My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one I took on the road.
Beams– Beams helps you stay focused and reduce distractions during your day. You can see your daily schedule, join calls and take breaks with one click from your Menu Bar. Work smarter, not harder with Beams.
Whereby– Join a meeting in just one click with easy-to-remember and use links. Or embed a video conference directly on your website, platform, or app with Whereby’s Embedded Video API.
Noty.ai – Noty.ai is an AI-powered meeting assistant that can transform your meetings into transcripts, action items, summaries, and follow-ups in seconds. With Noty.ai, you can also collaborate with your team members on a shared transcript and seamlessly delegate follow-up tasks in real time.
These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape
If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.
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My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one I took on the road.
Chatsonic– Chatsonic is a new way to create content, easily and quickly. You can chat with your computer, giving it commands in plain English. It’s like ChatGPT, but better!
Chron– Cron is a next-generation calendar for professionals and teams. It streamlines workflows, integrates other productivity tools, and builds collaboration right into your calendar. Cron is helping make the modern workspace more efficient.
Readitfor.me – is the world’s leading book summary service for executives and entrepreneurs who want to stay on top of the latest thought leadership. Their platform allows you to consume hundreds of best-selling books in less than 15 minutes a week.
These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape
If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.
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LiveGood is a health and wellness company that provides natural, plant-based products to help people live a healthier lifestyle. We provide products that are made with natural ingredients and are free from chemicals, preservatives and other artificial additives. Our products are designed to nourish and support your body, mind and soul.
Our products include:
- Supplements: Our supplements are made with ingredients that are carefully sourced, ensuring that you are getting the best possible quality. We offer a range of supplements to meet your needs, ranging from multivitamins to probiotics and more.
- Superfoods: Our selection of superfoods are packed with nutrients and antioxidants, making them the perfect addition to any diet. We offer a variety of superfoods, including spirulina, chlorella, maca root and more.
- Herbal Remedies: Our herbal remedies are made with natural ingredients that are designed to support your health and wellbeing. We offer remedies for a range of issues, including stress, anxiety, sleep and more.
- Essential Oils: Our essential oils are designed to help you relax and unwind. We offer a selection of essential oils, ranging from lavender to eucalyptus.
At LiveGood, your health and wellness will always be our number one focus. That’s why we eliminate the middle man, to make the highest quality products on the planet available to our customers and members for a fraction of the price of the competition.
And on top of the huge savings you get when you purchase any of our life-changing products, we also give you the opportunity to earn income with the most exciting compensation plan in the industry!
In fact, you can earn up to $2,047.50 per MONTH without ever enrolling a single person!
And if you decide to share our amazing products and compensation plan with others, you can earn even more!
You’ll have access to exclusive training, resources, and support to help you reach your goals and live the life of your dreams.
So why wait? Become a LiveGood Member today and join the thousands of people who are already experiencing the life-changing power of LiveGood: bit.ly/3jqdbwG
My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one I took on the road.
Thnks– No more waiting until you meet someone in person to say Thnks! Thnks makes it easy to send a carefully chosen thank-you gift instantly via text or email. They have a library of exclusive “thank you” items that can be delivered for any occasion, no matter how you know them, including prospects, customers and employees.
Blaze– Blaze is the next-generation tool that helps you understand, engage and manage your users. We’re talking Discord analytics, user management and powerful reporting all in one place.
ClickMinded – ClickMinded is the Marketing Operating System for your business. It’s a library of digital marketing SOPs and online courses that help you grow new customers and revenue through a repeatable process.
These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape
If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.
from Duct Tape Marketing https://ift.tt/4VgS6EL
via IFTTT
My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one I took on the road.
Growthfyi– This tool helps to load Google Analytics faster for more accurate data collection. It also stops cross-domain tracking making it GDPR-compliant.
Senja– Easily collect, manage, and share your testimonials like never before. Senja has a super simple and easy-to-setup testimonial tool making it easy for your happy customers to share their reviews. It also has a dashboard for you to manage all your past reviews in one place.
Page Improve by Semrush – This easy-to-use Chrome extension allows practically anyone to improve their SEO immediately without waiting for limited developer resources. You can optimize meta tags, canonicals, alt tags, and links in minutes and share them with your team.
These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape
If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.
from Duct Tape Marketing https://ift.tt/g7SQsGN
via IFTTT
My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.
Xtiles– Allows you to organize all of your ideas, projects, and to-do’s visually and in one place. Finally a single source of truth for both work and personal tasks.
Heyday– Heyday is an AI-powered memory assistant that helps you recall things you’ve seen online, so you won’t forget any of it. The program allows you to remember more with no extra effort on your part.
