Tools & Resources

A list of tools to help your business.

Tools & Resources Available To You

Over the years we have used many different online tools to helps us create the online presence that our customers desire. We are often asked by our clients:

  • What tools to use to create great social media posts?
  • How to edit a video for free?
  • Where can I find stock imagery?

So we have put together a list of tools and resources that we believe will help you create great content for your online presence to grow your business. This list is by no means complete as technology changes and new and exciting tools are introduced all the time. We will be adding to this list any new technology that we feel may be of benefit to you.

Images

A picture paints a thousand words!

Imagery is so important to the suceess of your online activity. Pictures hold your customer’s attention, they give the customer the sense of what the product or service is like, the quality of the product and thus helps them make a decision when browsing your website.

Professional photography is amazing and if possible try to get your photos taken by a professional photographer. With product photography you will notice the difference and so will your customers.

If you do not engage the services of a professional photographer you will still need to find and use great photos for your website. Below are some of the image resources we have used.

FREE Image Resources

Unsplash ( www.unsplash.com )

Pixabay (www.pixabay.com )

Freepik (www.freepik.com )

Paid Image Resources

Adobe Stock Images ( stock.adobe.com )

Shutter Stock ( www.shutterstock.com)

iStockPhoto ( www.istockphoto.com )

Image Editors

The ability to edit an image, resize it, add text to it and overlay your logo are all very important tasks to be able to achieve for small businesses in today’s online environment.

In our view the leading software for design is still Adobe with apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, LightRoom etc.

For business owners who do not want to become graphic designers and just want to resize their images so they look good online here are a number of free editors that are availble to use.

Free Image Editors

Pixlr X (www.pixlr.com/x/ ) – the basic version with very basic tools

Pixlr E (www.pixlr.com/e/ ) – advanced version, loads of great tools

Gimp ( www.gimp.org ) – require software download

Paid Image Editors

Adobe Cloud ( https://www.adobe.com/ie/ ) – in our view the market leader in design software with all the tools you will need for graphic design, print design, web design and video production.

Social Media Tools

Creating content for your social media channels is an activity that businesses need to do on a regular basis. Creating orginal quality content in line with your brand values and posting on a consistant basis is key to getting your brand in front of your potentail customers on social channels.

Social Media Tools

Canva ( www.canva.com ) – Free and Paid Options. Canva is an online image editor to create visual content for your social channels in the correct sizes. You can add your brand and brand assets so all your content is in line with your brand guidelines.

Buffer ( www.buffer.com ) – Free & Paid Options. Buffer allows you to plan your social media content inline with your social media strategy. Buffer allows you schedule your content on diffent social channels all from it’s dashboard.  The paid version has some interesting analytics and insights into your audience.

Hootsuite ( www.hootsuite.com ) – Paid Options. Hootsuite is probabaly one of the market leaders in social media management tools.

SproutSocial ( www.sproutsocial.com ) – Paid Options. If Hootsuite is the market leader then SproutSocial is a very close second.

Meta Business Suite ( business.facebook.com  ) – Free. Meta Business Suite is a social media management tool for Facebook and Instagram. You can create and schedule posts accross Facebook & Instagram. 

SEO Tools

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the process of improving the quality and quanitity of online user traffic to a website through natural or organic listings on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. SEO is not about online advertising, it is an internet marketing strategy that looks at the algorithm of search engines and how to best present the content of a website to search engines so they will list your website in a top position when online users search for specific keywords that match your target audience and content. A content strategy can be very powerful in achieving a strong search engine result.

There are many other tools available for SEO and some developers prefer one software over another. This is a list of some of our favoutite SEO Tools that we believe help with any SEO strategy.

Google Analytics ( https://analytics.google.com/ )

Google Search Console ( https://search.google.com/search-console/about )

XML Sitemap Generator (https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ )

Google My Business ( https://www.google.com/intl/en_ie/business/ )

Google Page Spped ( https://pagespeed.web.dev/ )

Google Search Central ( https://developers.google.com/search )

Bing Webmaster Tools ( https://www.bing.com/webmasters/about )

Sem Rush ( https://www.semrush.com/ ) Paid Option

Keyword Tool ( https://keywordtool.io/ ) Paid Option for all data.

Yoast ( https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/ ) WordPress SEO Free Plugin & Paid Option

Moz ( https://moz.com/ ) – SEO Toolset Free & Paid Options

PrePostSEO ( https://www.prepostseo.com/ )

Video

Video is propably the most consumed content with the highest engagement rates at the moment. If you are creating long form video content for your website or YouTube channel or you are creating video content for your social channels, it is vital that you learn some video editing skills.

Video Editing Tools

Premiere Pro  ( https://www.adobe.com/ie/products/premiere ) Paid – Adobe product.

DaVinci Resolve
( https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve ) – Free Option No Watermark & Paid Option

Filmora ( https://filmora.wondershare.net/ ) Free & Paid Options

CapCut ( https://www.capcut.com/ ) Free Option

Kapwing ( https://www.kapwing.com/ ) Free & Paid Options. This is a handy tool to create a single piece of video that will be resized correctly to each platform.

FREE Video Resources

Unsplash ( www.unsplash.com )

Pixabay (www.pixabay.com )

Freepik (www.freepik.com )

Paid Video Resources

Adobe Stock Images ( stock.adobe.com )

Shutter Stock ( www.shutterstock.com)

iStockPhoto ( www.istockphoto.com )

Mobile Apps

Having the ability to create content while on the move is very important in today’s fast paced environment. Having the right apps downloaded to your phone can make creating content and keeping in touch with your audience so much easier.

This is a list of some of our favourite mobile apps.

Lightroom for Mobile ( iPhone / Android )

PremierRush ( iPhone  )

CapCut ( iPhone / Android )

Canva ( iPhone / Android )

Buffer ( iPhone / Android )

And of course all the social media apps.

AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming one of the most important digital trends for small businesses. AI tools can improve business operations and streamline repetitive processes to gain a competitive edge and service customers more efficently.

AI Tools

ChatGPT (chat.openai.com)  from OpenAI (https://openai.com/) FREE & Paid Options

AI-powered personalisation tools: Klevu (https://www.klevu.com/ ) or Madgicx (https://madgicx.com/ ) 

Text Image Generation: DALL-E 2 (https://openai.com/dall-e-2/), Midjourney AI (https://www.midjourney.com/app/ ), Dream Studio (https://dreamstudio.com/create/ ) or Craiyon ( https://www.craiyon.com/ )

Copywritting / Content Writting: Copy.ai (https://www.copy.ai/ ), Content Bot ( https://contentbot.ai/ ), Article Forge ( https://www.articleforge.com/ ), Quill Bot (https://quillbot.com/ )

Data Modelling: Hugging Face ( https://huggingface.co/ )

Natural Language: Wordsmith ( https://automatedinsights.com/ )

Social Media: Kontentino (https://www.kontentino.com/ ),  SproutSocial (https://sproutsocial.com/ )

Social Media Listening: Emplifi (https://emplifi.io/ ) and much more

Synthesia ( https://www.synthesia.io/ ) – AI avatar video creation.

Automate Processes: Zapier (https://zapier.com/ )

More Tools & Resources

Jitter ( https://jitter.video/ ) – Animate your videos.

As we find and use different online tools and resources and we feel they may be of interest to you we will post them here.

 

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