8 Applications for Marketing DIY Ninjas

Marketing today is more and more catered to the “instant gratification” approach which in some cases means knowing how you can quickly get something done in a pinch or in “bootstrap" times.  Having been in those situations often, I’ve used a variety of tools to help me get the job done.  Each of the below eight tools have enabled me to get things done with few resources and little time.  I’ve marked in brackets if they are “freemium” (more or less free) or have a fee "[$$$].”    

1) Graphics- Canva [freemium mostly] Many of you have likely already used this application to whip up a quick social media graphic, newsletter header image, or companion images for blog posts.  I like that it’s free for the most part, but the free photos are limited.  The good news is that many of the images are $1.   https://www.canva.com/

2) Transcription service- wescribeIT.com  [$$$] When doing interview that are lively and engaging, even the best note takers aren’t “transcribing” which is helpful for capturing quotes accurately to use them in relevant contexts for collateral, Web etc.  One challenge with general transcription is lack of industry specific knowledge so you might get garbled industry jargon or spoken acronyms  (Ex.  iSCSI is said "eye-scuzzy” and may get transcribed that way by some transcribers).  I’ve used the WeScribeIT service and had good luck with their accuracy and knowledge of IT.  It has made the read through of their transcription more accurate.  http://wescribeit.com/

3)  Graphics and layout apps-  Adobe Apps you really can’t live without (Creative Cloud) [$$$] These apps are not free, but they are the de facto standard for creating anything digital.  I like and have used the below:  

• Photoshop- Editing photos primarily
• Illustrator- Vector graphics editing 
• In Design- Collateral layout updating
• Premier- Light video editing and file format outputting.  I really like that you can take “stills” of your HD video that are usable for digital assets and sometimes print if the usage format is small enough   https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud.html

4) Evernote- indexed notes [freemium] I used to have lots of notes that were in paper notebooks that were difficult to remember which meeting I wrote what at on what day.  I converted to Evernote a few years ago and wouldn’t go back for meeting notes and search ability of the information.  I can also upload handwritten notes that get indexed and are searchable as well.  I’ve also really liked the clipping of Web pages capability.     https://evernote.com

5) Scannable (an Evernote product)- PDF images directly from your phone [freemium] I use this to sign documents, take a picture of the signed or executed contract and generate a PDF directly from phone image.  No more having to find a scanner to scan and email yourself a copy of the document.   https://evernote.com/products/scannable/

6) Asana- Project management [freemium] This free tool enables tracking and creation of basic projects and tasks.  It’s built on tasks as the base unit of work to be done.  It has sub tasks but that hierarchy didn’t prove as useful.  If you have a small team but many projects, this is a nice tool to replace email as the medium for tracking and assigning work.   https://asana.com/

7) Join.me- Online meeting [freemium] If you need to do a quick screenshare and your group doesn’t have a paid tool or for a variety of reasons Skype doesn’t meet the need, I’ve really liked Join.me for basic screensharing.  The free version is limited (i.e. no passing the presenter controls) but if you just need a quick screenshare, this service works well.  https://www.join.me/

8) Hootsuite- Social media publishing [freemium] This is a nice tool to consolidate your publishing on multiple social media handles including scheduling and basic listening.   https://hootsuite.com/

This list, of course, isn’t an exhaustive list of applications for DIY ninjas but these 8 have come in handy for me.  

What applications have you found to be useful in your marketing day to day?