Mindstamp– Increase viewer engagement and conversions on your videos with Mindstamp. This software allows you to create fully interactive videos with clickable graphics and buttons right in your videos. You can also create workflows, quizzes, polls, questions and much more right.
These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape
If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.
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My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
Vadoo – is a video hosting platform that helps brands and creators to engage and grow their audiences by uploading, recording, and sharing videos with just one click.
Universe – is an immersive EdTech solution where educators and students can simulate a real classroom experience online. They can debate ideas freely with a 3D audio feature, maintain high attention levels with breakout rooms and custom-made quizzes, and drive engagement by rewarding students with points.
Plask– is an AI tool that transforms videos of people into animated online characters in seconds. Just record yourself, drop the video into the platform and make the final edits to your animation.
These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape
If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.
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My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
OptiMonk– allows you to personalize popups, offers, forms, headlines, and embedded content in your website to enhance the experience of your website visitors, improve your conversions and boost your engagement rate.
Vouch– is a video marketing tool that lets you capture, edit and share authentic video testimonials in no time. Simply ask the questions you’d like answered, send a link with a request, edit the person’s response and easily share your videos.
Guidde– is an app that helps you create and record step-by-step videos efficiently. With their free Chrome extension, you can record your screen, customize those recordings and share your video through any channel with just one click.
These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape
If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.
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The global market value of artificial intelligence (AI) in the marketing world is projected to reach over half a trillion dollars by 2024.
There is an AI tool out there for almost any marketing need, and the stat above proves that these tools will grow and develop to offer even more value to marketers and small business owners.
Using AI tools is just one way to help optimize your content marketing workflow. As you create your next piece of content, look at the tools shared here, and see what value they can bring to the table.
The more tools you plug into your workflow, the easier it will become to build great content, and deliver it in a timely manner.
What are AI marketing tools?
AI marketing tools are platforms or systems that mimic human intelligence and help marketers improve efficiency, accuracy, and automate parts of their job. There are numerous AI marketing tools on the market right now, and odds are, you probably already use a few of them.
Benefits of using AI tools for Marketing
AI Marketing tools can take a lot of the work out of doing marketing for a small business. They’re often scalable to the size of your business, and quite easy to use. They also reduce the amount of manual work needed, meaning less human error and more efficiency.
Best of all, AI marketing tools can cover every area of your small business marketing. As you’ll see in this article, there are AI tools for copywriting, design, social media, SEO content creation, decks, and much more.
Honestly, the biggest pain in using AI marketing tools for your business can be deciding the best to use.
Here are our 5 AI tools that every marketer can and probably should start using today. Check them out and see what works for your business:
A market leader, Writesonic offers marketers the opportunity to use AI to create written content of any kind. It has you covered from creating SEO-optimized long-form posts to sales emails, Q&A, essays, product descriptions, reports, and even ebooks.
For blogs and SEO articles, simply enter a keyword or a topic, and it will give you AI-based options for your title, introduction, outline, and finally a well-written post in minutes.
Writesonic has a cloud-native, AI-powered system, that provides complete ownership of the AI-generated copy in your account, and integrates effortlessly with Semrush, WordPress, and other common marketing programs.
We use this tool at Duct Tape Marketing, and it has been a massive help to us with time-consuming tasks like topic research, crafting engaging long-form content, doing FAQs and Q&A pages, optimizing our SEO, and creating ad variations.
If you struggle to create written content but want to brighten up your online presence without spending much effort and time, then Writesonic might be helpful. With their generous 2,500 words free trial, it can help you build tons of relevant content in no time.
Disclose that DTM is a Writesonic affiliate: Disclosure: Duct Tape Marketing is a Writesonic affiliate and may receive commissions for purchases made through links in this post. Duct Tape Marketing would never endorse products or services it has not test or does not use.
2. Lately
If you want the content of your social media to be created and tested efficiently, Lately is the perfect solution.
It employs a combination of your social media analytics, millions of data points from its own archives, and crowd testing to create organic social media content that your audience will love.
This allows your social media team to spend more time focusing on strategy, growth, or creating a better end-to-end experience for your clients online.
Try their 7-day free trial to create posts your followers will love and share.
3. Photosonic
Need some inspiration for new creative designs, concepts, or projects? PhotoSonic lets you create realistic or artistic graphics from a text description, using a text-to-image AI model. Just type in a few keywords and the software will produce several relevant images for you to choose from.
This AI marketing tool also lets you modify existing images with text and filters, create images of any kind, and customize them with diverse attributes and details within seconds.
Photosonic offers a 15-credit free trial that helps you get an idea of how AI Image generators can boost your marketing.
Jasper
With all of its combined features, Jasper is an effective AI Marketing tool that can help marketing teams break creative blocks to create amazing, authentic content faster.
