This guest post is by Daniel Scocco of Next iPhone News.
The Internet changes pretty fast, and if you want to have a popular blog, you must keep up with it. What if you get an awesome idea for a new post while at dinner? What if an important news breaks while you are at a birthday party? The bottom line is: you should be able to work on your blog all day long, even if you are not sitting in front of your computer.
How do you do that? With an iPhone! The 20 apps below will help you blog on the go, find ideas and images for your posts, track your analytics, promote your posts on social media and so on. Enjoy!
1. WordPress
If you are reading this blog I am guessing you use WordPress, right? The WordPress app for iPhone gives you everything you need to make a quick post, edit previous posts, edit pages, reply to comments and the like. In other words, it lets you manage your blog even while you’re commuting on a train or taking a break from driving on a highway. Just recently, the app was updated to version 8, bringing one essential feature suited for mobile bloggers: the ability to post photos that you’ve taken using your iPhone’s camera. Perfect!
2. Evernote
Literature on being a successful blogger will always tell you to be organized with your thoughts and to keep notes for your ideas. With Evernote, which is a very popular getting-things-done application, you can do that quite efficiently with your iPhone. You’ll find it’s an awesome tool for organizing your digital life.
3. TypePad
Okay, so your blog is not on WordPress? Then it must be using TypePad. This app lets you do things that you can normally do on your blog using your computer—write new posts, post photos to your blog, and alert your friends when you’ve published a new post, You know what’s great? The TypePad app integrates with the desktop client, too.
4. PayPal
PayPal is a must-have for bloggers and online entrepreneurs. When you want to check your balance, withdraw your hard-earned money, or pay-off a contracting service, you can do so now through the PayPal iPhone app. I’ve used this app many times before, and it’s secure, fast, and reliable.
5. Instapaper
Instapaper is an useful app to keep track of interesting posts and pages you found online. I mean, being a blogger, I’m sure you do a lot of web surfing using your iPhone. Since you’re on the move, though, you won’t have time to finish reading all those articles, so using this app becomes quite handy.
6. Twitter
Find me a blogger who doesn’t have a Twitter account and I will quickly say that the person is not a true-blue blogger. If PayPal is the official financial service of bloggers, Twitter is the official microblogging service. In fact, it’s not a microblogging service anymore. It has become an official communication medium for online geeks. There are many Twitter apps for iPhone, but why bother with third-party apps if there is this official one?
7. Analytics App
Once you start using Google Analytics it’s easy to get addicted. If you already are, then you’ll certainly want to install the official Google Analytics iPhone app. This should also save you from boredom in those situations you have nothing else to do.
8. iEarn
Useful if you’re running Google AdSense on your blog, this iPhone app will let you check your earnings and statistics with all the AdSense aggregate data (including revenues for today, revenues for yesterday, last seven days, this month, and last month). The app also gives you statistics on your AdSense impressions, clicks, eCPM, and CTR.
9. Byline
A useful tool for getting the latest news from your favorite sites and blogs, which you can use as a reference for blog posts, new ideas and outbound links. What’s good about this app is that it syncs with your Google Reader account and delivers the latest and most updated news feeds to your iPhone.
10. Blogpress
If you need to manage several blogs hosted on several blogging platforms, you definitely need this app. It supports Blogger, WordPress, TypaPad, and others. It also integrates well with social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and Picasa. The app lets you do most of the things that you will normally do while log-in to your blog using your computer. One thing that you will most likely appreciate from this app is that you can cross-publish a post to different blogs on different platforms.
11. CoverItLive
Sooner or later in your blogging career you’ll be prompted to live blog a certain event. If you don’t feel like bringing your laptop to said event, you can still cover it using your iPhone. Get this app and you’ll be able to launch and run live events, publish live commentary, publish photos, audio and video, email event links, and more.
12. ShoZu
This app is best described as a social media hub. That is because will let you connect with more than 50 social networking. For bloggers like us, this app also supports WordPress, Blogger and TypePad. It lets you upload photos and videos to multiple sites with one click, update status and tweets, and geotag photos.
