Many bloggers consider their computer to be their main blogging tool. However, there are many other things that should be considered blogging tools. I know that bloggers such as Darren Rowse have emphasized other blogging tools, so I thought I’d put a few things out there, which I think should be essential to every blogger.

A Dry Erase Board

I think that this is extremely key for anyone who is blogging. A white board is excellent for jotting down ideas, and also provides a large canvas near your blogging setup that you can just look towards for ideas. My personal suggestion, and what I’m going to do when I get to my new place is to do this with it:

• Split the board into several sections, using electrical tape (or whatever other method you like). Label each section for each of the blogs that you have. If you only run one blog, include all the topics in your niche that you wish to cover.
• Create a section for any goals you wish to meet for the blog for the next quarter (3 months). These are going to be goals like technorati, alexa, backlinks, and perhaps monetary goals.
• Create a section for any ideas for blog posts that you might have for each blog, so this way you can keep track and look here if you ever get stumped.
• Keep track of advertising prices on your blog, and update this as needed. This way you have the information readily available, and you can tweak it here.

Having all of this information near your desk can help keep you organized and make your blogging much simpler. Being able to keep track of everything is extremely important.

A Journal/Notebook

These can be immensely helpful. Having a journal or notebook that you can carry around with you all the time is great for jotting down ideas, or even writing entire posts out if you’re not near a computer. I can’t tell you how many ideas I’ve lost because they were in my head and I never wrote them down. It really is a shame if you lose a lot of posts this way. It’s a simple thing you can do, and I’m positive you will have more ideas than you can possibly write about in one day!

Books and Magazines

Did any of you think this one would be here? Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. A great way to become an authority in your niche is to do a lot of research about it. If you’re going to blog about movies, like I do, get a subscription to Entertainment Weekly, so you can have some news to write about, and a little look into the inside of the industry.
Remember, Reading is just as important as writing when it comes to blogging. I recently wrote how important it is to read as well as write when you blog. I stress it again here… read about what you are going to write about, so it at least seems like you know what you are blogging about!

So there they are, my suggestions for offline blogging tools. What do you think, and what do you use offline when you are blogging?

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