Jasper has a Chrome extension that lets you create content directly on social media platforms. It also helps marketers write viral YouTube and TikTok video scripts, craft LinkedIn articles, Instagram captions, website copy, and write emails.
Jasper and Writesonic are built on the same AI technology, both have good customer support and can help marketing teams to create content more efficiently. However, Jasper doesn't offer a free plan and is more focused on writing short-form content like ads and product descriptions.
5. Grammarly
If you create written content, then you have to check out Grammarly. This AI tool helps writers with grammar, spelling, and tone mistakes. Grammarly also offers a Chrome extension and smoothly integrates with commonly used tools like Slack, Gmail, GoogleDocs, WordPress, CRMs, and others.
Grammarly’s AI system processes reams of natural human language, a component of AI that involves teaching machines to understand human language. This method allows Grammarly to do sentiment analysis, score your writing, make styling decisions, and more.
There is a free versions and which corrects spelling, grammar, and tone mistakes in your writing.
How to start using AI Marketing tools for your business
Choosing the right AI marketing tools can often feel overwhelming. There are often so many services and each with their own unique features.
To get yourself through the process and find the best AI tools for your business, think about these 3 simple tips;
Nobody knows your business more than you do, so really think about where an AI tool might benefit your workflow. Is your content creation process slow? Are you disappointed with your social media efforts? Identifying your needs will help you target the right AI tool for your marketing.
Test all the AI tools you’re considering. Most of the above-mentioned offer free trials, so take advantage of these. Make sure you like using them, and that implementing them will be as easy as possible.
Does the tool save time and drive growth? If you do your research and test the product, you’ll know if it helps you or not. Don’t add too many tools and keep it simple.
Essential Workbooks forSmall Business Marketing Strategy
According to a study by Quantcast and Forbes, AI helps marketers to boost sales, increase customer retention, and succeed at new product launches.
This post will provide you with practical and useful examples to understand a bit more about AI and how it can help your marketing team do all of that and more.
What is AI?
The simplest way to think about AI is to see it as a tool or system that has the ability to learn and predict. It can comprehend what we want, or it can learn from its mistakes, and then predict what we might want the next time.
AI is all around us. Every time we ask Siri something, it learns and gets smarter understanding what we're asking, who we are, and what we want to know.
Anytime we ask for directions on Google Maps, AI processes and learns what is going on around us through traffic patterns and how cars are moving.
There are some AI tools that use existing data to make new content. Article writers, for example, can create original content because they scan and take in all of the information available on the Internet.
There's also AI that uses trial and error. The AI-driven chess computer that gets better and better and eventually beats everybody learns from what the opponent did, and processes all that information to come to a better result.
The thing all of these tools have in common is that they take in information, learn from it, and can make informed future decisions all on their own.
AI and Content Marketing
Content has become a crucial part of digital marketing in recent years. In fact, content is now the primary focus for most marketing teams.
The problem is that creating long-form content, On-page SEO, and social media posts can be extremely time-consuming. Even more challenging is coming up with ideas that your audience will find interesting and engaging.
AI tools are making it easier for marketers to streamline their content creation processes. From generating ideas to choosing images for your blog posts, AI moves the implementation work to a place where it can be done effectively, even with the smallest of teams.
Is AI going to make us obsolete as marketers?
AI is not going to make agencies, marketers, or business owners obsolete, but it is going to make us more efficient. It becomes a competitive advantage if an agency can produce 10 times more content than before.
However, AI is not going to process emotion, is not going to be able to process an opportunity, is not going to understand a gut feeling you have or relationships that it can lean on, and it's not going to replace strategic thinking.
5 practical ways to use AI in your marketing today
Use AI for your long-form content
Long-form content has become one of the hardest things for smaller marketing teams or smaller agencies to produce because it's so time-consuming and yet it is so essential for end users and the educational approaches that we have today.
Here are some of the ways to use Writesonic – An AI tool we frequently use –to helps create better long-form content:
You can use Writesonic to help you create a fully customized blog outline. The AI content tool does this by scanning the Internet and choosing content based on what people are searching for online. This allows you to then easily fill in the rest.
Writesonic uses AI to make long-from content more engaging, relevant, and attractive for readers. This can decrease your blogs bounce rate and increase your overall visibility online.
Connect Writesonic with an SEO tool like Semrush to optimize your long-form content towards your target keywords and audiences.
If you are creating content for new clients, Writesonic can save you tons of time by completing the initial background research for you.
Spend more time creating a stellar experience for your leads & beat your competition
Disclosure: Duct Tape Marketing is a Writesonic affiliate and may receive commissions for purchases made through links in this post. Duct Tape Marketing would never endorse products or services it has not tested or does not use.
