It’s hard to believe, but Squarely Digital is in its 10th year of business.
In that time, I have developed a lot of systems — some documented, some not — for getting work done. And a key part of those systems are the links I have bookmarked that take me to some great free online tools and resources.
I thought it might be helpful to share those links on the blog today. They are sites and articles I revisit frequently as an entrepreneur who creates content, runs search advertising campaigns and is fanatical about search behavior and tracking results.
I’ve pulled together my Top 10; they are below with links and a brief description. Hopefully at least a couple will be helpful to you, too:
Character Count Online
Useful for getting a word count on a blog post or a character count on the first paragraph of a social media post (keeping them short ensures the important stuff appears before the “see more” link).
Emoji Keyboard
This is the easiest way I have found on a desktop to search for a particular emoji and copy it for use in email, social media or blogging.
Gill Andrews on Creating Service Pages
Gill provides a smart and simple breakdown the must-have elements of a service page. I use it all the time to help structure landing pages.
Instapaper
When I see an article I want to read later, I save it to Instapaper. This makes me more efficient in two ways: 1) For work-related articles, it stores them all in one place that I can access on any device; 2) For non-work-related articles, instead of wasting my time reading them during the work day, I stash them away to digest when I’m not on deadline.
Josh Spector’s “What to Post” Guides: Article 1 and Article 2
Both of these posts are headlined as “what to tweet” articles, but the tips work for any social media platform, I have found. These are great for those days when you feel like you’re out of ideas for what to post.
Messages
Messages by Google allows me to read and reply to my texts on my computer — much more efficient than switching between the keyboard and mobile phone all day. This site/web app is for Android users; there is an equivalent Messages app on Macs for iPhone users.
Related Words
This site is not quite a thesaurus, but it’s just as helpful in finding the right word when you’re stuck, I have found. You type in a word and it gives you a list of, yes, related words — not 1-to-1 replacements for your seed word, but words that inhabit the same “neighborhood.”
Trello
Trello is billed as a project-management tool for teams, but I have found it is a fantastic way to organize individual work, as well. You create cards for each of your upcoming tasks (or sub-tasks), and you can move them up and down your list, or from one list to another, in a flash with your mouse.
Unsplash
As Unsplash says, it’s “the internet’s source of freely-usable images.” The selection is not as good as paid stock image sites, but for occasional use, it’s more than adequate. (The photo I used with this post is from Unsplash, posted there by Elena Rouame.)
URL Builder
Google’s tool to add UTM parameters to your links. These parameters allow you to track web traffic more precisely in Google Analytics. It’s a little more technical than the tools I list above, but it may be the most valuable tool on the list if you care about understanding how users get to your website.
Is there a free website, tool or article you can’t work without? I want to know about it — post it in the comments!
