If you are an inbound marketer you are a publisher. And any publisher can tell you how hard it is to keep track of all the information, projects, notes, deadlines and content for multiple campaigns. Being in charge of all this makes a normally imperturbable person look and feel like that iconic “Stress” poster of Cathy with every hair standing on end and papers wafting in the air around her.
But Cathy is so 80s…she didn’t have access to the wealth of applications you do to help keep your sanity while all around you are losing theirs. Here are 6 apps today’s inbound marketer can use to manage all those campaigns, ideas, files, papers and whatever else is thrown your way.
Trello
Trello is an organizer that you can use to keep track of all the projects you and your team are working on. You can use it to visualize tasks, create a bulletin board and collaborate with colleagues. Somewhat like Microsoft Project, Trello creates a critical pathway for projects to travel to completion.
Evernote
Evernote is an excellent application for taking and organizing notes. You can create a notebook for specific topics, campaigns, or any other way you want to organize your notes. Evernote allows you to type in notes, copy and paste text, and place images. Each note can have multiple tags (which you create) assigned to it to help you search and group information.
Even better, Evernote syncs all your stuff across all your devices.
Dropbox
Dropbox is a cloud based document sharing application you can use to sync documents across devices and, with the Business package, collaborate with other users. If your computer crashes, files in Dropbox can be easily retrieved. It is especially valuable for files that are not compatible with GoogleDocs.
Feedly
Where would you be without all your favorite blogs, websites, and newsfeeds? Feedly uses RSS to go out and bring the information back to you, puts it in one place, and organizes it just for you. You can view all your stuff by title, as a list, like a magazine, or as cards; whichever is the best way for you to get through all your reading.
It also has a sharing feature so you can shoot pertinent pieces to your team.
HubSpot
You simply cannot get along with an excellent content management system and that is where HubSpot shines. HubSpot was designed specifically for inbound marketing. HubSpot can host your website, provide a blogging platform, keep up with your leads, and manage all your content.
HubSpot lets you publish to your social accounts, provides email and download services for your customers, and has reports and metrics galore to help you monitor your campaigns, content, and anything else.
HootSuite
Marketers now have all those social media networking sites to take care of. Do it all from one application; Hootsuite is a powerful tool for managing social media networking, tracking mentions, and analyzing your social media traffic. Hootsuite helps you schedule messages and tweets to go out any time of day or day of the week you want.
Frontload on Monday the tweets you want for the week and just let HootSuite go. You can use it for free as an individual or you can get it for your team for a reasonable monthly price.
You can mix and match any or all of these applications to help you maintain control over the blizzard of content you find yourself in each day. These applications are free or come with a low cost for individual or group use.
