Marketers’ jobs include a little bit of everything today. Companies are investing in social media, public relations, website and landing pages, advertising, email campaigns, blogging, vlogging, and the list goes on and on. And content creation for all these tactics is a critical component of their success.
While technology has driven marketing in new directions, it has also provided marketers and content writers with new digital tools to help simplify their jobs. Today there are boundless apps and tools that didn’t even exist five or 10 years ago.
Many of the tools you’re probably currently using may be MailChimp for email list and automation marketing, Hubspot for content creation or Buffer for social media scheduling and replying. However, there are several other interesting ones that offer you the ability to work more quickly and interactively on tasks that you might not have given much consideration to, but are worth being able to do easily with the right automated tools. Plus, all the tools mentioned below are FREE, and several offer additional services for a paid subscription.
Transcribing Video or Audio
oTranscribe.com is a free website that makes it easy to transcribe any type of sound file. You upload the file and then use the simple shortcut keys to pause, rewind or slow down the audio while you transcribe it in a single web tab so your hands never have to leave the keyboard. Your transcript is saved automatically to your browsers’ storage every second.
For anyone who conducts interviews for PR stories or company newsletters this is a straightforward tool that makes transcription easy. You can also upload a video file from YouTube to transcribe as well. This is a great feature for any company that has customer testimonials, how-to videos or an ad spot that needs to be transcribed and used on their website underneath the link to the video.
Recording Video or Audio
On September 4, Skype announced a new call recording feature is now available in the latest version of the app on most platforms, except Windows 10. It’s been a long, long, long time in coming as in for the last 10 years people have had to use an app to record calls via Skype.
However, now you can start Skype call recording at any time on both desktop and mobile devices. You’ll need to click the + symbol at the bottom of the screen and then select or tap Start Recording. A banner will automatically appear letting everyone on the Skype call know that it is being recorded. If you are recording a video call, the recording will capture everyone’s video as well as any shared screens. The recording all happens in the cloud, and after the call you can save and share the recorded call for the next 30 days.
Recording Something You’re Doing
Filmora Scr and Screencastify offer free versions of ways to record from your desktop, record audio voiceover, create cursor effects and handle basic editing.
With Screencastify, a Chrome plugin, you can quickly record videos and have them stored right to your Google drive. It also allows you to save in various formats, including the ability to directly upload to YouTube. The free version only allows up to 10 minutes of recording, which often turn out to be enough for most marketers.
These program tools are great for marketers or sales team members that want to explain certain products or features to a client and send demos as well. They also offer team members a way to quickly share information with each other, becoming ideal tools for a fast and easy tutorial session.
Writing Something Correctly
Everything is all about content these days. Creating good content requires a good grasp of grammar and syntax. That’s where the Grammarly browser extension for Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Firefox comes in handy. Grammarly lets you know of any spelling and grammar issues with anything you’re writing, including tweets, emails, Facebook and LinkedIn posts. It’s easy to correct errors and it even picks up style mistakes that you probably hadn’t even noticed before.
A couple of these may be worth giving a try to speed up and simplify some daily tasks. In the age of digital content, you need to be on the lookout for new tools that give you an edge in this fast-paced marketing environment.
