Productivity is a key part of running an integrated online marketing campaign whether you’re a pro or doing it yourself.
The tools that are constantly open on my Mac tools, along with the universally popular Evernote, are:
Brainstorming & Clarity
Curio is perhaps not the most well-known tool in my list but it’s absolutely wonderful. A cross between a project organizer, mind-mapping space and notebook, it’s a great thinking space to work in.
With the ability to include outlines, notes, mind-maps, images, hyperlinks, audio files, I can play with my ideas to my hearts content.
Recently I used a mind-map to generate ideas for an ebook I’m working on, the outliner to plan each section of the book, and another space to collect sources.
Because Curio is particularly suited to working with a Mac trackpad your work space is easy to navigate and drag yourself around.
The learning curve is a little steep because there’s not really many applications like it, but it’s definitely worth the time digging deeper into the possibilities of Curio. I suppose in the good old days I did all my thinking on a piece of paper or in a notebook.
The standard edition costs 99 USD and the professional version, which I use, 149 USD. The academic license is just 69 USD.
Blog Productivity
Although I’m a big fan of TextExpander for making it easier to include literally anything at the turn of a shortcut, MarsEdit makes blogging so much easier for me because of the code shortcuts that are included and it’s ability to do everything related to blogging in one space.
Having tailored my install to include the WP Thesis Theme custom settings (title tag, meta description, keywords, etc), I can work in a simple window and write offline.
It’s easy to upload images, edit Pages, add tags and categories and helps speed up my blogging.
Finally, the other reason I like MarsEdit is that it makes it so easy to navigate between recent posts. At one glance I can see recent titles, or check the text.
Data Collection
Although I like Microsoft’s Excel on the Mac I just find myself turning to Numbers for spreadsheets. I’m not sure why but perhaps it’s got something to do with its simplicity.
I use Numbers to track both my own data and that of my clients. It’s great for collecting data on:
- Google Analytics
- Hootsuite (Twitter) analytics
- Facebook Pages
- and blog posts.
As I mentioned the other day, I particularly like working in Numbers when outlining my blogging calendar for the month. It gives me a clear idea of emotional triggers I’m trying to connect with in my writing as well as the response of my audience.
Finally
Although there are stacks of other apps open most days on my Mac (Mail, Google Chrome, NetNewsWire, iOrdning and Evernote), the three I’ve mentioned today deserve extra special praise for helping me do the job I do.
How about you? Whether you’re on a PC or a Mac, what applications help make your work with online marketing and communications easier?
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