AI for Metadata and SEO
Good SEO practice is a necessary process that takes time and effort. However, much of it can be repetitive and time-consuming. Tasks like creating SEO-optimized titles, creating the right meta tags, or keyword research can now easily be automated with AI.
How can AI tools produce better results for SEO?
Doing keyword research manually is time-consuming. AI tools help you streamline this process by crawling relevant content on the internet and then giving you questions, keywords, and information that people are looking for in Google, so you can create more valuable blog posts or pages.
AI tools like Writesonic can also help you write engaging and optimized titles and meta descriptions in seconds by simply typing in an overview of the topic. It’s a great way to save time and free up your marketing team to focus on more innovative and strategic tasks.
Q&A is another essential feature that can boost your SEO results. With today's AI tools you can easily create highly relevant Q&A content, that you can use in Quora, Reddit forums, or in relevant Facebook Groups.
Add copy and variations
Google Ads now gives you the ability to create up to 15 headlines for your search ads. It takes time and brain cycles to write those ads.
AI tools can automatically produce these variations for you in the format that Google, YouTube or any other platform will understand. The ad copy will also be automatically optimized for higher click-trough rates based on past campaign performances.
Additionally, AI recognizes that people on LinkedIn write differently than on Facebook, so you can customize tone based on the platform.
Below is another example of using Google headlines. Some of them are great, and some maybe don't hit the mark, but it gives you a quick sample of things to start working with.
By having 10 different ad copies to test, you whittle down and find the winner. It makes the creation of the ad variations much faster and efficient.
Social Media Content
Brands need to create and publish content every day on several different platforms.
One of my favorite ways to produce social media content is to break one big piece of content into many pieces. So, you can take an article that you've already written, put it into your AI tool, select the social media platform and the tool can generate weeks worth of posts from that one piece of content.
AI tools can also generate content ideas, hooks, and captions with just a topic or a few keywords.
Some AI tools can even create complete posts for you, give you a mixture of Instagram captions, descriptions for your YouTube videos, titles, script hooks for TikTok, and more.
Content repurposing
Content repurposing has become a big topic. Constantly refreshing content can be a powerful way to impact your SEO without having to write new content. AI tools can easily accomplish this task in seconds.
AI can also help you shorten content. For example If you have a blog post that people love, but you need to shorten it in order to repost to LinkedIn, AI can do that.
Start using AI tools to help you create great content, and save you time, and money
AI tools are great for getting more content and finding easy ways to boost your SEO. Utilize these powerful tools today along with some editing and styling to boost your results in marketing.
It is not a 'cut and paste' solution, but it does get you closer to an optimal result.
Now that you know this, it is time to identify some aspects where you can improve your marketing efforts using AI today.
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My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.
Resume Worded– is an AI Platform designed by recruiters that allow professionals to get expert feedback on their resume and LinkedIn profile. You upload your resume, and in 30 seconds, you’ll get tangible feedback to edit your resume and land more interviews.
Get it out– is a persona creation software that helps you streamline your buyer persona development process. Easily create everything you need to market your product or service: personas, generated texts, branding, and your websites, emails & promotional materials.
Clay– is an app that allows you to see and manage all your contacts and relationships in one centralized place. You can connect calendars, emails, and social media profiles and then the app defines how often you should communicate with a person depending on the relationship.
These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape
If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.
from Duct Tape Marketing https://ift.tt/iDK9vIk
via IFTTT
My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.
Regiey ai– is an AI Content Platform for sales and marketing teams. You can create impactful AI-powered social posts, blogs, sales sequences, email nurturing campaigns, and other content in a few minutes.
Omnisearch– uses AI search technology to extract content from anything: audio/video, pdfs, presentations, images, and more. Omnisearch also allows transcribing video recordings into subtitles in seconds.
Mini-course generatoris a course-building platform that allows people to promote courses and workshops better with interactive mini-courses. You can build lessons smoothly, customize the layout to your branding needs and embed them directly into your website.
These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape
If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.
from Duct Tape Marketing https://ift.tt/EtH4FYd
via IFTTT
My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.
Journey io– helps storytellers and business owners create memorable presentations. You just upload your videos, slides, PDFs, and other formats of content to the tool, and it will transform it into an interactive document that tells a story.
Talkbase– is a Community Operations platform designed to help keep remote teams aligned, collaborate with contributors, plan and execute events, and manage community members – all in one place.
Beams Pro is a virtual event platform that allows marketers and HR Managers to create webinars, networking sessions, tradeshows, online seminars, and more using one-window technology and end-to-end analytics for higher engagement.
These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape
If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.
from Duct Tape Marketing https://ift.tt/smZc2FB
via IFTTT
My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.
