10 of the most useful apps for creating digital content

If you run a business, it’s likely you have to do some of your own marketing. This might be as simple as creating Facebook content or as in-depth as building a website. If you’re creating content without the help of a professional graphic designer, it can be a challenge to make your content look consistent and professional. Whatever your marketing needs, this list of 10 of our favourite digital marketing apps and Chrome extensions is for you. These are the apps that will ensure efficiency with everything from design to organising to communication. And even better, they don’t cost a thing.

Page Ruler

This Chrome extension is simple yet surprisingly handy. Page Ruler lets you measure pixel dimensions and positioning of any webpage element. This is useful for creating or recreating the look you want and keeping consistency throughout design elements. The ruler is a great tool for producing much tidier work, especially when you’re building your website.

Snip

Snip is a faster, easier way of taking screenshots – just click the snips and away you go.

The app has a feature that allows you to write or draw on the ‘snip’, which comes in handy for things like communicating edits to someone digitally, or showing your mum who lives 700 kilometres away where the ‘save’ button is.

Snip saves your screenshot image to your chosen file as a PNG, so you can insert it into documents, emails, social media, anywhere else that lets you add a picture. This app is a Windows feature, but if you are running on Mac there’s a similar version available in the App store.

Nimbus

Like Snip, Nimbus is used to take screenshots, but more specifically for web. The big benefit is that Nimbus allows you to capture shots of entire pages in one click. Similar to Snip, you can save the image as is or write and draw on it within the app. You’ll then have it saved as a PNG for later use, which is a major asset if you need to clearly explain specifics to web developers, designers, or clients.

Eye Dropper

Ever wanted to know what shade of blue the Google ‘G’ is? Or maybe you need the exact colour used on your webpage, but can’t get hold of your designer. Eye Dropper is a Chrome extension that allows you to pick, view, and copy colours from the web. Simply click the dropper on the colour you’re after and it will save to the app. It then shows you the colour formula in a range of formats so you can match it in any program you need.

WhatFont

Have you ever met a designer who can just look at a font and tell you what it is? Well, this is the more efficient (and less intimidating) app version.

WhatFont temporarily converts your cursor into a font detector that shows the name of a font as you hover over text. If you want to know specifics, simply click and it’ll show you the font family, style, weight, size, line height, and colour. This is super handy if you want to borrow another brand’s aesthetics (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all) or if you’ve simply lost your style guide.

Loom

We’ve talked about Loom before in our Top 10 Apps to Market Your Business, but it’s so good it’s worth another mention. Loom can be used to create quick videos of your desktop as you use it. It’s great for creating walkthrough videos that you can then share or link to. We use it to provide advisory services to clients who can’t meet face-to-face, but it’s also great for communicating clear, concise instructions or for creating social media content.

Lasso – Bookmark Manager

Lasso wrangles selected pages to bookmark, helping you herd them efficiently either into folders or by searchable tags. Each bookmark is saved under a ‘card’ that gives a brief, editable visual and description of the page. The interface of the app is a much more user-friendly way of managing bookmarks, especially if you have so many saved you forget what they all are (or why the heck you saved them in the first place). The dashboard also allows you to invite individuals or ‘teams’ to access chosen bookmarks or folders.

Reshot

Finding great stock images is key to creating good content. But if you have to post a lot of social media content this can get pricey if you’re paying $10 – $15 an image.

Enter Reshot: Reshot is a stock photo site that avoids cliché stock imagery.

Unlike the standard stock image libraries, the photos on Reshot reflect a photographer’s point of view. This means the photos are generally more interesting and higher quality than those on many other free stock photo sites. The site uses a simple license and terms that give you a lot of flexibility for using the photos.

Reshot photos are free, although you can also find photos for sale from Reshot partners. To browse the images or learn more, visit the website.

TinyPNG

If you are uploading images to your website, app, or social platform, you need to compress them to a small file size so they don’t slow down your website. Web app TinyPNG is an online PNG conversion tool that does just that. It makes your PNG image files tiny – or at least tinier then they were. It does this by selectively decreasing the number of colours in the image, which in turn reduces the file size. The visual changes in the image are practically undetectable and it can preserve any transparency (i.e., if it’s a clear-cut logo). TinyPNG can even convert animated PNGs. Converted PNGs can be used on your platforms but will use much less bandwidth, meaning they will load much faster.

