Two blogger resources to enjoy

Somebody’s getting a head start on studying! Image courtesy of MIphoto, Morguefile.

One nice thing about being in contact with other bloggers is the opportunity to hear about helpful resources. I came across two free resources recently, and thought I’d share them with you.

The first one is Blog Post Headline Analyzer, created by the nice folks over at CoSchedule, a content marketing company from North Dakota. It’s fun to run your headlines through it and see what your headlines rate. I ran some of my blog post headlines through it, and seeing the different scores was intriguing.

The analyzer is also a useful learning tool for bloggers, making you think about what should be in a good blog post headline, how many words the headline should be, and what types of keywords you should use to help search engines pick up your blog post.

Mostly, when I’m creating a headline, I add in a keyword or two for SEO. I also make the headline intriguing and/or funny whenever possible. I do love me some word puns.

The second tool is an Australian site called Open2Study. All you have to do is sign up with an email address and password, and take the course when it starts.

Some courses they list are Writing for the Web (bloggers, take note of this one), The Art of Photography, Financial Literacy and other interesting subjects. You watch videos, read transcripts, do pop quizzes and take assessments to gauge what you’ve learned. There’s also a forum where you can talk with your classmates and get perspectives from different parts of the world. Fun!

I recommend both of them. I’ve found both to be helpful, and I hope you’ll find them to be the same. Enjoy!