Over the years, I have created a master list of tools and resources for digital marketing. Each time I discover a new tool, I check it out and review posts from other social media marketers who have tried it out. As you can imagine, many tools have come and gone while others have been acquired or morphed into a stable of products. Another trend has seen start-ups who offered their app/tool/resource for free, slowly added paid premium features, and then moved to a full pay option only.
A few of my current digital media resource favorites are:
Canva for creating amazing designs and graphics.
I created all of the images on my website and all of my social media platform banner images with this free tool. Canva does a great job with pre-sized templates for the appropriate project (Facebook Cover Photo, Twitter post, etc.). You can import your own images or use the Canva library of free and paid images (only a buck each!). The only downfall I see is that they are lacking the ability to edit the size of your design after creation. For example, if I create a custom look for a banner image that I want to use across multiple sized formats for my social media sites, I have to recreate the wheel every single time. Hopefully they will address this soon. Or maybe….it will become a future premium feature!
Snagit for capturing images and videos from your computer screen and making edits. (Make sure you have the rights to use the images)
I like to pull shots from my LinkedIn Profile and my other social media sites to illustrate examples in my training materials. I think people appreciate having a screen shot to refer to when they are back in their office and reviewing our session.
Camtasia-
While I have had Camtasia for a long time, I’m just now starting to use it. Most of my original videos from 2009 used straight webcam technology with no editing capabilities and uploaded directly to YouTube. Over the years YouTube has added some nice editing features. Three years ago I began a relationship with a local tv production station, AC-TV, to produce and edit some amazing videos for a social media talk show that I developed with co-host, Mark Macomber, called Digitally Speaking. The station, which is a non-profit, is being shut down this year, and so this has forced me to take a closer look at the amazing Camtasia that has been sitting on my pc unused.
Project Example:
Here’s an example of my first Camtasia video project (I’m still trying to learn all of the dozens of features). As a reward for sitting through the 2 minute video, you will find a free gift at the end. Well this blog post is all about resources, right?
http://www.screencast.com/t/T5rmie75Li5