Nextcohort– offers a directory of various cohort-based courses. This approach differs from other online programs because each lesson has a specific start and end date, live classes, meetups, lectures, Q & A’s, and a strong focus on community.
Churnzero-is a customer success platform that helps brands reduce customer churn by personalizing and automating to-do lists, calendars, customer journeys, and surveys based on everyday events and behaviors.
Kumospace– is a virtual office and event-hosting platform where remote teams can interact, collaborate, and meet online in a completely customizable workspace. If you’re tired of the typical Zoom meeting check out Kumospace, it’s certainly fun and engaging.
These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape
If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.
from Duct Tape Marketing https://ift.tt/1aFmnNk
via IFTTT
My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.
Nextcohort– offers a directory of various cohort-based courses. This approach differs from other online programs because each lesson has a specific start and end date, live classes, meetups, lectures, Q & A’s, and a strong focus on community.
Churnzero-is a customer success platform that helps brands reduce customer churn by personalizing and automating to-do lists, calendars, customer journeys, and surveys based on everyday events and behaviors.
Kumospace– is a virtual office and event-hosting platform where remote teams can interact, collaborate, and meet online in a completely customizable workspace. If you’re tired of the typical Zoom meeting check out Kumospace, it’s certainly fun and engaging.
These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape
If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.
from Duct Tape Marketing https://ift.tt/QoUstZf
via IFTTT
My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.
Verbally– is an early-stage tech start-up based in Berlin that helps companies make online meetings more productive by having a visible timer and agenda. It is free, super simple to start, and it supports Google Meets and Zoom.
GrowthBar SEO–is an AI-based tool that creates SEO-optimized blogs, metadata, and outlines, based on keywords and descriptions you feed it. You describe the topic, and it creates an optimized outline, meta tags, and a blog within a couple of minutes.
Issuu– makes it easy to convert, publish, host, and elevate your PDF content. You just have to import a PDF file and it will transform it into embeddable flipbooks, email graphics, social stories, and more.
These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape
If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.
from Duct Tape Marketing https://ift.tt/vKi3lLJ
via IFTTT
My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.
SwipeWell – compiles hundreds of marketing and copywriting examples to use for inspiration. It has templates and samples from social media ads and pricing pages to lead nurture emails.
Skybucket– is a mobile and desktop app that allows travelers to collect, visualize, and control their travel bucket lists. Just create a board, and you can save content from all external sources and get notifications and reminders.
Spinach.io makes daily standup meetings more straightforward by helping teams with icebreakers, saving all the discussion topics for the end, sending daily summaries through Slack, and more.
These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape
If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.
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The Agency Spark Podcast, hosted by Sara Nay, is a collection of short-form interviews from thought leaders in the marketing consultancy and agency space. Each episode focuses on a single topic with actionable insights you can apply today. Check out the new Spark Lab Consulting website here!
About this episode:
In this episode of the Agency Spark Podcast, Sara talks with Nicole Bandes on how to build a successful business around a thriving life.
After losing her 17 year old son, Nicole Bandes discovered her purpose: encourage others to make time for what matters most.
In 2017, Nicole founded Virtual A Team, a virtual services agency helping overwhelmed coaches and consultants who want to define success by the wealth of their lives, not the size of their bank accounts.
Nicole now walks the walk working less than 20 hours a week and also hosts the Coach’s Copilot: Your Online Business Manager podcast.
This episode of the Agency Spark Podcast is brought to you by Podmatch, a platform that automatically matches ideal podcast hosts and guests for interviews. Imagine your favorite online dating app, but instead of using it for finding dates, you’re booking podcast interviews. I use Podmatch to find guests for Agency Spark and it’s made booking engaging and talented guests incredibly easy. Learn more here!
from Duct Tape Marketing https://ift.tt/b65Oq8k
via IFTTT
My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.
Capsho – is an AI-powered podcast copywriter that helps podcasters create titles, descriptions, show notes, social media posts, and emails from an audio file upload.
Movio.la – Movio is a system that allows you to combine different scenes in a single space to create professional videos online.
Kalendar -SaaS start-up that allows companies to get initial meetings with prospective clients by automating sales outreach.
These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape
If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.
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My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.
Krisp – a free AI tool that mutes all the background noise during online meetings in real-time.
Deck Rocks – is an AI-based tool that generates pitch decks using GPT-3. You just have to describe your idea in 1 or 2 sentences, and you get a deck tailor-made for you within minutes.
Writesonic– is an AI writer trained to help you write high-performing ads, sales copy, SEO content and much more. Enter a couple of keywords, and Writesonic will provide several options in seconds.
These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me@ducttape
If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.
from Duct Tape Marketing https://ift.tt/85RZ7vi
via IFTTT
My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.
Krisp – a free AI tool that mutes all the background noise during online meetings in real-time.