Crop Photo

Crop Photo allows you to easily crop pictures without fiddling around with Adobe or other editing programs. Crop Photo features a bunch of templates designed to make cropping images for social media super easy, or you can use custom dimensions for your own projects (i.e., cutting an ex out of an otherwise great photo). You can then choose to save your image to your desktop, Facebook page, or Google Drive account.

So that’s our rundown of the 10 most useful marketing apps and extensions for digital marketing. Whether we are building a new website, creating digital content – or, let’s face it, just geeking out – we use at least one of these apps every day. For more great tools check out our previous blog Top 10 Apps to Market Your Business. And if you’ve got any projects that need a professional touch-reach out to us at Creative Content, we can help you to build your website, create great content and increase your online profile. Get in touch with us Here.

The Top 10 Apps To Market Your Business

The online marketing world can be daunting, at Creative Content its our job to make marketing easy for our clients, so we love it when we find useful tools that make our job easier. Luckily there are many simple and inexpensive apps that make it easy for you to market your business in the digital age.

Apps can be amazing tools to help you streamline processes. And with the right set of tools, you can spend less time managing campaigns and more time developing effective messages. They can also create a more enjoyable experience for your clients, so that people are more likely to recommend you to others.

Check out our list of the top ten apps that we use every day in our agency that will help you with marketing your business.

1. Loom

Loom lets you create quick videos that display a desktop view of your screen. You can create a simple walkthrough video in a couple of minutes and easily share it by email or via an embedded link on your website. This is particularly good if you want to provide advisory services to clients who can’t meet face-to-face. You can also use Loom to create social media content to share.

Get it now: https://www.useloom.com

Cost: Free!

2. Canva

Canva is an incredibly simple platform to create professional-looking graphic design elements in minutes. If you need a quick graphic for a social media post or to jazz up a presentation or report for a client, you can create it in Canva in no time.

Canva has hundreds of pre-made templates for all kinds of professional uses. It also comes with handy images and font suggestions so that even the most design-challenged among us can create something classy and professional.

Get it now: https://www.canva.com

Cost: Free to use, with some premium fonts, templates, and images having a nominal cost.

3. ContentStudio

ContentStudio allows you to organise all your social media marketing from a single place. You can curate engaging content, share it through multiple channels, and strengthen your content marketing.

A popular feature of ContentStudio is its ability to fetch fresh content from over a thousand sources, meaning you can delve in and compile trending content from any niche or market. You also have the ability to compose unique posts and schedule them to be published through your social accounts, helping you create better looking posts at a faster pace.

Get it now: https://contentstudio.io/

Cost: Free to use, with premium packages offering advanced features.

4. Asana

Asana is a simple project management tool designed to help teams organise their workload and get more done. In Asana you can map out steps, assign work, see what’s currently in progress or what still needs to be done, track due dates, and see visually how work is tracking. It’s a great tool to help your team manage their workload and to give you visibility over how client work is tracking.

Get it now: https://asana.com

Cost: Free to use, with premium packages offering advanced features.

5. Biteable

Biteable is an awesome site where you can create unique video ads, explainer videos, animations, infographics, and much more. You’re essentially able to create pro-quality video in the time it takes to drink your coffee. You have the ability to choose from hundreds of styles, insert your own digital content, choose high-quality soundtracks, and easily share it through multiple channels.

With a lot of social networking sites becoming more video-centric, this is the app you should be using if you want to set your business apart in the digital world.

Get it now: https://biteable.com/features/

Cost: Free package available with a limit of 5 projects per month or a premium package offering unlimited use.

6. Yesware

There’s no doubt that you send and receive a lot of emails. This clever app allows you to use simple email templates, and then see who actually opens your emails and clicks on any links. It also offers other useful email tools and shortcuts. It integrates with Gmail and Outlook, so you don’t have to learn a new tool.

Get it now: https://www.yesware.com

Cost: $12 per user per month, with a free trial period.

7. Trello

Trello is a project management tool much like Asana, but it’s probably even simpler. It’s great for small teams that don’t need a ton of tools or features, but just want to get more organised and have visibility around their workload.

