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Posts Tagged ‘Tools’

What if I told you there was a FREE 3rd party Blog editor that can be a game changer in your efforts to improve your corporate Blog adoption? What if I told you it works with most of the major Blog vendors and that it handles images, does a great job cleaning up Word code, and allows newbies to author great looking articles? What if I told you it was made by Microsoft? I know I just said free, good, and Microsoft in the same breath, but it is true and you should take a look because you may be missing something if you don’t.

I know that most long-time Bloggers are quite comfortable with the built-in editors that come with Blogs such as TypePad, WordPress, Blogger, etc., but if your company is like mine and Blogs are opening up to more and more non-traditional Bloggers, take a look at Live Writer by Microsoft. I have had amazing results and much lower long-term support levels using this tool and frankly those that have adopted it love it. In an earlier article, I wrote about my efforts to create scalable Web 2.0 Intranets with Blogs as the backbone. Live Writer has allowed me to rapidly down-level the skill set necessary for content creation from fairly technical Project Managers to Administrative Assistants and more junior non-technical personnel. In one of our largest divisions we were able to replace a Web contracting firm for content creation and maintenance with a single Exec Admin and we get better results.

The only downside to Live Writer is that just like most Microsoft tools it is Windows only. Our company, like most with large Engineering divisions, is not Windows only. But if your company is like mine and the vast majority of the non-technical community is Windows based then this requirement becomes a non-issue.

Intrigued? Download it, take it for a test drive and you may just be surprised by the capabilities of this free Blog editor.