Deck Rocks – is an AI-based tool that generates pitch decks using GPT-3. You just have to describe your idea in 1 or 2 sentences, and you get a deck tailor-made for you within minutes.
Writesonic– is an AI writer trained to help you write high-performing ads, sales copy, SEO content and much more. Enter a couple of keywords, and Writesonic will provide several options in seconds.
These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me@ducttape
If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.
from Duct Tape Marketing https://ift.tt/nShrat6
via IFTTT
Want to jump straight to the answer? The best cPanel web hosting for most people is A2 Hosting or HostGator.
While there are multiple control panels for interacting with your web hosting account, the cPanel has consistently proved to be a top choice for web admins. From the easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI) to the extensive support documentation, it’s easy to see why the cPanel is so popular.
However, not all cPanels are created equal. Tasks like creating site backups, setting up email, or managing your CMS database can be either seamless or frustrating, depending on your cPanel host.
With this in mind, we set out to find the best cPanel web hosting plans for various users.
A2 Hosting offers the fastest speeds on the market today, and a great option for those looking for cPanel web hosting.
Every A2 plan comes with cPanel for free. This is a big deal when some competitors don’t offer cPanel with their cheapest plans—like iPage.
Getting a free cPanel account and a great price on web hosting are only two of the many reasons to consider hosting your site on A2. Speed, reliability, green hosting, and excellent customer support make it a top option for anyone.
They also have a wide range of hosting plans and prices.
Shared Hosting — Starting at $2.99 per month
VPS Hosting — Starting at $4.99 per month
Reseller Hosting — Starting at $18.99 per month
Dedicated Hosting — Starting at $129.99 per month
With A2 Hosting, cPanel allows you to do things like:
Manage email usage
Configure SSH keys
Create a Node.js app
Install an SSL certificate from a third party
Manage your files
Manage databases
Manage domains
A2 also uses Softaculous, which is made for installing software to your account with just one click. CRMs, blogs, database tools–there are hundreds of supported products. Softaculous and all auto-updates can be handled directly from your cPanel dashboard.
HostGator is one of the most popular names in web hosting. That’s because they offer affordable plans loaded with features. They don’t cut corners on what they offer and let you try their service for more than six weeks risk-free.
I like that you can log into any cPanel account directly from the HostGator portal. Of course, you can log in via cPanel, but if you’re managing a lot of different sites, this small feature will help you stay organized.
And once you’re in cPanel, it’s easy to accomplish tasks quickly in the intuitive dashboard.
They offer a variety of different plans depending on the type of hosting service you need
Shared Hosting — Starting at $2.75 per month
VPS Hosting — Starting at $23.95 per month
Reseller Hosting — Starting at $19.95 per month
WordPress Hosting — Starting at $5.95 per month
Dedicated Servers — Starting at $89.98 per month
Altogether, they have 12 different web hosting plans to choose from—all of which come with cPanel.
With HostGator, you’ll always get the latest version of cPanel with your hosting plan, as well as additional incentives like:
Free website builder
Free site transfer
Free domain transfer
Google Ads credits
Bing Ads credits
Free SSL
All shared hosting plans come with a 99.9% uptime promise and a 45-day money-back guarantee. HostGator is compatible with the most popular CMS platforms including WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Magento.
HostGator is one of the best web hosting providers for websites that need to scale their resources. Having access to cPanel for managing all of this makes everything easier.
InMotion is a perfect option for small business users who want a little more flexibility with their web hosting service.
If you prefer a hands-on approach, InMotion offers cPanel web hosting with every plan. This makes it easy to manage your Linux-based service, set up domains, manage resources, automate your site, and more.
This web host also supports one-click installations with over 400+ apps directly from cPanel.
Whether you’re using WordPress, Drupal, or other CMS systems and shopping carts, InMotion is an ideal solution for your website. The one-click installer also allows for easy upgrades, convenient maintenance, as well as rollbacks to previous versions.
Here’s a look at the introductory pricing rates for InMotion web hosting:
Shared Business Hosting — $2.49 per month with a three-year contract
WordPress Hosting — $3.99 per month with a two-year contract
VPS Hosting — $19.99 per month with a two-year contract
Dedicated Hosting — $139.99 per month with an annual contract
All of these plans include cPanel for free.
You’ll also get data backups, free SSD drives, SSH access, secure email, and other great freebies.
InMotion has been providing cPanel with its hosting plans for more than a decade. This has allowed their IT team to customize the backend specs to speed up its responsiveness and ultimately allow for a more seamless user experience.
My InMotion hosting review also found that plans are backed by a 90-day money-back guarantee, which is an industry-leading offer. So if you’re looking for a reliable web host with a feature-rich cPanel, look no further than InMotion. Sign up today.