Trello works with a system of cards – like virtual index cards on a big virtual pinboard. You can move and arrange the cards any way you like, and add due dates, files, and collaborators.

Get it now: http://www.trello.com

Cost: Free, with premium packages offering advanced features

8.Pixel Me

Pixel Me is a great way to track and measure the links you’re posting and who is clicking on them. This means you can track the audience of the content you’re posting and target them again through remarketing. It gives you the opportunity to speak through different ad platforms to your custom audience and increase your brand awareness.

Get it now: https://pixelme.me/

Cost: Basic to comprehensive paid packages available

9. Missinglettr

Missinglettr increases traffic to your website’s blog by creating strategic, automated social media campaigns. It automatically pulls snippets from your blog posts to create promotional content – your only job is to review the content and choose how long you’d like to promote it.

Missinglettr markets the unique content you’ve created by connecting your social channels and running your campaigns for you. This provides regular social updates to your clients and encourages clicks to your content year-round.

Get it now: https://missinglettr.com/

Cost: Free, with personal and business accounts available.

10. Full Story

Ever wanted to know what your website visitors do once they land on your homepage? Want to find ways to convert more leads with your site design or copy? Then you need to try Full Story.

Once installed, Full Story tracks website visitors and shows you what those visitors actually do in a recorded video you can replay. It also shows you where your site traffic comes from and highlights areas of your site that cause visitor frustration. It’s great if you want to improve your online marketing and understand the effectiveness of recent marketing campaigns.

Get it now: https://www.fullstory.com/

Cost: Free, with premium packages offering advanced features

These are the ten apps we love the most in our agency. With new apps appearing almost daily, there countless possible solutions to boost your marketing and communication efforts. What are some of the apps that you use that we haven’t mentioned? Send us an email if you have a tool that you think we have missed! Contact us

Five tips for effective web copy

It’s downright hard to write succinct and clear web copy. And it can also be very time consuming. But if you nail your copy, you can increase traffic to your website, the amount of time people spend on it, and potentially your conversion rate.

You might think it’s best to list as much detail as possible on your website. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Listing a lot of information is effective for print publications, but it’s ineffective for a web page. This is because web pages have unlimited space but their readers have very limited attention.

To help you combat the challenge of writing for web, check out our top five tips for developing sharp and concise web copy.

Place your most important information first

Web copy is different from other types of writing. On a web page your most important information needs to come first. Often a simple statement of what you do and how you can offer value is the key piece of information needed.

This style of writing is called the ‘inverted pyramid’. Here the most noteworthy information always comes first before detail and background information. Journalists use this structure of writing so that you’re able to understand the bigger picture of an article from the first paragraph.

Your customers also want to understand the big picture first. Your web copy needs to succinctly convey from the outset what you can do for them.

Avoid large paragraphs

Copy on each page of your website should be short and to the point. Large blocks of writing can be off-putting for browsers and can come across as clunky. Browsers are often scanning or looking for a quick answer when reading web copy, so it’s best to give them what they want rather than have them leave your page to find it elsewhere.

Keep in mind that you should also have around 250-300 words for SEO purposes so that your page can be optimised correctly and be discovered. Although 300 words may sound like a small number, you’ll be surprised how dense 300 words looks on a published web page.

Use customer testimonials

Reinforce the value of your business by putting client testimonials on each page. From a customer’s point of view, you are not the most credible source of information about your service. Testimonials from your clients will add to your credibility and increase the value of your proposition. They are a form of social proof with high persuasion powers.

Include a call to action

A call to action is vital. What steps do you want your browsers to take? What are they meant to do next? This could be simply a link to another piece of content you have, an invitation to subscribe to your newsletter, or a pop-up contact form asking them to get in touch. If you highlight what you want your browsers to do next, it’s a lot easier for them to engage.

Top tip: Always incorporate a ‘contact us’ link or contact details on every page so browsers can easily get in touch. Don’t make your visitors work hard by scrolling through every page searching for ways to make contact.

Establish a value proposition

Your value proposition is your conversation starter. It’s something that gets the reader’s attention and makes them want to learn more about you. Highlighting your value proposition enables your readers to understand your services and how you can benefit them. The quicker they can understand your abilities and why you’re better than the competition, the more likely they are to remember your business or product.

