Quick toolbox for new social media tools, apps, tips, technology of interest to bloggers, content producers, storytellers, marketing & PR pros. Emphasis on practical not techhy, usable not confusable! ;-)
This short video was produced to show how quick and easy it is to produce a video from an existing blog post using the free Lumen 5 video tool.
Lumen 5 is an AI-powered video creation platform that turns blog posts into engaging videos. Using the tool is easy, intuitive and surprisingly fast. After producing a few Lumen 5 videos, I expect you could create one in as little as 10 minutes from existing content like a blog post. You can see my original blog post here http://bit.ly/LaoTzu8 to compare it with the video produced so effortlessly.
The creative and marketing possibilities are very intriguing and so far Lumen 5 is free although it may offer more features for a price in the future. For now, it's an interesting tool to explore.
Businesses, bloggers, trainers, authors and really anyone can use it to produce social content to drive audience engagement online. Great thing is you can focus on your message, visuals and creativity without having to touch the technology.
You can get more info and demos for the app at www.lumen5.com.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
With Lumen 5, producing video content for social media is simple, easy intuitive and fast. My demo was taken from an older blog post about writing for the internet. Lots of potential for this tool.
With Lumen 5, producing video content for social media is simple, easy, intuitive and fast. My demo was taken from an older blog post about writing for the internet. Lots of potential for this tool.
Free images for blogs and marketers. I have collected a bunch of sites that give you free images for commercial use. Check it out regularly as we add sites
En marketing, a great image is often a key component of the message. Constant need for pictures can dig deep into your pocket when using stock photography. If you want a particular image, then it makes sense to pay for the stock images as it will be a lot cheaper than to hire a photographer. What to do when you need images all the time, but their marketing lifespan can be measured only in days, maybe hours? Images for Facebook posts, email newsletters, individual slides in presentations that you use only once… Paying 10 or 20 dollars per image for these adds up. So where do you get free images? I have collected a bunch of sites that give you exactly that… free images for commercial use.
If there is one thing that is constant about social media platforms (besides their URLs), it is that they change fast. There are some recently released social media tools that communication and marketing professionals may find very helpful…or at least find good to know about.
In this post I want to take a look at some new tools that are available for the more prominent social media platforms and give an idea of how they can be helpful for PR professionals and marketers....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
There's one constant across all social media tools: change. Learn what's new and how communication and marketing professionals can make use of these 5 tools.
There's one constant across all social media tools: change. Learn what's new and how communication and marketing professionals can make use of these 5 tools.
See if your data's out there, shut down old accounts, send self-destructing messages, and more
.There’s nothing wrong with having a high profile on the web, but too much of a good thing can lead to plenty of bad things. These tools can help you get stuff done without revealing too much to hackers, marketers, and other assorted snoops....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Excellent set of social media tools to add to your toolkit. Highly recommended. 9/10
If you're reading this post, chances are you already have the SlideShare basics under your belt. You've uploaded a few presentations. You know you need a compelling story, beautiful design, enticing call-to-action, and solid promotion plan -- and you're comfortable executing on all of that in your slides.
But you feel like there's still more you could be doing with the platform. You want better copy, and better design, and better promotions, and better CTAs, and better results (usually in the form of leads).
Unfortunately, the recommendations you've found so far have been fairly surface-level.
If this sounds like you, I'd recommend you keep on reading. We've compiled an in-depth guide to generating leads with SlideShare, showing you how to design, optimize, and promote your presentations to get more traffic and leads....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Useful tips to help you get the most from your Slideshare presentations.
There is a trap with tools. They work very well in a particular setting, but when the environment changes, if you keep trying to use the same tool in the same way, you can go out of business.
Here is how Seth Godin describes it:
"One study found that when confronted with a patient with back pain, surgeons prescribed surgery, physical therapists thought that therapy was indicated and yes, acupuncturists were sure needles were the answer. Across the entire universe of patients, the single largest indicator of treatment wasn’t symptoms or patient background, it was the background of the doctor.
When the market changes, you may be seeing all the new opportunities and problems the wrong way because of the solutions you’re used to. The reason so many organizations have trouble using social media is that they are using precisely the wrong hammer. And odds are, they will continue to do so until their organization fails. PR firms try to use the new tools to send press releases, because, you guessed it, that’s their hammer."
The best way to find the right tool for the job is to learn to be good at switching hammers....
In response to sea changes in how people find, consume and share information, traditional media outlets are retooling their newsrooms and evolving their coverage. Despite the still-challenging economic environment, many outlets are investing heavily on people and technology, in order to deliver a news product that satisfies audience appetites for rich visuals, tablet-friendly design and up-to-the minute reporting. This begs the question: is PR content keeping up?
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Chicago Sun-Times dumps pro photographers for reporters with iPhones. Bad move as visuals gain in importance. And say, asks Sarah Skerik, is PR keeping up with the new content visuals trend?
Right now people are using their smart phones to scan QR Codes which allows them to either download information, or be taken to a web page of some sort. I happen to love QR codes, when they are used strategically. But this new technology adds several new dimensions.
A lot.
Rather than scanning a code, Aurasma’s software, which is a free downloadable app for smart phones, recognizes images. The company actually describes it as a “virtual browser”, but I’m not sure that terminology does it justice.
When you see an image that is accompanied by the company’s “A” logo, you know that you can scan it. Once the image is recognized, it takes you to an augmented reality experience that brings that image to life, and allows you to interact with it....