Bluehost offers a fantastic user experience. So it should be no surprise that they rank high on my list of cPanel web hosts.
Here’s how their pricing breaks down:
Shared Hosting — Starting at $2.75 per month
VPS Hosting — Starting at $18.99 per month
Dedicated Hosting — Starting at $79.99 per month
As you can see, it’s incredibly affordable — even for dedicated hosting.
Bluehost lets you manage access control from your cPanel dashboard. This allows you to restrict access to certain areas of your hosting account, which is ideal if you have multiple users logging in. As a small business owner, you may not want to give your blogger access to your billing account or server resources.
Looking for a VPS plan or dedicated server? You’ll have root access from cPanel as well. This will give you complete control over your server to make any custom changes, without the need for any additional software or hardware.
And dedicated plans allow you to increase storage on-demand from cPanel without any assistance from a server administrator.
All Bluehost plans come with a free SSL certificate, 24-7 customer support, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
SiteGround is a great option if you’re interested in cloud hosting. It’s one of the best and most scalable options for cloud hosting out there.
Their hosting is fully managed too—allowing you to focus less on the little things like maintenance and more on growing your business.
Its cPanel features include:
Install your CMS (like WordPress)
Backup your website content
Make changes to the server
Set up your email accounts
Manage domains
Manage your security features
Manage your databases
View and manage your resources
It’s extremely easy for webmasters to manage files too. All you have to do is upload files and add new folders to keep everything neat and organized.
This will ultimately make things easier for you whenever your site needs maintenance.
For advanced users, you’ll also be able to manage complex settings, like “Chron Jobs,” in cPanel. This allows you to run specific commands to optimize your disk space.
SiteGround offers shared hosting plans starting at just $3.99 per month. They also offer cloud web hosting, which starts at $100 per month. And for a limited time, QuickSprout readers can get one free site transfer and three months of a free site scanner by using this link.
Regardless of which option you choose, you’ll be able to manage everything with ease through the platform’s responsive interface and dashboard. Read more about their different plans and services in my complete SiteGround review or click here to visit SiteGround.
iPage offers a great rate on VPS hosting with cPanel. It’s too bad they don’t offer cPanel with their shared hosting plans (those are on my list for best cheap web hosting), but if you need the control and private resources of a VPS, then iPage is a great choice.
They don’t skimp on the features. iPage comes with a surprising amount of benefits like unlimited disk space, scalable bandwidth, unlimited domains, 99.9% uptime, and a free SSL certificate.
You also get a free domain for the first year after you sign up.
What I like about them, though, is their unlimited email addresses feature. You can create as many addresses as you want that direct to your domain. It even comes with autoresponders and email forwarding. This is great for those of you looking to add a little professionalism to your email address.
iPage VPS hosting plans start at $19.99 per month. This includes cPanel with optional root access.
You can find out more about each plan in my iPage hosting review. As I noted, their shared hosting plans do not come with cPanel. Instead, iPage uses something called vDeck Control Panel as an alternative, which is fine but definitely lacking compared to cPanel in terms of its capabilities and interface.
That said, the iPage VPS plans are cost-effective compared to other providers out there. So it won’t cost you too much for an upgrade to get cPanel included with your hosting. Learn more at sign up at iPage.
If you like to tinker with your website in order to extract maximum performance from your server, you lean hard on backups and restore points. Nothing’s worse than making changes without the reassurance that you can just rewind if they break your site.
Scala Hosting automatically backs up your site for the last seven days. Other web hosts offer this service, too, though you usually have to pay extra or buy a premium hosting plan.
Scala includes automated backups with every plan they offer. And it’s just better. You actually get seven different backups for the last week–one for each day.
It’s a cinch to have restore points, so you’re not adjusting and optimizing your site without a safety net. If anything goes awry, just go into Scala’s SPanel look for “Restore Backup” under “Files”, and then find the restore point you want to rewind back to.
SPanel is completely compatible with cPanel, so don’t worry if you are thinking about migrating to Scala. SPanel is completely free with all Scala accounts (no need to buy a cPanel subscription) and it’s running on Scala’s servers (not yours), so it will never slow your site down.
You can also create your own backups under the same “Files” section on SPanel and even request that Scala hold one of their automated backups or one of your own for 30 days, if you’re doing some long-term adjustments to your site (like implementing a custom theme).
While juggling backups is a huge plus to Scala Hosting’s SPanel, there are many more benefits to using it, including one that you may not have thought about.
Scala Hosting promises 100% email deliverability from your email accounts on their hosting plans. That’s because you get a dedicated IP for your email exclusive to you, meaning that your worries about blacklisting or getting caught in spam filters can be left in the past.
