-use interface and a little speaker that allows me to hear what I mumbled into it on my commute or at work or when out with friends or whatever. Works very well.
  4. My MacBook Air. What a blessing that machine is! When I saw the good reviews from Michael Hyatt and John Saddington, I was fortunate enough to be able to get one, and I am very thankful. It’s battery life and light weight are perfect for my needs, and it is plenty peppy enough for everything I need to do.
  5. My Evernote. It is my gigantic searchable file folder of love. I store many types of things in Evernote… clips from other blogs, links, pictures, ideas, and I draft my posts in it so that I always have access. I can tweak my writing from my iPhone, view it on my Fire, or get things ready to post from any computer anywhere.
  6. WordPress. My platform of choice. Crafting a good-looking post is super easy, the scheduling option couldn’t be simpler, and the fact that it looks good on mobile with no tweaking is fabulous.
  7. Hootsuite. This is what I use to schedule my updates. I am able to post links to my posts to my Twitter, Facebook, and my #NoCamo Facebook page with ease. I am really looking forward to Hootsuite adding G+ functionality, and hope that happens sooner than later (Yeah, yeah, I know I kinda dogged Google+ a while back. But it’s growing on me.).

So there you have it. This is what I currently use to get my posts out there. What do you use that I might like?

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