Recommended Tools & Resources
Website Developers & Hosting Sites
Squarespace
I use Squarespace for most of my sites. Depending on what the exact needs are, Squarespace provides a user friendly backend with very modern frontend templates. It is a very fast and reliable system in terms of updates, domain transfers and overall site stability. Squarespace also comes with domain hosting, which is fantastic. For a flat $20 a year, you own your domain name. Website building costs depend on the features you need but the costs are very competitive. Squarespace is great for teams who want a modern site and their updates done quickly and on the fly… so this is a great fit for most business models!
WORDPRESS
Wordpress is another great website builder. There are hundreds, if not thousands of templates and plugins to get the look and feel you desire. The only downside is that it takes a little bit more training and expertise on the backend. It is entirely learnable and the backend is somewhat user friendly but it will take some more time to dial things in and train. If you decide on Wordpress, you will need to use another company to purchase and host your domain.
Website Domain Hosts
Bluehost
If you go with Wordpress, you’ll need a separate website hosting provider to actually manage your website domain name. I have consistently had the best success with Bluehost. The most popular website domain host you may have heard of is GoDaddy, I feel bad even saying this but I have had the worst experience with them hands down. For being a website hosting company, their website is very confusing to navigate and changing settings often takes a long time. Transferring domains in or out of GoDaddy is also a slow, drawn out process where they try to get you to stay with them. To the point where it takes days sometimes to get a product out of their registry. Well, that turned into a 1 Star review on GoDaddy awfully quick! Haha - Go with Bluehost if you need a seperate provider ;-)
Graphic Design Tools
Canva
I use this every single day. Canva is a fantastic web based graphic designer. Their app is incredible for designing on the fly and their browser platform has a ton of features as well. One of the beauties of their system is that there is a FREE version with a bunch of features and that it is web based. So you can get an idea going on the fly on your phone using the app and then dial in the details on your computer when you can get to it. As a social media manager, I love that ability. You never know when inspiration will hit! While you can rock out a lot on the free version, you’ll want to go Premium when you can afford it, there are more features and tools.
Adobe Suite
The Adobe Suite of products is a no-brainer. Especially if you are a non-profit organization, TechSoup.org lines up a huge discount for the entire suite of products. Starting around $20 a month for a year and then 40% off every year after that which totals around $32. If you are not a non-profit or school, you will need to purchase the full price suite, still worth it. With that all in mind, I use Photoshop (Photo Editor, Graphic Designer) Illustrator (Graphic Designer) and Premiere Pro (Video Editor) often. They are industry standards for design and have the capability to produce the highest quality content for any project.
Adobe Spark
I wanted to make this one it’s own featured tool because I use this app (along with Canva’s app) every single day. It is mobile, has great presets and templates and produces solid content for social and other projects.
Video Editing Tools
iMovie
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah… I’ll catch some flack from other marketers on this one because it is not an industry standard, however, I can crack out so many projects quickly on this program and oh, by the way, it’s FREE with an Apple computer (which I also recommend). iMovie is a very basic video editing software but it works very smoothly and is great for a quick project.
Adobe Premiere Pro
As I mentioned above, the Adobe Suite is loaded with great programs. This is an industry standard in video editing. It has robust features to work with any size video and has professional quality features for any project.
Final Cut Pro
My personal favorite! Final Cut Pro is the natural next step up from iMovie and it is packed full of high end, industry standard features. If you are an Apple user, I highly recommend this program.