I’ve always used this site as a testing ground for different plugins and other experimentations so that I could help some clients have an easy plug-n-play experience with their blogs. Many plugins have come and gone but I want to give special mention to a few that have really impressed me lately.
WWSGD – What would Seth Godin Do? The one question every marketer should ask themselves when in a promotions pickle. This simple plugin has been around awhile, but it’s value far exceeds it’s ease of use. By dropping in a simple box asking folks to subscribe, you create that always desired permission to sell/promote/endorse directly to those folks checking in on a regular basis.
WordPress Automatic Upgrade – Upgrading WordPress isn’t brain surgery, but it’s not Tiddly-Winks either. The worst part about upgrading is the tedium, and when the fine folks at WP upgrade their software every 3 months, upgrading becomes a pain. Top that off with managing several blogs at a time, and you’re bound to write off upgrading ever again. This plugin is my saving grace. It couldn’t be easier and any less painless.
Feedburner Monetize – I’m not exactly discovering fire by announcing Feedburner as a useful tool. Honestly, the lot of Feedburner’s toolset are among the most important and useful items in my arsenal, but since they recently added the option for people to integrate Adsense directly into feeds and posts, it’s been great for my clients trying to monetize their blogs. I’ve been using it hear just to test and seems to work well. I’ll be pulling it down from this blog, but I definitely recommend it to others who want to get a little coin for their efforts.
iPhone – Ok, not a blog tool, but definitely a productivity tool. Before I purchased my iPhone, I had a Blackberry, a camera and an iPod. Granted, the camera on the iPhone doesn’t compare to my digital, it’s great for those quick snapshots. Direct interaction with Gmail is vital for me, although I’m still trying to figure out how to send email from different accounts. Multiple recipient SMS, Direct Youtube access and being able to select which voice mails to listen to without having to call in, these are all extremely useful, but still not where I’m most productive. That comes from Google Reader.
I constantly rotate about 50 or so RSS feeds, which isn’t ridiculous compared to some, but if I don’t stay on top of my reading, it gets out of hand fast, especially with sites like Apartment Therapy posting 50 to 100 times a day. With the iPhone, I’m always ahead of my reading because I’m not limited to my time in front of a computer. I’m even considering adding some more feeds to the list, but we’ll see. Yeah, the phone is a bit pricey, but not ridiculous and considering my increased productivity, I’d say I made my money back already.