Tools I Recommend

Everyone benefits from a great set of tools. Here are the ones I like the most. Some of these are affiliate links – ie, if you end up buying from them, I will receive some compensation. Thanks for checking them out.

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Website Hosting: HostPapa

Great service. Decent prices. I’ve been very pleased for the years I’ve been using them to host my websites.

Email Marketing: My various email newsletters wouldn’t look so good and my whole setup wouldn’t be so fantastic without Constant Contact and their incredible support system. Get a free 2-month trial, here. I’ve been able to build lists for my various projects over the years – The Eleven: my monthly email to friends and family – Albertideation newsletter: all about email marketing and social media. Then, there’s Song a Day where I share my love of music. Finally, Farm My Yard is a project I’ve had going on for a few years to connect urban farmers with nearby homeowners who have yards to farm. Sign up for one or more lists and see what you think. I’ve added my other email service provider links here.

Car Insurance. Metromile. I know it might seem strange to see this here – but I signed up for Metromile a while back and that has lowered my car insurance considerably. You pay a base rate and then for every mile. Thus, if you’re not driving a lot (which is the case for many people right now) your rates plummet.

Scheduling: I use the free verion of Calendly.

Webinars: For webinars I use Zoom.

I use Wisestamp to create a professional-looking signature on my outgoing emails. It makes things look like this

I use Canva for editing images and creating memes, for instance. I’ll add more to this post as I recall what’s missing. I hope this is useful to you – I really couldn’t do what I do without the aid of these (mostly free) tools.

I also love Fiverr to get images/designs created quickly. Here’s a code for $10 off your first order.

If you have any questions about a tool that’s not on the list, feel free to run it by me – I may have tried it in the past. If you’d like to work together, check out my new guide to getting started.

Here are my 11 Life Tips – tools for living a happier/healthier life. Like how to get a great night’s sleep.

6.26.18 Tools I learned about at this year’s Digital Summit in Portland, Oregon

https://emailclientmarketshare.com/

Single-column emails only from now on

Postmaster tools in Gmail

Microsoft also has a version of this.

senderscore.org – blacklist lookup

Fixed width emails – 375 pixels – look into this

https://www.bestcssbuttongenerator.com/

https://reallygoodemails.com/ – a way to learn what well-designed emails look like + they have a really awesome sign-up process.

Tools for ubiquity – Litmus, targeted.io, email on acid

Subject Line Matters a Lot! – the simpler the better – superlatives matter a lot

Always include Easter Eggs in an email.

Always say hello.

Keynote speaker mentioned: Countable page – Chelsea Handler mentioned it. Emily’s List.

MOZ – https://moz.com/local/categories – to do category research if you’re using MOZ. Hard to find this page on their site…

Tumblr seems to be a thing. I didn’t realize that.

Google Lighthouse: https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/

– for a tech review of your website

– key to have a robot.txt file on your site for this to work and for better searchability

Google Search Console – worth signing up with

Screaming Frog – a way to check your website

https://www.redirect-checker.org/ –

Siteliner – https://www.siteliner.com/ checks for duplicate content

URL Profiler – link checker – https://urlprofiler.com/

GTMetrix – check page speed – https://gtmetrix.com/

https://www.metaforensics.io – full test of the website.

Enjoy, and let me know if you have any questions.

5 Facebook Surprises

You may know that I’m a peculiar fan of Facebook. I use it more than most people – but some of the ways I am on there are probably different than most. I do not think it’s a very good marketing tool, for instance. I find the more I poke around in the corners, the more interesting things I learn. Here are 5 ways that I experience Facecrack that might illuminate what’s going on on there and help guide you to a more improved experience. I also have a webinar that goes step by step through some of this – it’s a bit long, but I promise you’ll learn some things 🙂

Facebook is an incredible networking tool. If you want to find someone – I’d use LinkedIn (and that’s another article in the works), but if you want to connect friends who need to meet (you matchmaker, you!) – or coordinate something, Facebook works great. I use the chat area all the time – sometimes just looking at a friend who’s on-line will prompt me to remember that I needed to talk to them about X, Y, or Z. In a way, it mirrors email’s ability to connect people – but that visual of someone’s face I think elevates the interest we all have in connecting and makes it practicable and immediately possible. Try this sometime – start a chat with a few people on the sidebar at the same time. Who do you know that needs to meet someone else that you know and for what purpose? Introduce them. Go! Report back if you have any great results 🙂
Create lists. I talk about how to do this here, but I now want to add that the lists that you create can also be used for selectively sharing your posts. Once you’ve created a sub-list of your friends – this makes viewing your newsfeed a completely different experience. For one thing – you can now see everything that person(s) has posted rather than accept what Facebook’s algorithm feeds you. And, you can also use that list in the pull-down of (public, friends, etc.) who can see your post. Example: you want to keep friends and family members separate? Create a list of just family – post things you want them to see and choose that list – and vice versa – want to share with just your friends – post to your Friends list (the one you create, not the “automatic” one that FB creates for you.
Play around with Facebook. When you start experimenting, you find things that are possible, and possibly useful that you would never find otherwise. For instance, regarding fan/business pages – which I think are about as useful as a yellow pages ad these days – you can make a post that reaches a certain demographic only, without paying anything extra. Just want to reach 45-year old women? Here’s how. (it turns out this is not available on all pages!)

Step one: create post and use the pull-down arrow

Step 2: choose your demograhic
Take a Facebook purification tool for a test sometime. I’m using something called Facebook Purity. The interface looks like this and it allows me to kill all advertising and do some other customization of my experience. There are a few tools out there – try one and see what you think. I love that I can set my newsfeed to most recent news, automatically. I guess what I’m saying is – if you’re going to spend a bunch of time on FB, learn more of the ins and outs of it 🙂
FB Purity, free tool super helpful! https://www.fbpurity.com/
Get some training on how to use Facebook well. It will make such a difference. I teach free classes on email marketing and social media on a fairly regular basis – and there are tons of resources out there, too – search Youtube – spend a little time – once you figure out how to get past some of the more frustrating aspects you’ll see a bit more of how useful FB can be.Some things to learn next: how to unfollow someone without unfriending them. Decide what you’re on FB for – just close-knit friends and family or everyone under the sun (I’ve gone for the latter). This makes a big difference in your experience.