At Thrive, we like to not only provide information and news from the marketing and design industries, but also helpful hacks for the everyday working of your business.
There are lots of tools and browser extensions that people have on their Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer window, but we need to make sure they're actually improving productivity.
Tools and software are only deemed effective when you can claim they are doing the following:
- Improving productivity
- Increasing efficiency - either decreasing workload or time on a particular task
- Allowing you to be more creative (there are lots of great design tools out there)!
This list is a compilation of our favourite online tools and browser extensions to help improve your productivity levels, design or marketing skills.
Canva
If you're a marketer that needs to produce quality images that fit the requirements for blog posts, Facebook and Twitter updates and social media adverts, Canva is the tool for you!
Google Analytics (and their classes)
Most companies are aware of the powerful metrics to be gained installing and monitoring their Google Analytics Analytics, but you should also ensure you know what you're reading!
The Google Digital Marketing classes are a great source of information for your web or marketing team members to learn about how to read your analytics and act upon the results.
Bit.ly
Use URL shorteners to improve the appearance of your URLs in both blog posts and, more so, social media updates. With a browser extension as well as a website bit.ly is a great, easy-to-use tool.
Healthier
This Mac-only app encourages you to exercise every 40 minutes, to ensure that you don't get too comfy at your desk. In a world, where most office workers have all that they need - including lunch - at their desk, Healthier is crucial for your physical and mental health!
Trello
Keep up to date with your projects and tasks by using Trello. This tool is capable of assigning tasks and deadlines to members of your team as well as tracking their time (Additional software required).
We also have demonstrated how to use Trello as an Editorial Calendar for your blogging needs.
StayFocusd
StayFocusd is a productivity extension for Google Chrome that helps you stay focused on work by restricting the amount of time you can spend on time-wasting websites.
Once your allotted time has been used up, the sites you have blocked will be inaccessible for the rest of the day.
Feedly
Feedly is a single place to organise, read, and share the all content that matters to you — and your team.
Make the content you like work for you with this handy web desktop full of the content you choose, suitable for work and play.
Tagboard
Perfect for sourcing suitable and popular hashtags for your image sharing apps, including Instagram. Tagboard also works to find desirable hashtags for your preferred ones to help improve visibility for your brand, products and services.
Toggl
Use Toggl to monitor yours and your team's productivity and time spent on projects ensuring your price your services most appropriately.
This provides a real boost to productivity and allows you to give more accurate sales pitches for your services. Suitable for office/computer-based teams.
Giphy
For social media marketers that want to stay on trend, GIFs are in! Giphy has a huge library of GIFs including those based on emotion, reaction, celebrities and more to ensure that you can provide laughs and humour for your social posts.
Can be used as a website or browser extension for ease.
LastPass
Make sure you never lose a password again and store confidential passwords in a safe, secure location.
LastPass was one of our preferred tools in our previous productivity tools blog, find out more.
ColorZilla
Those of us that aren't designers need to rely on tools out there to improve our capabilities. Marketers in particular can benefit from ColorZilla. If you want to use Canva or similar software to produce social media images, it helps your brand awareness to ensure you can replicate the colour and style of your brand.
ColorZilla can pick any colours opened in a web page to ensure you can match the colour too!
Emoji Keyboard
In a world where we are all emoji-crazy there is a great tool available as a Chrome browser extension - Emoji Keyboard - that enables you to insert emojis in social media posts.
The convenience of this being a browser extension means you don't need to open multiple tabs to use these emojis.
Sidekick
As a HubSpot Partner we are proud to recommend Sidekick as a great app for monitoring email opens and page views. As a HubSpot user you get so many additional tools, as well as their automation platform, to ensure your marketing campaigns are produced and analysed to the highest standard.