13. Photoshop Express
We all need to edit photos and images once in a while, so Photoshop’s app for the iPhone comes in handy. It has several nifty features that we could otherwise enjoy only on our computer. This app gives you the ability to perform several photo editing functions to your images or photos—from simple cropping to filtering and applying special effects. It’s free as well.
14. Air Sharing
Let’s say you’re drafting a post while on your way home. When you finally arrive home, what’s the best and fastest way to transfer your draft to your Mac or PC to fine-tune the post some more? Well, this app of course. Air Sharing lets you mount your iPhone as a Wi-Fi device on your computer. Once mounted, you can drag and drop files from your iPhone to your computers and open them using the appropriate app.
15. Posterous
This app made it to the list because of its seamless autoposting feature that works with most blogging platforms. It’s useful to integrate different blogs, Twitter streams, and to make sure that your posts are going directly to all your online channels.
16. Tumblr
Tumblr is also known as the “other” microblogging service, which thankfully didn’t follow Twitter’s path and remained true to what it was created for. If you have a Tumblr account and you want to regularly update it with text, image, video or link posts, this app should be sitting on your iPhone’s app screen. It’s completely free.
17. WriteRoom
This app (which is the iPhone version of a popular desktop software) has one goal: to give you a distraction free writing environment. No fancy menus, options, formatting features and the like. Just plain and straight-out writing with an even more useful full-screen writing feature.
18. Photobucket
Not only is this app is useful for posting photos you’ve taken using your iPhone, but it also allows you to search for images and photos from the Photobucket website. And if you find something that you can use for a blog post, you can save the photo or image and then use it right after. It’s great for sourcing images.
19. iBlogger
The first thing you’ll notice when checking out this app from the App Store is the relatively expensive price (i.e., $10). However, this app has several nice features that make it worthy of its price. For example, it makes adding links to posts easier and it allows the integration with Google Maps and other location based services (using the iPhone’s GPS).
20. Facebook
We couldn’t leave the Facebook app for the iPhone out of the list, right? After all Facebook and blogging go hand in hand. With this app you can easily share links to your recent posts, write new updates for your followers and readers and so on.
Do you use these apps? What others can you share?
You missed Squarespace…
I have a feeling adding Analytics App to my phone might be a life-changing event. WordPress app is essential; I love it!
Great list!
I have a feeling adding Analytics App to my phone might be a life-changing event. WordPress app is essential; I love it!
Great list!
While I have a Droid rather then an iPhone, I still use many of the aforementioned apps. The biggest ones for me are Twitter, WordPress and GMAIL! I get all my e-mails forwarded to my g-mail, so when I have a comment to approve and I’m not near my laptop, I get alerted via e-mail and can quickly approve it with the WordPress App..
Google Analytics on your phone is also crucial because it’ll let you know of any big spikes in traffic, if your post goes viral,etc.
Instagram, it has it’s own little community I love it. It’s really freshened up my instant image sharing and I love that people “like” photos and can engage in conversation.
Great post, just downloaded CoverItLive as it sounds exactly what I need.
Thanks for the recs! I don’t have an iPhone, but I do have an iPad and know that there a few of these that translate over. Any specific recs for iPad apps?
Comprehensive list. Now I know what apps to get for my iPhone. Thanks heaps.
Justin Williams app “Elements” was a game changer for me — simply awesome DropBox powered syncing. Good stuff.
i didn’t knew about the worpdress and paypal app. I think this effect my decision of buying the next smartphone.
Great list. How about top 20 iPad apps for bloggers.
This is a really helpful list, Daniel. I don’t actually have an iphone yet (I spend all of my time in a home office), but the sites you mention are great for laptops, too! I’ve heard of some of these (even signed up with sites like Evernote and Posterous), but I don’t use them. I’ll have to take another look…
Clarice
I highly recommend Pinterest. Fantastic resource for discovering beautiful and interesting images. I stopped using Tumblr due to the problem of links breaking and images quickly becoming “orphaned” from the original source. Pinterest avoids this problem much more effectively.
I added about 6 thanks to this list!!! Thanks for gathering and posting it! This will make my life a bit easier.
