Shelley Bell
Growth Marketing Manager
As the Growth Marketing Manager at a start-up, I appreciate any tool that can help me work smarter, instead of harder. Hats off to all the developers out there who’ve created products that make us marketers’ jobs a little bit easier, and a lot more fun! Here are some of my favorite tools and websites I use almost every day, and why I think they are so awesome.
1. Canva – If you haven’t heard of Canva yet, you’re definitely missing out! It’s perfect for the times when my graphic designers are slammed and I need something created quickly. Canva’s design templates are the best I’ve found, and make it so simple for non-designers like myself. From social media post images to presentations – they have it all. The easy-to-use search function and resize option are my two favorite things. There is a free version, but for how inexpensive the pro version is – I completely recommend it, it’s worth it!
2. Grammarly – Although I think I am an expert at proofreading and grammar, Grammarly has taught me otherwise! This chrome extension proofreads in real-time for grammar, spelling, and clarity to take your copywriting skills to the next level. The free and paid versions are both great and have helped my team and I get better at catching grammatical errors, mistakes, and conveying our message in the best way possible!
3. Otter.ai – Ever have a conversation you can’t remember? We use Otter.ai to transcribe a variety of things. Zoom meetings, blog interviews, brainstorming sessions, and more! it saves us so much time during meetings so that no one has to take notes. It’s a great reference later on when we’re trying to think of content, remember an idea, or find quotes from different people in our organization.
4. Sendible – If you’re not using a social scheduler yet, I can promise you that you’re wasting time and making more work for yourself. Our team uses Sendible for all of our social posts. It keeps us organized and takes so much less time than posting individually. Sendible is awesome because we’re able to publish content to multiple social sites at once, while still being able to customize posts for each platform. Being able to tweak images, change text, add hashtags or links right in the scheduler makes it so that posts on each platform are as successful as possible. It’s also a great reference for the whole team, so we know when things are posted, what’s scheduled, and where the gaps are.
5. Monday.com & Trello – Project management tools are a must. You’re able to see all of the projects going on in one place, to ensure you don’t miss anything. Trello has helped us get off and running as a start-up, and while we love a lot of things about Trello, we’re currently transitioning to Monday.com. We’ve outgrown Trello as we’ve added more members to our team and our workflow. We love the visual elements of Trello but are excited about the versatility of Monday.com. Both are great options, check them out to see which is the best fit for you and your team!
6. Emojipedia – An oldie but a goody, Emojipedia is just like it sounds, it’s an encyclopedia of emojis. This is the perfect tool for searching and finding the right emoji for your social posts and email subject lines. Bonus points for the super easy copy/paste function!
7. Marketing Syrup SEO Extension – I found this gem through a newsletter – and it’s an easy-to-use SEO plugin for chrome that helps you identify your current website titles, descriptions, alt tags, and headings in one simple dashboard. You can quickly see what needs to be edited and fixed, and how things look overall without having to go into the back-end of your website.
8. Slack – I don’t know what our company would do without Slack! Some of our team members work remotely, some work on separate floors of our office building, and some tune us out to their headphones (you know who you are!). Slack makes communication happen fast, in a non-intrusive way. It integrates seamlessly with our workflow, and the remind feature saves our life multiple times a day!
9. Wappier – Wappier helps us navigate our consumer data post-acquisition, we use it in so many ways at TapOnIt. Our marketing team loves being able to streamline data and manage our audiences so that we’re sending out the right information, at the right time.
10. Zapier – Zapier is the glue that holds this marketing team together! We love how easy it is to automate our workflow using Zapier, we use it to push forms to our project management software, automate Shopify orders (did you know we have our own shop on Shopify?), and helps us push our internal communication where it needs to go. Every time I say “I wish this was automated”, it seems Zapier can make it happen!
The marketing industry is always changing, so finding new tools to help us get the job done better, easier, and faster is something our team is constantly on the lookout for! Do you have any must-have marketing tools?
