We all need tools no matter what we do for a living and online marketing is no different. The tools you use should be targeted to what your trying to do in your online business. A hammer is a great tool if your a construction worker, carpenter etc. But I wouldn’t recommend a hammer if your a website developer- well maybe if you have a slow computer!
I wanted to share with you some of my favorite and go to tools that I use on a daily basis to keep myself on track and focused… Enjoy!
This is one of my favorites- When I am thinking about my business I will use this to keep me on track. For me it helps a lot to have a visual aide to keep me focused.
https://adwords.google.com/intl/en_uk/home/tools/keyword-planner/ and
For my market research I like to use Google’s Keyword Planner. I like to see the keyword Ideas it comes up with but I also like that it shows keyword competition and the difficulty of ranking for that keyword.
https://www.similarweb.com/ and http://www.spyfu.com/
When doing my research I always use similarweb. I can “spy” on my competition and see where their traffic is coming from. It helps me to plan my content, ad’s and platforms that I want to focus on.
As for anything analytics related I of course use https://analytics.google.com/ using this tool I can get insights into traffic sources, pageviews, demographics, SEO, social media- pretty much everything I need to know. Another tool which I like is http://buzzsumo.com/ It’s an analysis tool but for content.
When it comes to images I like to use Canva- https://www.canva.com/ I like how I am able to create the graphics that I am looking for and that I need for my website, pinterest, instagram- you name it and canva can do it. Another advantage is the tutorials for those of us who are not graphic designers. Remember there is always pixabay, imgur and many other sites where you can find royalty free images for your marketing and social media posts.
When starting online not everyone has a big budget to start with so keeping costs down is important. When I started out I used mailchimp as my autoresponder and it works great for up to 200 subscribers for free. Double check this as it may have changed.
In addition to these tools there are quite a few extensions available for google chrome which can help, I can’t go into all of them here but a few that I like-
- emoji for google chrome- I like being able to add emojis into my social media posts and this extension has more that what’s included in facebook.
- Facebook Pixel helper
- Pinontop- a pinterest tool to stay on top of pinterest trends
These are just a few of the extensions available. Do a search for chrome extensions to get the right ones for your marketing style and goals.
For my wordpress site I have a few plugin’s that i use-
Yoast SEO
Pretty Links
SumoMe
Kiwi Social Sharing Plugin
WP Smush- photo resizer, optimizes and compresses(No slowing your sites speed)
There are way too many plugins to name here but I would search for what you need in your wordpress dashboard- search in plugin’s tab.
We all have plugins and tools just sitting on our computer hard drives that we may have purchased or got as a bonus which we do not currently use. I recommend searching in JVZoo, Warriorplus and our email accounts for these bonuses- sometimes we may have forgotten that we bought a product because we got overwhelmed and we moved on to the next shiny object before we accessed our purchases.
Some of my favourite paid products are-
Octosuite- social media software
Youzign- Design Software
Instamate- Social media software
Video Robot- Video Creation
Image redirect- Clickable Images
Image X Pro- Design Software
Quiz Funnels
Screen Cast-o-matic
I am going to stop looking at my purchases now as I sense A depressive episode coming on. LOL. We all have products that we have access to but have never used or we don’t use anymore. Choose which ones that will help your business, which ones that we can use to create our own product and then start using them and start making forward progress.
