tips & tricks
It’s not easy being a marketer today. Not only are you supposed to wear many hats – you’re supposed to get them all for free somehow AND make sure they look amazing! Here’s a collection of resources that help us do our jobs better (for ourselves and our clients). We add to this over time, so be sure to check back once in awhile. And if you have a resource you’d like to share, drop us a line!
Amazing (and free!) stock photos
It’s hard to find stock photos that 1) don’t look like stock photos and 2) won’t break the bank. When we discovered Unsplash – a website full of free, hi-res, beautiful stock images – it was like finding gold. They have an interesting beginning, which you can read about here and here if you’re curious.
Templates for
the designer in all of us
Of course we believe that great design is best achieved by a great designer. But, we’re also practical and realize that sometimes schedule and budget demand a different path. Enter Canva: free design templates for everything from presentations to brochures to social media graphics.
Let’s make
Comic Sans obsolete
Google’s font library offers 900 free font families that are easy to test-drive, download and use. It’s time to move beyond Arial, Helvetica and Times New Roman because fonts matter! The way text looks impacts the way people absorb and remember the information you’re trying to convey. Here’s proof.
PowerPoint presentations weren’t built in a day
Oh the number of days we’ve all spent laboring over PowerPoint slides to get them to look just right. Nancy Duarte and her firm (Duarte Inc.) are experts in communication, especially when it comes to designing great presentations. And lucky us! They’ve made their amazing PowerPoint diagrams free for all to use.
Someone’s looking
for you
Google Trends gives you visibility into what the world is searching for. You can enter the name of your organization (or anything!) into the search bar to see what interest is like in your brand or category, and even compare it to your competitors. Fair warning – this tool is mildly addictive.
Clear my what?
How many times have you been working with a developer on changes to your website and they tell you the edits are ready for your review. But you go to the site and don’t see the changes. So you tell them. And then they remind you that you need to clear your cache. Right. We all always forget that! Here are some handy instructions (courtesy of HubSpot!) on how to clear your cache, cookies and history on any device.