Here are 24 fantastic, and free, online creativity tools you can use to kick your creativity into high gear.
Below you’ll find 24 creativity tools to help kick your creativity into high gear. This list of creative thinking tools includes creativity cards, tools to scribble, idea markets, and more. And, best of all, they’re all free!...
Peter Himler shares an excellent list of online influencers to follow including PandoDaily, Business Insider SAI, The Verge, The Wrap, Digiday, The Awl, Mediaite, BetaBeat, VentureBeat, TheNextWeb, Vator.tv, SocialMediaToday and more...
As the web becomes more and more inundated with blogs, videos, tweets, status updates, news, articles, and countless other forms of content, information (30+ Cool Content Curation Tools for Personal & Professional Use
“Tech is really mainstream,” said TJ Snyder, partner at The OutCast Agency, during a conversation with us this week. “Tech is now part of every story.”
From HP to Facebook to Apple, the doings at tech and digital companies is filling up the news cycle. We spoke with Snyder to get a sense of how this is impacting the tech PR sector. On top of his list of tips and trends is finding a way to stand out now that the news is overflowing with tech items.
Marketers Cruise Capt. Lou Edwards shares a collection of 101 cool tools and technology used and recommended by the biggest names in marketing.
The tools include the following categories: audio, video, communication, social media, management, automation, productivity, content marketing, scheduling, task management, books, and tips. A very useful reference.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Lou Edwards has a great collection of 101 cool tools and technology recommended by top marketers.
Today, with all the internal communication tools available to a workforce, emailing seems almost primitive. Though many organizations still use email, most are trying to reduce the number of emails sent in favor of a simpler, more efficient form of internal communication. Employees are relying more on intranets or enterprise social networks.
Rio Rancho Public Schools has eliminated routine "all staff" emails, such as weekly school bulletin updates, by posting such important news on the intranet. (Here's the RRPS case study.)
Though you might not be ready to eliminate every "all staff" email and all one-on-one emails, you can improve internal communications with these powerful tools:
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Here's a couple of useful suggestions for alternatives to email.
For meaningful growth, startups must completely change the rules of traditional marketing and innovate outside of those growth channels. You should be thinking growth when building your app. Companies like Dropbox, Mint and the recently sensational Slack incorporated sharing into their functionalities.Mailbox used the waiting list to their advantage and it worked.
Lot of startups now look beyond AdWords, SEO or popular marketing strategies to find users. These are a collection of products, tools and apps to grow your startup or new business....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Useful PR and marketing tools for startups and operating companies.
The tide of influence hunting on the web is rising beyond public relations and social media to digital marketing at large. In particular, there’s growing attention being directed towards influencers as gateways to new audiences.
Influence as the ability for a person to inspire action amongst a community is a very powerful thing and therefore, increasingly appreciated by digital marketing and PR pros alike. An influencer program that identifies, qualifies, engages and maintains relationships with industry influencers can serve as a formidable “force multiplier” for everything from content amplification to product feedback to content co-creation.
Beyond the “brandividual endorsement”, people with a strong center of influence can provide valuable context and credibility to a company seeking to connect with an audience of buyers. But in an age of information overload and the ability for anyone, anywhere to publish, finding those influential connections in your industry can prove to be a challenge.
Here are 9 of many tools that can be used for the initial task of finding influencers aligned with specific areas of subject matter expertise. Several go beyond discovery and also support filtering, managing, engaging, monitoring and reporting....
Twice this week I've been asked for alternatives to iBooks Author that students can use to create multimedia books. This is probably a good time to share the three options that I usually recommend. These are listed in the order in which I typically recommend them...
Here's another tool for your leader toolbox. Doing your research and finding people who can help strengthen your PLN is key. This makes it much easier.
A complete three-lens optical system for serious iPhoneographers...
iPhone Lens Dial: Is this the coolest iPhone photography accessory or what? This perfect for quick and dirty pics for PR, blogging or what have you.
Of course it also means you have the perfect excuse for avoiding calls from your mother-in-law, boss or your spouse with that grocery list. "Uh sorry dear, I'm taking pictures right now!" ;-)
Lots of agencies have booze on hand—Arnold in Boston even has an impatient and lonely beer vending machine that harasses employees on Twitter until they visit it. But JWT's Casa in Brazil has the most annoying agency beer fridge.
It's hooked up to the shop's computers and refuses to open on Fridays until all staffers complete their weekly time sheets.
...there are other search engines out there, even if Google is pretty much the king, with ‘Google’ having becoming a commonly used verb- “I’ll Google it”. Of course there’s Yahoo!, Bing, Firefox, but a little bit of research has revealed many lesser known search engines. Here’s some of the most interesting ones, which are designed for specific purposes, such as increased privacy, safer searching, videos, maths and music....
21st century public relations pros don't need expensive equipment to create quality photos & videos. Six iPhone accessories to do just that.
Being a non-expert at much of this stuff, I recently got a bee in my bonnet about finding a way to build my own, iPhone-ready DIY photo/video studio, that would let me take/create not great, but good enough visual/multimedia content (Project 366 is proving to be great testing ground for this).
After a month or so of trial and error, finally all the pieces have fallen into place. And I did this on less than $200 (excluding taxes and shipping). Here’s how you can too, with six terrific iPhone accessories that will give you a mobile [sic], “good enough” photo/video studio....
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With Lumen 5, producing video content for social media is simple, easy, intuitive and fast. My demo was taken from an older blog post about writing for the internet. Lots of potential for this tool.