Social Media

A growing and updated list of tools, apps, and other resources.

Pre-Startup

NameCheckr: Check domain and username availability across several networks.

Domains, Hosting and Email

Pagely: Managed WordPress hosting in the Amazon cloud.

Synthesis: Hosting optimized for The Genesis Framework by Rainmaker Digital.

WPengine: Blazing fast managed WordPress hosting.

Pantheon: Developer hosting for WordPress and Drupal.

Flywheel: Managed WordPress hosting with phone support.

WhatsMyDNS.net: Global DNS propagation checker.

DNS History: DNS historical record archive.

nexcess.net: A hosting company built for specific CMS including Expression.

GitHub Pages: Host websites from your GitHub repository.

Firebase Hosting: Host static websites with Alphabet powered hosting.

Website Security

Sucuri: Scan your website for malware, it’s free.

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)

Max CDN: The king of CDN’s.

Website Speed

dotcom-tools: dotcom-tools provides website speed tests from 6 continents and many countries.

img2go.com: a simple app that compresses images without losing any quality of the image.

WordPress

WordPress: The most popular open source CMS.

Is It WordPress: Quickly find out if a site is using WordPress.

Studiopress: Awesome WordPress themes.

Gravatar: Set up your Gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatar).

NinjaForms: Awesome forms for WordPress sites.

Fantasktic: WordPress migration service (Used by WebSynthesis).

Codeable: WordPress developers.

Learning Management Systems

Udemy: The learning management system with the largest audience.

Thinkific: Create and sell online courses under your own brand.

Content

The Punctuation Guide: A simple clear guide to punctuation.

BuzzSummo: Analyze what content works best for any topic.

Piktochart: An easy to use infographic creator.

SlideShare: View and upload presentations.

Pablo: Create beautiful images that fit all social networks perfectly.

SummoMe: Tools to grow your website’s traffic.

Copyblogger Certified Writers: List of professional writers certified by Copyblogger.

Rainmaker Platform: A content marketing platform starting at $125/month.

Contently: Professional content writing a content marketing agency for brands that don’t want to do it in-house.

Hemingway Editor: Get suggestions that make your writing clear and simple.

VideoScribe: Create your own whiteboard videos.

ScreenFlow: A highly recommended screencasting and video editing software for Mac.

Camtasia: A highly recommended screen recording and editing software for Windows (also available for Mac buy ScreenFlow is recommended for Mac users).

WriterAccess: Hire writers and bloggers.

Hubstaff Content Marketing: Hubstaff’s content marketing service page.

Content Marketing

Triberr: Join a tribe of content writers of the same topic and share each other’s content.

Viral Content Bee: You share other people’s content and they share yours.

Medium: Republish your original content to an audience of 100 million.

Podcasting

Anchor: The easy way to podcast.

MatchMaker: Find podcast hosts or guests.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Marketing (SEM)

Google: Google’s explanation of how search works.

Google: Google’s Scraper Report Tool.

Google Keyword Planner: Use Adwords data (estimates) to plan your keywords.

Google: Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.

Google: Google’s mobile-friendly test tool.

Google: Think with Google’s mobile speed test.

Google AdWords Help Center: Get all your AdWords questions answered.

Google Legal Support: Get help reporting illegal content on Google.

Opteo: Google Ads management.

KWFinder: Find long tail key phrases with low competition.

Rank Tracking

AccuRanker: Rank tracking.

Website Design

Google: The complete list of Google fonts.

GTmetrix: Get site speed recommendations.

ColorZilla: Great Chrome extension and gradient generator.

Dashicons: The official font for the WordPress admin/dashboard.

Ionicons: The font for the Ionic Framework.

Iconfinder: A fantastic selection of premium icons and some free ones too.

Fontello: Build your own icon fonts.

Pixels: Free stock photos.

Code Validators

HTML Validator: An HTML validator by w3.

CSS Validator: A CSS validator.

PHP Checker: A PHP code checker.

Java Lint: A Java linter.

Photos

Stockvault: A place to quickly get free downloadable images.