…If only I hadn’t bought the iPhone in the first place…
With all the awesome apps like this, it’s literally impossible to go back to a sub $100/month plan! Damn you, Apple!
Although I don’t seem to have enough time to blog anymore, I find that I want to have the ability to do so on hand at all times. I use a lot of those aforementioned items. However, for ease of posting, I find Dragon Dictation indispensable. Dictate to your phone, copy, open WordPress, paste, voila – post is done!
Whoa, Daniel! I cannot tell you how helpful this is! Mostly, I work in the blogosphere. I just sold my iPad because I was unable to properly do my blogging work with that device. I’m picking up a used MacBook instead. But I carry my iPod Touch around like a rag doll. Thanks to you, I can now really start putting it to use.
Awesome!
suzannemcdermott.com
drawandwatercolor.com
@Shawn, I never used it personally, but I heard some really good things about the Dragon speech recognition software.
Great List! I have some already but there are a few here I intend to download later today, like Paypal and Analytics. Tweeting from the phone is easy – drafting a whole post is more challenging, but capturing ideas for posts is pretty straight forward on a phone.
I use my Starbucks app way too much if that counts as a ‘blogging’ app:)
I love these kinds of lists! It is getting really crowded in the app store, and I find it hard to differentiate between some of the apps that are available. One that I think many aussies under utilize is evernote, and one that you did not mention which I think is really cool is dropbox.
Great list! Now, if I could get my phone away from my 6 year old we would be in business.
Don’t mean to nitpick, but I don’t think the Analytics App is an “official” Google Analytics app.
Here I thought Google had actually released something of their own…
OK, now I am waiting for an Android list.
I don’t use my iPhone enough for my blogging and tweeting. You’ve encouraged me to move into the real world. :)
These all apps are ultimate
Nice list.
Personally, I prefer the PlainText app over the WriteRoom app. PlainText syncs with dropbox, so I can then go to my laptop and access any new files automatically.
Not to miss Bloapp http://www.bloapp.com a free tool for bloggers to convert their blog into a native iPhone (and Android) app.
My blog’s on Blogger. Any specific cool apps you can recommend? Great list by the way. I will get that Paypal and iEarn apps. I’m actually downloading it now. Cheers!
BlogPress will do the trick
Thank you for this list. I have the newest generation iPod touch which though can run these apps, is limited mobility-wise because it has only wifi. I had been wondering if it was worthwhile still getting an iPhone. However, regular access to these and other apps will definitely aid managing a blog and makes getting the phone a wise thing.
Good one Daniel. Good to see you on your next adventure. I remember reading a post when you where highlighting the iPhone niche, it looks like you have ventured and I hope that its a profitable one for you.
Will check out the Analytics app! Good to know. Display on BlackBerry is too small to be useful for stats.
As for Twitter, I don’t like the iPhone Twitter apps – I’ve got Hootsuite and it’s OK, aside from one useful feature which UberSocial on the BlackBerry has – via the BB browser I can visit a web page and then send a shortened link to UberSocial, add a comment, hashtags etc and Tweet away. Simple and quick.
iPhone Twitter apps don’t let me do this, or at least I have not found one which does yet. Tips on this front would be welcome.
Ciao from Italy,
Alex
I just tried out evernote its pretty cool. I put it on my ipad, iphone and my laptop. Now I can take notes and see them with whatever I am using
Great list. I had always wished there was a better analytics app as well as a compentent adwords app. I am fairly surprised no one has been able to come out with something solid in these areas.
Great stuff I will check out some of these I am not as familiar with.
Hi Daniel,
Thank you for posting this. We were inspired by your useful post and created an article for bloggers with an iPad – 30+ Best iPad apps for Bloggers and Webmasters.
Hope this helps. Cheers!
What happened to my comment, was it removed? Is analytics app the official GA app or not?
Hi Greg, you are right. There is NO official Google Analytics app in the App Store.
I think the OP should change that in his article, that seems to me to be a huge mistake.
Reeder to sync with the RSS feeds in Google Reader. Just read this post and wrote this commenton Reeder for the iPad actually!
Blog pulse is very good. It works much better than the WordPress app.