18 Invaluable Sites for Improving your Blog

by Mexicanwave

Does your blog content provide a valuable service?

If you're a serious blogger, you should be asking yourself this question on a regular basis.

Because if the answer is no, why on earth would anyone want to visit or follow your blog?

In her newsletter I Love Great Curators.  Are You One?, Jane Friedman says, "Curation is one of the most valuable services you can provide in a world flooded with information."

Curation?

What does curation have to do with blogging?

Well, Jane compares bloggers to content specialists, who research, index, and preserve previously inaccessible information and bring it into the public domain. 

Bloggers, according to this line of thinking, are cross-pollinators, go-betweens, connectors, who guide readers to smart, interesting, and reliable content.  And that makes them curators.  Often great ones. 

In the spirit of guiding readers to smart, interesting, and reliable content, here are 18 top-notch sites about blogging I've discovered over the past year and added to my trove of treasures.

Invaluable Sites For Improving Your Blog

1. Photo and video sharing service: TinyPic (Great place to resize photos for your blog)
2. Web Analytics:  Clicky and Statcounter
3. Discovery Engine:  StumbleUpon 
4. Online pin board to organize and share things you love:  Pininterest 
5. Social network teaching how to blog and how to make money online:  TheSitsGirls  
6. Curating buzz worthy news plus scoops for women bloggers:  ShePosts
7. Blogging Teacher
8. Protect your original creations:  My Free Copyright
9. Create a Custom Blog Header
10. Google Page Rank Checker
11. Free Stock Photos
12. Blog doctor
13. Pictures for your blog:  Flickr
14. Blog Content:  How to Write Great Content
15. Spicing up your blog
16. Daily blog tips
17. What is pinging?
18. Ping your blog

Add the ones you find useful to your own reference library.

And if you like what you see, let me know, and I'll keep working on my curating skills.