Recommended Tools

I mostly use:

• Dubb for personalised video marketing I use Dubb, which allows me to create simple videos from my mobile, upload them to the dubb server and create a landing page with a call to action. I use this for Patreon welcome, after course sales and individualised sales emails. Read more about Dubb in this blog post
• Stencil for creating images for blog posts, tweets and instagram.
• ChatterScan A simple, free Twitter client that shows posts that Matter, avoiding the Chatter. Essential, and Free.
• CloudApp A cloud based screenshot, video and animated gif recorder. All your videos and images are stored in cloud - easy to download and amend, and easy to share without having to download. I didn’t realise how much this would speed up my video and image workflows.
• SocialBee.io for scheduling social media posts. It has good support for Instagram allowing images and videos. And the date and time can be controlled, or use default scheduling. You can also see a calendar of posts, and vary the post across different platforms.
• beacon.by for creating and hosting lead magnets and opt in forms.

Deals

• AppSumo AppSumo is my favourite deals site. They organise amazing lifetime deals on marketing software Previous deals have included lifetime access to: StoryChief for $49, PromoRepublic for $49, CloudApp for $39 (all tools I use to create and promote this site). Make sure you Browse all the deals currently running. You don’t want to miss out. I really can’t recommend AppSumo highly enough. They also have a fantastic refund policy so you can try out the tools for a month (often longer) with a no quible money back policy.

Main Tools

I use tools to provide me with a more efficient way of working. You might find these useful.

• MissingLettr
  • Monitors my blog posts and automatically creates a ‘reminder’ feed campaign for the post for 1 day, 2 day, a week, 2 weeks, a month, 3 months, etc. so I have an automated set of tweets and other social media content for the next year. Given an age of information overload, it is easy for followers to miss your material when first posted. So having a regular reminder of content really helps. You’ll see MissingLettr posts show up in my Talotics Twitter feed, and it also supports LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and Facebook.
• TubeBuddy
  • Essential for working with YouTube. Helps me create thumbnails, navigate through comments easily, templates for when creating videos, tagging tools for finding better tags to rank with, competitor analysis tools for comparing similar and competing videos. I couldn’t survive on YouTube without this.
• Morningfa-me
  • I receive emails on the progress of my videos - which are popular, which are driving subscriptions etc. And when I login I gain easy access to analytics which are presented in a simpler format than YouTube. Also there are many tips and tutorials that really help. The drip feed of information via email keeps me engaged with my progress. I use this at least once a week. Well worth checking out. (One month free if you use link above).
• Stencil
  • I see so many people recommending Canva online for image creation, but I’ve always used Stencil. Easy resizing of images for different social media posts and banners. I created my Talotics YouTube Channel art using Stencil in a few seconds. Easy sharing to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Buffer. Lots of royalty free stock images to use as a backdrop. I find this essential for working with Instagram and creating illustrative images for blog posts and promoting content on Twitter.
• PodBean
  • The PodCast hosting service that I use for my consultancy podcast. Very affordable and easy to use, with an optional set of features to monetise your podcast. I found it very easy to add to iTunes and upload my podcast to PodBean.
  • Read our Review of PodBean
• ChatterScan
  • A simple, free Twitter client that shows posts that Matter, avoiding the Chatter. Essential, and Free.
  • see a brief write up of why the tool exists
• ffmpeg A cross-platform open source software to record, convert and stream audio and video. I use this for so much video marketing - check out our posts on ffmpeg

Desktop Tools

• Camtasia
  • The video editing and screen capture tool I use for both Mac and PC. I use this for all my YouTube videos and to create my online training courses.
• Snagit
  • The screencapture tool I use on both Mac and PC for creating images for blogs posts and my books.
• RIOT
  • Makes it easy to compress or resize files on Windows.
  • Read our Review of RIOT
• GIMP
  • for basic image tidying up, cropping and resizing I use this as a cross platform image editing app.
• VMWare
  • I use a lot of virtual machines when I’m training and creating online training courses. I exclusively use VMWare as my Virtual Machine software on both Mac and PC.

Free SAAS

• TinyPNG for adhoc compression of images I use TinyPNG. It is easy to use and works fast.
• ezGif
  • I use this online service for converting .mp4 to animated gif
  • Read our Review of ezGif
• Google Docs Spreadsheets
  • I use Google docs for a lot of prototyping, and especially for Contact Us and other forms, also for vanity metric tracking.
  • Read how to create a Contact Form in Google Docs
• Dillinger.io
  • I write most of my content in markdown to make it easy to repurpose. To generate adhoc HTML I often use the online site Dillinger which can conver my markdown into HTML which I can copy and paste into other applications. For offline conversion I use Pandoc
• TurnDown for converting HTML to Markdown
• Mozilla Site Security Scan Service
• SSL Testing
• Site and SSL Monitoring

Mobile

• Google Mobile Friendly Test Tool
• Bing Mobile Friendly Test Tool

WebMaster Search Engine Tooling

• Yandex WebMaster
• Bing WebMaster Tools
• Google Search Console
• Google Page Speed Insights

Social Media Validators

• Twitter Card Validator
• LinkedIn Shared Post Tester
• Facebook Sharing Debugger

Printing

• StickerMule
  • For face to face engagements: conferences, meetups, training, etc. Having quality vinyl stickers as freebies to give away is an incredibly popular giveaway. Shaped to pretty much any custom specification. I’ve never seen anyone stick my business card on the back of their laptop, but I’ve seen people eagerly stick stickers which promote my ‘.com’ on their stuff. Thoroughly recommended. And they have distribution and print centers in Europe and America so postag costs are lower than you might expect.

Community

• Patreon
  • I’ve recently started a Patreon page for my consultancy and online training work. And I’m using all the techniques I write about on Talotics to promote it and grow the community.

Other Tools

I have previously used these tools:

• Sumo
  • To add social share buttons, flexible positioning mailing list sign up forms. I’ve used Sumo.
  • After adding a JavaScript file include, much of the functionality can be configured on their server side.
  • To add social share buttons to each post, I simply included a small section of HTML in the post template.
  • I removed Sumo on 20180316 to simplify my compliance with GDPR
• Mailchimp
  • Read our write up of Mailchimp
• Content Samurai
  • I can create a video automatically from a script, add a voice over, generate and release it within 30 mins. This tool is incredible. The link takes you to a 7 day free trial (I paid for it on day 2 of my trial). Some example videos I created with this tool: 1, 2, 3
• Commun.it to keep an eye on things, find content to retweet and schedule retweets
• StoryChief.io - write once, syndicate to many, I use this as my main content publishing system.
• PromoRepublic
  • I used to use this for social media scheduling and image creation but switched to SocialBee.
  • Read our Review of PromoRepublic
• Commun.it
  • Helped me manage my main social media profiles in one place.

I’ll add more when I remember what else I use. Expect this list to grow.

Note: Some of these links are affiliate links. I only endorse products that I actually use and recommend.