People looking at your website are often in a hurry and make quick decisions about whether you’re right for them based on your website content. That’s why it’s best to have your value proposition clear, concise, and credible.

Keep these top five pointers in mind to make sure your content is effective. Remember: don’t treat your visitors like information-hungry sharks. Position your information clearly and always get straight to the point. If you’re in need of a more professional hand to help, you can always contact us here for the right advice or to help you craft the right message for web.

I have a new website should I be doing AdWords?

Is digital marketing including services like AdWords right for my business?

When a customer asks us this question, I always want to know:
Where do your current leads come from?

Understanding where you already get leads for your business is the key to finding value for your marketing budget.

Jumping too soon into an AdWords campaign when you don’t have a landing page squeeze page set up, or your sales copy in not compelling enough to convert any prospective visitors you do get can mean you can waste a lot of time and money on advertising that delivers no results.

From the outside digital marketing looks very attractive, as once you set up your campaigns, done right it seems you could set it and forget, watching the inquiries come in. The facts are, the further away the contact point between you and the customer you are trying to attract to your business, the lower the average conversion rate for acquiring that customer.

The reason most small businesses don’t succeed online is that creating a communication strategy where you don’t get the power of the face to face interaction, the harder it is to share, define and explain your offer to your customers.

I always suggest to a small business owner that you analyse where your current leads come from, and work on improving your content and presentation before stepping into the world of digital advertising.

Creating memorable media creates engagement and gets results.

Ask yourself what improvements in presentation, or communication could you make to your existing sales material? If your current conversion rate is say 40%, if you increased your ease of understanding around your offer with a new brand, flyer, and website would that increase your sales?

When you feel ready to enter into promoting your business with AdWords, get a good strategy set up first.

You need to understand the conversion process and all of the content that will need to be created to assist a customer to evaluate your offer from your website. You also need to be clear about the cost of customer acquisition Most AdWords agencies suggest if your business average sales value is under $250 because of the cost per click/ over the volume of inquires ad-words will never be able to deliver an effective return on your investment.

What advertising channels have you tried? What were your results?

Want to find out more about our small business AdWord services? Click here.

Speak to us for free one hour strategy session and we can assess what marketing channels we think would be right for your business.

Remarketing Cheat Sheet

What Is Remarketing

Remarketing is the process of tracking your digital traffic from a search campaign (Google AdWords) and retargeting your message to your potential customers.

Why use remarketing?

If you have a search campaign running (AdWords) and you’re paying Google for traffic to your site, on average out of 100 people that visit your website only 4% will take an action after viewing your landing page. So if you are paying $1 a click then that is $25 per customer!

This is because not everyone is ready to contact you straight away, statistics show 30% of traffic are in a position to act but many factors delay them from doing so.

But you still have to pay Google for each click.

So what are you doing with the 96% of people who didn’t convert? That’s where remarketing comes in.

How remarketing works:

If a customer visited your website or a landing page but didn’t call or contact you, you can remarket to them on the Google Display network, the YouTube ad network or through Facebook.

This means when they are browsing other websites and they are logged into their personal Facebook account, an ad would appear for your business so they are reminded and can click on the ad again. You can do this by adding a tracking pixel (cookie) to them after they visit your page.

The price tag for re-marketing is much lower than a standard pay per click (PPC) search campaign.
While a Google Pay Per Click search ad could have an average cost per click of $2- $3, a remarketing ad has an average cost of $0.25-$0.60.

Just like a PPC search campaign, you are only paying when someone actually clicks on the ad. If they do not click on the ad, there is no cost, but you still are able to give a visual reminder about your site to that potential customer.

The reason that remarketing is so effective is that seeing your offer appear multiple times, creates brand awareness and reminds your visitor to take action.
So when they are ready to make that decision to pick a solution you are the one they remember to choose! And guess what is even better, your competitors are probably not using retargeting so you get a bigger piece of the pie

Customer case study

443 contact form inquiries (leads) in the last month, 19% are coming from Facebook remarketing alone (86 users)
Cost of each lead through Facebook = 32 cents 86 x 32 = $27.52 for 86 leads Cost of each lead through Adwords = is between $1.20 and $2.26

Contact Us

Get in touch with us to find out more about remarketing for your business or click here to learn more about digital marketing strategies.

Category: Content marketing