In addition to my role as Qumana product manager, I am a consultant in my own right.  In fact, I am a new breed of consultant--I'm a professional blogger.  I am one of the Founding 20 members of the Professional Bloggers Association and on its executive board.  So, what do I do as a "professional blogger".  Essentially I write and help others to do the same.  The only difference is that this writing is posted to a blog instead of a newspaper or magazine.  Specifically I help clients in two ways.  First, I write content, preferably as me for transparency reasons, for their blogs.  The idea is that I start adding the content that attracts visitors and search engines while they work on their style and voice.  This reduces the pressure of staring at a blank page and worrying that after the first "hey we're blogging" post there isn't any other content coming.  Second, I consult with them on blogging in general--how to pick the right platform to blog on, customization, monetizing, writing, and (moral) support.

Who do I write for?  Well here's the list of public sites that I write for semi-regularly.

 
 
That's a lot of writing.  Those are a lot of different blogs and represent six different blogging platforms (Typepad, Blogware, .Text, WordPress, Drupal, and Blogger).  So, first, how do I find the content?  At last count I check 366 webfeeds.  Most are blogs, some are news sources (CNET, eWeek, Internet News ,NYT, etc), and I have a few Flickr feeds in there too (you have to have some fun!).  I use Lektora (Windows only right now, buy Jeff says he's working on a OSX version).  I've tried a lot of feed aggregators.  For me I need two things, skimability and savable searches that really work.  Lektora does this for me.  I've shaved at least 30 minutes off my morning news reading time using Lektora.  It works within Firefox or IE as a browser window.  It's free during this beta period and I really encourage you to check it out. Disclosure: I am not getting paid by Lektora, I just really like it and like to encourage young Canadian software developers and companies.
 
Now, the writing.  Okay so I have content from 366 feeds, how do I get it onto all these blogs?  One word: Qumana.  Here within our small Qumana team I am the most active (prolific?) blogger and publish to the most places.  I've been using Q--as we like to call it--as my primary blogging tool for nearly six months.  Let me tell you it's come a long way from the first version and Graham, our programmer, has some even cooler things up his sleeve that I can't talk about yet.
 
So how does Q help me?  Integral to Q is the DropPad.  With most offline editors it's like bloggis interruptus.  Stop, blog, continue.  With the DropPad I drag and drop a URL from the address bar to it, then maybe a couple quotes from the page, maybe an image too.  If I drop a file from my local drive (a picture, PDF, Word doc, whatever) Qumana handles the uploading to my choice of my blogs.  I have a dozen, easy, blogs already configured to publish to and Qumana handles them with ease and grace.  Okay you say, other clients can do drag and drop.  Yeah, but can you store those bits for later?  Items dropped into the DropPad go into the WorkPad in the main Qumana application.  From the WorkPad you can reorder them, add a new HTML-based item, or just click the Compose button and everything in the WorkPad is put into a fully functional, WYSIWYG editor (with spell check!).  Now, if you don't want all that stuff on the WorkPad to go into the post now, drag into a folder in the searchable Library.  I use the Library for the umpteen links to careers pages I need for the jobs blogs above.
 
Once you've written your content you can save it for later and it goes into the Library or publish it right away.  Here's the best part.  Have a few blogs to publish to?  Once you've added them to the publishers list, you just select them from the pull-down menu and hit Post again.  During the Blog Business Summit I wrote an article once and published to four blogs (two Blogware, one Blogger, and one WP) in just a couple minutes (you have to figure for Internet traffic).  So as a professional blogger this lets me focus on writing in a word processor-like interface and then just save and republish as needed.  For the jobs blogs sometimes one article is appropriate for more than one blog.  I don't have to copy and paste the content from one browser window to another, I just select the next blog and post.  It's really that easy.  Honestly, without Qumana I couldn't write for all these blogs on all these platforms without pulling out my hair and screaming.  Adding Lektora to the mix has now just made my life much more efficient.
 
Ready to try it? Download Qumana and request a 30-day registration key.  Now, if you'd like to try something a little different we've been working on a version that doesn't have the library, but still has the DropPad and some improvements in the editor.  If you would like to try that one, it's in an alpha/beta testing slash prototyping period right now so its free.  I'm not going to put the link here, but if you're interested in this scaled-down version (that is no WorkPad or Library, but still with the DropPad, WYSIWYG editor and multiple publishing destinations) e-mail me.
 
So these are a couple of the secrets to professional blogging--having great tools.  The other secret is that you have to write and write and keep writing.  Give it a whirl.  If you're interested in Pro Blogging as a career you can e-mail me about that too.