There’s no secret iPhone dramatically changed the way people are consuming – and, somehow, producing – digital information. 2 years ago the focus was on a stream of web enabled apps which could make your blogging easier. Today, there is huge shift towards mobile apps. You’re “there” everywhere, so to speak, so you don’t need a browser for that anymore.
I blog for more than 5 years now, the latest 3 in English, the most notable outlet being Brilliantly Better. Creating and maintaining a high profile blog isn’t always easy. The most important problem of all being time. Or the lack of it.
Here are 7 of my favorite iPhone apps which are helping me each day to play a nicer game of blogging. Each of them gives me a little bit more time by making the access of a specific type of information easier.
Woopra
If you don’t know what Woopra is, I think it’s time to find out. Woopra is a real-time analytics service and, I dare say, one of the best. I was initially hooked with their desktop version, which allowed me todo all sort of cool things like seeing who was online or even start a chat with my visitors (some of them found this somehow spooky 
). The iPhone app contains everything that is in the desktop app, but it also makes an interesting use case from the mapkit. In the image below you can see a real-time snapshot of my other blog traffic. Pretty cool.
Get Woopra for iPhone from AppStore by clicking here.
StumbleUpon
Many blogger don’t really “get” StumbleUpon. Because of that, they stop using it. Which is sad. It took me around 6 months to make my way around StumbleUpon, but now a vast majority of my traffic is coming from SU. I agree that social media traffic doesn’t convert well (or at all) but it’s still traffic and it should be taken into account. Their iPhone app makes it really easy for me to keep in touch with my SU friends, thumb up or down the shares I get and, generally, stay in sync with my SU account. Before the iPhone app I was constantly maximizing my SU bar because I didn’t have time to “work out” my shares. Now, I barely hit 10-15 shares because whenever I have 3-4 minutes free I just fire up the app and work out my shares.
Get StumbleUpon for iPhone from AppStore here.
WordPress
I use a self-hosted wordpress platform for all my blogs and it works great. But sometimes, mostly because I’m on the road quite often, I miss the ability to quickly edit a comment or a typo. WordPress for iPhone to the rescue. Being used to the plethora of features the browser based version has, you may be a little disappointed by the spartan look and feel of the iPhone version. But believe me, it really does its job. I know many situations in which changing a word in my post took only 30 seconds by using the iPhone app, as opposed to at least 3-4 minutes (including booting, starting the browser, etc) on my laptop.
Get WordPress for iPhone from AppStore by clicking here.
iAdd
[shameless plug] I used to be a productivity whoore. GTD, task management, planning, the whole thing. But in the last year I hit a wall. So, I created my own productivity framework (which os more of a life management framework) and gave up anything else. I also coded an iPhone app to implement the principles in the framework. So, every time I get hit by an idea, I just store it in my iAdd app and then I drive that piece of information throughout the whole Assess – Decide – Do path. Basically, when I start to write a blog post after it was processed in iAdd, all I have to do is to add some extra content, links and maybe pictures. Everything else is done on the road.[/shameless plug]
Get iAdd for iPhone / iPad from AppStore by clicking here.
If StumbleUpon drives traffic to my blog, Twitter drives people to me. Many of my digital friends are active on Twitter and many of my face to face encounters with blogging buddies or even real life friends were prefaced by a Twitter encounter first. So, I’m using the official Twitter iPhone app and I’m quite addicted to it. Since I’m using it on the road, my Twitter consuming pattern changed a bit and you’ll be surprised to find out that it changed in a good way. I’m using it even less since I know I literally have it into my pocket.
Get Twitter for iPhone from AppStore by clicking here.
If Twitter is driving people towards me, Facebook makes me feel good about that. Sort of . I’m using Facebook more and more and I find its diversity in interaction rather appealing. I’m still not into massive Facebook apps using, or playing games inside this, but I like the fact that I can “like” some of my friends activity and that I can create much more complex messages than on Twitter. Lately, Facebook also started to draw in a constant flow of visitors for my blog. Having Facebook in my pocket had the same effect on my like having Twitter on my pocket, I’m using it less frequently.
Get Facebook for iPhone from AppStore by clicking here.
PayPal
I left the goodie for the end of this post. I don’t know about you, but I’m generating a bit of a revenue through my blogs. Most of it is channeled through PayPal. And being able to make decisions about when to pay your affiliates or when to make a withdrawal, all this while waiting for the subway, well, it kinda makes sense to mention PayPal for iPhone here. If I’m not wrong, it’s one of the most recent apps in the AppStore (compared with the ones above, maybe iAdd is younger than PayPal) so you can expect a little bit of a clumsiness in the interface, but other than that it works great. And this is all you need from PayPal, after all
Get PayPal for iPhone from AppStore by clicking here.
Do you have any other iPhone app which you consider really important for your blogging. Don’t be shy. Share it
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