Writing • @maheshone

The 13 Best Google Chrome Extensions I Can’t Live Without (Plus 13 I Can Live Without)

@maheshoneOctober 9, 2015By

Google Chrome is much more than just a browser and that's how it became the web's favorite internet browser. And it was perhaps the first cloud-integrated web browser. That is, everything you do inside Google Chrome was automatically synced across all your computers (and today mobile devices as well). And there are literally hundreds of thousands of Google Chrome extensions that can make this super-browser even more powerful.

Don't Miss: Productivity Tools: The Fantastic Ten To Skyrocket Your Productivity

The good thing is, there must be an extension to make Chrome work the way you want. For instance, I often end up accidentally close a pinned tab. So, I can install an extension called Lock Tab to prevent it (I'm not using it though). The only problem with Chrome is that... it's so resource hungry that it eats up your computer's memory (RAM) in a big way. So make sure that you don't overload your browser with a ton of add-ons or extensions. It will not only slow down your computer but also make it a mess as most of the Chrome extensions can access your browsing history (or much more). So it's always a good idea to install only the trusted ones. Today, I have sorted some of the best Google Chrome extensions and apparently they are also my personal favorites.

13 Google Chrome Extensions I Can't Live Without

Here's a quick reminder. It's really impossible to come up with a definite list of Google Chrome extensions as its selection depends upon a person and his/her nature of work. For instance, if you are a gamer or a graphic designer then you may not find much helpful extensions. But if you are a blogger or even a writer then you would find at least few of them helpful. That's why this is a list of my favorite extensions. And I have divided the list into two: the first 13 are the ones that I can't live without and it's enabled all the time. And the next 13 are the ones that I activate on-demand --- that is, when I want to do something with it. If you're looking for a comprehensive list then check out: Top 50 Google Chrome Productivity Extensions and Top 30 Google Chrome SEO Extensions.

WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org: The Ultimate Comparison With Pros & Cons

@maheshoneFebruary 9, 2015By

maheshone

WordPress is web's favorite blogging platform. It’s a software that lets you create, manage and publish your content seamlessly. That's why over 20% of web or almost 50% of all blogs are powered by WordPress. So, What exactly is WordPress?

WordPress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. What a mouthful. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

WordPress was started as a blogging system, but it has evolved a lot to become a full content management system (CMS). It's limited only by your imagination (and tech chops) as there are thousands of themes, plugins, and widgets available to transform your WordPress site into almost anything that you can imagine.

Don't Miss: The 101 Best WordPress Plugins — For Anything & Everything

Blogger vs. WordPress: The Ultimate Comparison With Pros & Cons

@maheshoneFebruary 9, 2015By

maheshone

Blogger.com (or simply Blogger) and WordPress are the two most popular blogging platforms on the web. Of course, there are tons of other free blogging platforms like Tumblr, LiveJournal, Medium, Blog.com, etc. but I'm going to focus only on Blogger and WordPress. Blogger.com is also known as BlogSpot as all the Blogger.com blogs are hosted as a subdomain of blogspot.com. For example, http://googlesystem.blogspot.com (it's an unofficial blog about Google). The best thing about Blogger is that it's absolutely free and is owned by Google. WordPress is the most loved Content Management System (CMS). In fact, 20% of the web or 48% of all CMS sites are powered by WordPress. It's a software that lets you create, manage and publish your content seamlessly. WordPress has two flavors, namely: WordPress.com (the free hosted version --- like example.wordpress.com) and WordPress.org (self-hosted version --- like my blog).

Read: Over 51 Blogging Platforms To Showcase Your Awesomeness

The Definitive Guide To Writing A Perfectly Optimized Blog Post

@maheshoneFebruary 3, 2015By

maheshone

First Published: March 18, 2014; Last Updated: February 3, 2015

Over the past several months I have collected a ton of good resources about how to write a perfect blog post. And I thought it’s better to do a mashup than simply rewriting/reposting what’s already said in the blogosphere.

