Wishpond
Starting out in the digital marketing world, there is a lot to know and a lot to learn. There are so many things, people, and bits of information you need to remember and collect, it can be overwhelming to say the least. Trust me, I’ve lived through it.
But with the introduction of Google Chrome in 2008, web browsers took a turn for the better. If you’re not using Chrome as a marketer, you need to be.
Chrome gives you the ability to have app extensions directly on your browser – app extensions which save you time and put your most important resources front and center.
But which ones are worth downloading?
Scrolling through the Chrome web store it’s easy to become overwhelmed. The huge number of apps and extensions available is intimidating.
That’s why I’ve picked out my favorite 17 (the ones I, or my colleagues, use every day).
Now, I’m not saying you need to use every single one of these extensions, but by picking a few that are relevant to your job you’ll save yourselves a lot of time and be exposed to a whack of new information.
1. Bit.ly.com
Bit.ly allows you to edit your links and instantly share and save content straight from your browser into your bit.ly account. You can quickly shorten a link and brand the domain to customize it to your business. With bit.ly you can also track real-time stats to see which social strategies are most effectively engaging fans.
2. Buffer
Buffer’s Chrome extension is the easiest way for you to share content to your Following as you peruse sites throughout the day. It allows you to manage your day by scheduling posts to go out at specific times and follow up with analytics to track which posts had the best performance.
3. Colorzilla
Colorzilla gives you the chance to pick any color off of a webpage, providing you with the color number for future use. It then stores the hexcodes for you to use within your own content or design creation. You can get a color reading from any part of your browser, quickly adjust it and paste it into Photoshop, GoogleDraw, or any other design or drawing tool.
4. Pushbullet
Pushbullet allows you to send pictures, files, and links between devices and to your friends and family. You can send a link to your phone simply by right clicking on it while on your computer and wirelessly move files to your phone from your computer. No more emails to yourself!
5. Ghostery
As marketers we know exactly how tracking works. And for that reason we want to see what other businesses are doing and who exactly is looking into us on the web. Ghostery lets us see the invisible side, showing the trackers, pixels, bugs and beacons that companies place on pages. You can identify who is tracking you from Facebook or Google and get links to businesses’ privacy policies where you can choose to opt-out.
6. Diigo Web Collector
This awesome extension allows you to not only save pages you visit but to highlight the information you want, write something about it and reference it in a list for later. As a content writer we research a lot, (like multiple hours each day). Diigo allows you to collect everything in one place with highlights and notes so you can look back at those articles you found useful. Plus, you can reach this library from any computer for easy access.
7. Followr
I know I personally cannot stand any programs or applications that cheat to get you more followers, but Followr has helped many marketers strengthen their following. It is quick and easy to set up, and searches for tweets every 30 minutes related to your tweets and current following. The more you use Twitter, the more Followr will work to find you Tweets to favorite, resulting in more followers. Worth a try!
8. LastPass
Finally, the solution to remembering the dozens of passwords you’re required to have in the digital age and marketing world. I have at least two dozen between my personal and professional accounts. How on earth are we supposed to keep up? The answer, LastPass. All you have to do is remember your master password and Lastpass stores all your passwords, giving you secured access from any computer or mobile device.
9. Sniply
Sniply allows you to drive people to your website through the content that you share across social media.You can embed your own call-to-action onto other websites, along with custom messages for readers across the web. It can detect when you paste a link and will then ask if you want to embed a message on that page. Sharing a sniply link allows you to drive traffic back to your site.
10. Sidekick by Hubspot
Sidekick is the inbox tool any marketer, salesperson or general business professional needs. It works with Gmail, Outlook, Apple or Salesforce accounts to schedule emails in the future, see who opens and clicks your emails and your recipients’ title, company social profiles and recent tweets. Recommended for anyone who wants to improve their email productivity, coordinate teams, network, or close deals with sales leads.
11. Nimbus Screenshot
One of my favorites, Nimbus allows you to capture part of a webpage or even the whole thing and then save it into your files or onto your Google Drive. My favorite aspect of it is that you can scroll while screenshotting a page in order to get an entire web page. You can also choose to edit the screenshot by adding borders, arrows, and other features.
12. Yesware
Another email tool, Yesware, takes away the guesswork and shows you who’s opening your emails, sends notifications when emails are opened or clicked on and tells you what device was used. It also provides you with Gmail templates you can use multiple times with detailed reports about which templates lead to the highest engagement from recipients.
13. Mozbar
An absolute must for SEO’ers, this Moz extension lets you create custom SEO searches based on search engine, city, country etc., access SEO metrics while surfing the web and test the difficulty in ranking for a keyword.
14. Seoquake
Seoquake displays a page’s Google pagerank, alexa ranking and other parameters for any webpage. It can highlight nofollow links, text density on a page and compare one site to another based on URLs. An all in one for page ranking.
15. Evernote
In marketing, having a way to organize articles you need to read or notes you’ve made needs to be a priority to find productivity. With Evernote you can work offline, taking notes, collectiving web articles or photos in one organized space. It’s a great tool to manage and share resources with teams and can be accessed on all devices.
16. Momentum
Not restricted to any industry, Momentum is a great way to add some discovery into your day. It fills a default new tab with a page complete with an inspirational background from a beautiful location somewhere around the world as well as an inspirational quote and a place to write down your daily goals. It’s a simple extension that can brighten your day and give a boring web browser some spunk and personality.
17. Feedly
The Feedly Chrome extension allows you to add stories that you come across to your feed throughout the day, which you can then catch up on later in the day. You can also share pages or email them to others with the simple click of a mouse. As they say, it simply puts all your favorite sites in one place.
Conclusion
Now that you know the top 17 chrome extensions I’ve selected, it’s your turn to share. What are your favorites and why?
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