Blogging is hard work and until you’ve tried you hands at it for a few months you really have no idea how hard it can be. I’m not talking about physically hard work so much as mentally hard work. How so you might be wondering to yourself?

There are several things you must do in order for your blog to be effective.

• Choosing a niche to blog about
• Write timeless content
• Write new content
• Responding to readers comments and emails
• Optimizing the blog
• Spend time visiting and commenting on other blogs
• Generate a buzz around it as it gains momentum and (hopefully) takes off

The list could go on and on, but that’s enough to get the point across. Blogging is hard work, but fortunately there are a number of tools at our disposal which can make things much easier on us.

Are you always ready to blog?

Some people claim you should sit on a good idea. That is nonsense. You should immediately begin to flesh out a good idea. After all if it is truly a good idea the sooner you start working on it the sooner you’ll find it maturing. Austin Long over at One Man’s Goal recommends blogging with a voice recorder, and I couldn’t agree more. Even if you ultimately never use audio blogging you can always get your thoughts down and later transcribe them.

Of course you can always go with the more mundane yet timeless method of scribbling your thoughts out on some scrap paper. Regardless of what method you come up with the motivation is always the same. You are prepared to blog at a moments notice.

Be prepared to illustrate your point

I can’t tell you how often I’ve spent far too much time surfing around in Google Images looking for just the right picture to go with a blog post that was inspired by something I saw. How much easier it would have been had I taken a picture of that object when I saw it. If you don’t have one yet get a digital camera. You don’t need anything fancy a simple sub $100.00 point and click camera will suffice. The idea is to provide some eye candy for potential readers. There’s no need to be the next National Geographic photo contenstant winner, but of course if that happens so much the better.

As an aside don’t forget that you might need to budget for some extra memory as most digital cameras that are less than $100.00 come with a very limited amount of storage space. Memory is volatile in that the price fluctuates, but it is usually very, very cheap. To be on the safe side plan to set aside an extra $25 to $50.

Online image storage

Hand in hand with the need for a digital camera is the need for a place to store those images online. There are many services with Flickr by Yahoo being the most popular currently. Personally I use photobucket to store my images simply because I’ve used them for a few years now and am too lazy to change.

Whether you use Flickr, Photobucket, or another service altogether online image storage is an essential tool to have.

Respond immediately to email

There’s no need to sit around checking your email every 5 seconds. Just setup a simple auto responder via your email interface with a simple message to anyone who writes you an email. Make it clear that the message is coming from an auto-responder and advise that you will get back to them as quickly as possible with a “real” email. By doing so you assure them that their email has gotten through and you care enough to say so.

Use a good text editor

Mashable published an excellent list of 10 free desktop blog editors about a month ago. I won’t get into great detail as to why such a thing is invaluable, but it is. Personally I’ve begun using Scribe Fire and am quite pleased with it.

Write posts today, publish them tomorrow

Make use of Wordpress’s scheduling features and schedule your posts to be published in the future. This way you can write the article, set up the publishing and forget about it until it is published. Personally I often have posts scheduled out 2 to 3 days at a time, but I’ve read of people who schedule them out weeks and even months.

Communities

There are a few communities that all bloggers should become active members of. Each one has its own merits and used alone you’ll not get much benefit from them but used in conjunction with one another you’ll find them very effective.

Myspace

I doubt there’s any need to explain the relevance of Myspace as a community so I won’t get into great detail at this time, but it is essential to have a profile linked to your blog due to marketing power of Myspace

Blogging Zoom

If you’re not familiar with BZ go check the site out. In a nutshell it is a social bookmarking site for blogs. It might not deliver the sheer volume of traffic some of the other services do, but it is much better traffic as far as converting goes. Best reason of all however is the fact that you can submit your own content without getting penalized. In fact it is encouraged!

My Blog Log(MBL)

This is essentially a Myspace for bloggers. It provides tracking and an ability to join” each others communities. The more communities you join the more will reciprocate and join yours thus exposing your blog to more potential traffic. I highly recommend joining and creating a profile. If you join my community I will join yours.

Blog Catalog

This is another community blogging service not entirely unlike MBL however it has a very active forums and group session unlike MBL.

Stumble Upon

Last but not least nothing beats SU for sheer traffic volume that just keeps giving. I have stumbled articles that bring me in 50 to 75 uniques per day. Articles that had been stumbled over three months ago. I highly recommend SU!

RSS Feed publishing

Hands down the best is Feed Burner which will help you burn and publish a RSS feed which of course your readers will love you for. Not sure what exactly RSS is yet? Take a look here for an explanation.

Keep in contact with other bloggers

Easiest and cheapest way to do this is using Instant Messaging. There are several flavors of Instant Messaging out there but I’ve personally found the best thing to do is install and use Trillian.

A respectable number of bloggers also use Skype which unfortunately is not supported by Trillian at this time, but is well worth checking out for yourself and seeing how it could work for you. Skype has the advantage of provding FREE VOIP services so you can actually talk to someone instead of typing.

One last note on essential tools. A tool must be used to be effective. If you have all these tools (plus more) what good does it do to have them but never make use of them? What essential tools are part of your blogging toolbox? How often do you make use of them?