Use Triggit To Easily Add Images And Links To Your Posts

_trgun = “jshaffstall”

I received a contact from Zach over at Triggit asking me to review the tool.

I headed over to the site without much in the way of expectations. Since I write a blog that has been around for a while (in Internet terms, at least), I get requests like this a lot. Most of the tools don’t end up being anything all that useful, or they’re only interested in positive paid reviews, which I don’t do.

Triggit is still in a private alpha phase at the moment, but Zach gave me the code to get in. It’s always great to see these sorts of tools before they’re released.

The website is a bit minimalistic right now. The member’s area is a single page of instructions with a video demonstrating how to use Triggit. For Blogger and Typepad, Triggit will automatically integrate itself with your blog. For WordPress users, you have to insert a bit of code just after the opening body tag in your template. Hopefully they’ll release a plugin that will do this for you in the future.

And that’s it. Just the demonstration video and the code to add. No help files, tutorials, etc.

I spent some time wondering if I’d missed something, but finally decided to duplicate what the demonstration video does to see how it all works. Here’s the best advice I can give for using Triggit:

Don’t over think it! It really is as simple as the demonstration video makes it seem.

For those who might want a bit more of a step by step tutorial, here it is:

1) Bookmark the link given in your Triggit member’s area

2) Install Triggit on your blog by clicking the appropriate button on their website for Blogger or Typepad, or putting the code they give you into your WordPress theme just after the opening body tag

3) Write a post and publish it. Write the post as if you had pictures and videos and links to Amazon and Commission Junction products already in it. Put the anchor text for the links, but don’t make the links.

4) View the published post in your web browser and click your Triggit bookmark

5) Enter your Triggit username and password

6) The Triggit toolbar appears, and on it is an Add New Triggit button. Use that button to add pictures and videos anywhere in your post, or make links out of any text you like.

This is especially cool for WordPress users, since WordPress has traditionally had poor image management features. Triggit doesn’t let you do text wrapping around the image, which would be very nice, but it does allow you to easily resize the image to fit your post.

And it does all this without actually editing your post. The downside is that you must publish your post before you can Triggitfy it. So there will be a period of time during which your post will appear without the images, videos, or links. If you use WordPress’ scheduled posting capability, this might be a bit of a pain. Zach says they’re working on a button that will let you Triggitfy your posts as you edit them, so you don’t need to publish first, so this issue should go away soon.

All in all, though, a very cool technology. I’m looking forward to seeing it evolve and improve.

Want to try Triggit out early? Zach kindly gave me an access code to share with a few subscribers, so just ask me for it via the contact form on the blog.