Some things in life we take for granted until they are not there. A large part of our work is based around Twitter. Not only do we post to Twitter, but we use it as a sign-in tool for other services – so you can imagine our dismay when the entire internet went down. OK, maybe the whole Internet, but a pretty big chunk.
That got us thinking. What other tools do we use daily that make our life easier? This is a shortlist of free tools or apps we use every day that we couldn’t live without.
Yoast SEO – We love Yoast because it provides a quick check to ensure we’ve covered the essential SEO elements. Alt tags? Yup. Title tags? Yup. Snippet? Yup. You get the idea.
Buffer – We use Buffer to schedule all of our social media posts. The free version allows you to schedule up to 10 posts to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+. Unfortunately, Instagram doesn’t let you auto-post.
Pablo – Need a quick tool to create graphics for Instagram and such? This is the answer.
Upflow – OK! We admit it; we have a few Twitter accounts that we set on autopilot. Upflow ensures they have relevant keyword-driven content added regularly.
Google Alerts – Need to track an industry or subject? Alert sends us a daily email letting us know the latest news tied to a specific keyword. This comes in handy went we a curating content for a particular niche.
WordPress – the many posts touting the benefits of WordPress are well deserved, but the quick down and dirty is probably the most user-friendly dashboard-driven CMS tool for creating websites. Nuff said.
Jetpack – I know there are many things that Jetpack does, but honestly, we use it for a quick traffic check, and it pings us when a site goes down.
SumoMe – SumoMe offers pop-ups and such to collect emails for your newsletter and integrates with most standard providers like MailChimp and Constant Contact. Are pop-ups a pain? Yup, but they do convert visitors into subscribers. You can set the frequency of the pop-up so as not to annoy regular visitors.
We never have enough hours in the day, and these tools either automate or help make our lives a bit easier. However, we are all about setting it and forgetting to focus on content creation and keeping our customers happy.
Let us know in the comments below what works for you.
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