Never worry about being able to rewind from site issues again. Get great, customizable VPS at a solid price point with SPanel control by going with Scala Hosting.
How to Find the Best cPanel Web Host For You
As you can see, every cPanel web hosting provider is unique. Whether it be the price, type of hosting, or other features, some hosts will serve the needs of your website better than others.
When you’re evaluating a cPanel web hosting provider, there are a few key elements to consider.
Performance metrics like uptime and speed are a given. So rather than focusing on those, I’ve identified some other factors that you should look out for when evaluating prospective web hosts.
Free cPanel License
First and foremost, if you want to use cPanel then you need to find a provider that offers a free cPanel license. There are plenty of hosts out there that offer cPanel for an upcharge, but there’s no reason to go with them if you can get it for free elsewhere.
With the exception of the iPage shared hosting plan, every provider on our list offers cPanel for free.
One-Click App Installations
A major cPanel benefit is its user-friendly dashboard. So for those of you who plan to install third-party apps, it will be easy for you to manage everything in one place.
Look for a web hosting provider that advertises one-click app installs. In my experience, this is much easier than complex downloads and installations. Whether it be CMS integration, ecommerce functionality, or anything else, a simple app installation will make your life much easier. Once installed, cPanel usually will allow for one-click or auto-updates as well.
Site Builder Tools
This shouldn’t be a deal-breaker, but it’s a nice feature for those of you who are building a new website from scratch. If your web hosting provider has an adequate site builder, you can essentially benefit from a one-stop-shop for your website needs.
Normally, I would not recommend bundling a hosting provider and website builder. I think it’s best to stick with providers that specialize in web hosting and platforms that specialize in website builders. Usually, there isn’t any overlap between the two.
That said, if you’re just building a simple website like a small personal site or blog, then you can get away with this for sure.
Freebies
Price always needs to be taken into consideration when you’re looking at different web hosting options. Some hosts appear cheap, but then upcharge you for basic features. So it’s in your best interest to identify the features you need and then look for a host that offers them for free.
SSL certificate
Site migrations
Domain name
Advertising credits
Developer tools
WordPress installation
These are some common freebies offered by hosting providers. I’d also keep on eye on their money-back guarantees. 30 days seems to be the industry standard. But I’ve seen 45 days, 60 days, and even as high as 90 days.
Resources
It doesn’t make sense to choose a cPanel hosting plan that doesn’t accommodate the needs of your website. While cPanel is a great tool, it doesn’t make up for poor performance.
RAM
Storage
Bandwidth
CPUs
You need to make sure that these types of resources accommodate your website traffic. For new or growing sites, it’s in your best interest to find a cPanel hosting provider that gives you the opportunity to scale.
Alternatives to cPanel Hosting
Not every web hosting provider offers cPanel, so you’re not forced to use it.
In most cases, people think cPanel is easier to use. Ultimately, it comes down to personal preference.
For example, earlier we talked about iPage’s hosting plans. For less than $2 per month, you can sign up for shared hosting, a free website builder, and plenty of other freebies. This comes with vDeck Control Panel. So if you prioritize price over convenience, you might decide to go with this option instead.
Alternatively, DreamHost is a popular web host on the market today. But instead of using cPanel, they have their own custom control panel. I know plenty of webmasters who love it.
Hostinger is another great hosting provider that does not offer cPanel. Even so, I would still strongly recommend them.
So don’t let cPanel availability be the determining factor in your web hosting decision. While I personally think it’s a great feature, you can still explore alternative solutions.
What Is cPanel and Why Do You Need It?
cPanel is one of the most popular control panels in the web hosting industry. The interface and dashboard make it easy for webmasters to manage things like domain names, backups, email addresses, files, account preferences, and more.
In my experience, once you’ve used cPanel, there is really no looking back. I’ve experimented with other dashboards, but cPanel is the best for beginners and experts alike.
One of the reasons why cPanel is so popular is because it’s a web-based control panel, meaning you can manage your website from anywhere with an Internet connection, as opposed to needing software on a specific piece of hardware.
Anyone with a website can benefit from cPanel hosting. Whether you’re looking for a shared hosting plan, virtual private server (VPS hosting), or dedicated server, a user-friendly hosting interface will make your life much easier.
Top cPanel Web Hosts in Summary
It’s easy to get tunnel vision when looking for the ideal cPanel web host. However, rather than focus only on the cPanel capabilities, it’s better to consider the hosting package as a whole.
For example, you want a host that provides sufficient resources for your website’s needs. You also want multiple add-ons like a free domain name, SSL certificate, and WordPress Installation.
Though you can do well with any web hosting providers featured on our list, we highly recommend A2 Hosting or HostGator as your top choice. These platforms tick all the boxes while offering excellent cPanel functionality at no extra charge.
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