So, I will be focusing on writing a blog post that’s well optimized and that attracts search engine and social media love.

As you probably know, there are a lot of bloggers who write really awesome content but the problem is their blog posts are not so optimized. The reason could be they don’t care about SEO much or they are not so tech-savvy so they don’t know how to optimize their blog posts.

Hence I believe that this blog post will also help the not so tech-savvy bloggers (food blogs, personal blogs) so that they can optimize their existing and future blog posts to skyrocket the traffic.

Don't Miss: 15 Blogging Tips To Supercharge Your Next Blog Post

37 Content Discovery Tools To Find Great Social Media Content

@maheshoneDecember 13, 2014By

maheshone

Image Credit: Flickr

If you're a newbie blogger then it may be difficult to come up with a new topic each day (especially when you want to blog daily). As you probably know blogging is all about quality content and you really don't have to blog everyday just to keep your blog active. When you publish a post you have to make sure that there's something unique in your content and you’re adding some value to your posts.

Read: Why 365 Blog Posts (Or Less) Is All You Need To Become A Super-Blogger

And if you're active on social media then it's almost impossible to share only your own content all the time. Even if you can, you shouldn't be doing that because your audience must be interested in other content related to your niche.

Be A Content Curator

If you want to become a good blogger then you have to become a good content curator. Like FastCompany has mentioned Content Curators are the new superheroes of the web. They say:

Curation is the act of individuals with a passion for a content area to find, contextualize, and organize information. Curators provide a consistent update regarding what's interesting, happening, and cool in their focus.

The good thing is… when you read, curate, and share more industry specific content you’ll get topic ideas naturally and you’ll know exactly what your audience want.

Read: Over 101 Social Media Tools (Free & Premium) You’ll Ever Need

Over 40 Image Sources & Tools For Free Stock Photos, Images & Cliparts

@maheshoneDecember 1, 2014By

maheshone

Image Credit: Free Digital Photos

Like every other blogger, I have been using Google Images for Clip art, Images, and Photos for my blog even though I didn’t want to. But recently I created a Lifestyle blog for a friend and advised her to use Flickr for images.

I was totally impressed by her image searching capability and decided to use Flickr for my blog as well. Again, the blogpost by Roni Loren titled “Blogger Beware: You CAN Get Sued For Using Photos You Don't Own on Your Blog” was a total eye-opener.

I read that article a couple of days back and got to action. Why? Because Roni said that we can get sued for using those clip-arts, stock images, and photos which we get from Google Images. I have often, like most of you, royally ignored the warning message from Google which says “Images may be subject to copyright.” while previewing images.

So where can you get images from now? Use images with a Creative Commons License. Creative Commons Attribution License indicates that you're free to share, remix and make commercial use of the work as long as you give an attribution.

Over 101 Content Marketing Tools (Free & Premium) You’ll Ever Need

@maheshoneNovember 3, 2014By

maheshone

If you're a blogger or an Internet marketer, you would probably know that there are hundreds of thousands of marketing tools online that makes Internet Marketing much easier. A good percentage of the content that resides in my Evernote are actually "tools" -- for almost anything.

Read: Why Evernote Is My (And Probably Your) Perfect Blogging Companion

And that's how I recently came up with a list of 101 Productivity Tools and 101 Social Media Tools (with over 30 Image Tools). Today I'm going to focus on Content Marketing -- just content marketing -- and want to feature some of the best content marketing tools to streamline your marketing efforts.

The 13 Best Google Chrome Extensions I Can’t Live Without (Plus 13 I Can Live Without)

13 Google Chrome Extensions I Can't Live Without

WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org: The Ultimate Comparison With Pros & Cons

Blogger vs. WordPress: The Ultimate Comparison With Pros & Cons

The Definitive Guide To Writing A Perfectly Optimized Blog Post

Over 40 Image Sources & Tools For Free Stock Photos, Images & Cliparts

About Mahesh (@maheshone)

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