StockSnap: An even better place to get free photos.

Unsplash: A great place for free great photos.

Gratisography: Weird high-quality free photos you might not ever use.

Negative Space: Some really nice free photos.

Cut My Pic: Quickly make any photo rounded.

Pixabay: My favorite place for skylines and a lot of other great pictures.

E-commerce

Stripe: Start accepting credit cards in 15 minutes.

payhip: Sell digital downloads, courses, coaching and more.

Recurly: Our favorite recurring payment solution.

Rebilly: A real cool freemium subscription payment startup.

Shopify: Easily make an online store.

Eventbrite: Simple event registration and ticket selling.

Square Appointments: Built for businesses that sell time.

SendOwl: Sell digital products with ease.

E-Signatures

HelloSign: E-signatures simplified.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems

Insightly: Insightly is a robust CRM worthy of consideration. Insightly is also an incredible value with a starting package price of $0/user/month for up to two users. The starting package provides a very good set of features and allows companies to really use the CRM before upgrading (if they so choose). Pricing goes up to $129/user/month for the the unlimited plan with a full set of features.

Pipeline Deals: Pipeline Deals is another great CRM. They offer a free trial, after which, there are two packages – $24/user/month and $48/user/month. If you’re the type who appreciates phone support, you’ll want to consider Pipeline Deals, it’s the only CRM on our favorites list that offers phone support.

Base: Base is yet another great CRM. They also offer a free trial and then you’ll choose a package ranging from $25/user/month up to $125/user/month.

Hubspot: Hubspot is another of our favorites. They offer a limited plan at $0/month with unlimited users but the full set of features costs $2,400/month.

Salesforce: Probably the most popular CRM.

Microsoft Dynamics: The CRM built by Microsoft. Starts at $50 per user per month. There is a “gamification” add-on which helps inbound marketing teams stay motivated and improve productivity.

Zoho: Probably the most popular free CRM.

Infusionsoft: A great CRM for inbound marketing and marketing automation.

Social Media Management & Sharing

Mention: This app alerts you when your brand is being talked about online.

Respond: A brand monitoring tool from Buffer (coming soon).

SharedCount: Check or track url shares or likes.

Hootsuite: Social media management.

RecurPost: Freemium social media management with post recycling.

Buffer: Social media management.

MySocialSuite: Social media management.

Everypost: Social media management.

OnlyWire: Yet another social media management app.

dlvr.it: Connect your WordPress feed to social accounts for automatic sharing.

Warfare Plugins: WordPress plugins that increase social shares.

ManageFlitter: Work faster and smarter with Twitter.

Twitter Card Guide: Twitter’s guide to getting started with cards.

Social Media Sites

Facebook: The most popular. A must for every business. Also great for remarketing purposes.

Twitter: Another must.

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is important to every business. Can be used to post employment opportunities and to do a basic background check on applicants.

Pinterest: If your target audience is women this is a good place to be.

Google+: Strongly recommended.

Instagram: Brand profiles projected to be available sometime third quarter 2016.

Foursquare: Can add value, but mostly for food, entertainment, or retail businesses.

GitHub: A place for developers.

YouTube: Your videos should be on here.

Alignable: A local networking app.

Meetup: Get together with others in your community that share your interest.

PR

BitesizePR: Get access to journalists who want to quote and cite you.

H/A/R/O: Help A Reporter Out by getting quoted and cited.

PR Underground: Low-cost press release distribution.

Email Marketing

MailChimp: Email marketing management.

Marketing Automation

Hatchbuck: Simple marketing automation for small business.

Leadsius: Marketing automation for SMB’s.

Jumplead: Nurture website traffic to leads and customers.

Online Courses

The Perfect Promo Video: Udemy’s guide to creating the perfect promo video.

Reviews and Review Management

Google: Google’s instructions on how to give a Google Maps review (from a desktop).

Google: Google’s policy on reviews.

Zurvia: Freemium review management software.

Dashboards

Dasheroo: An affordable dashboard builder.

Databox: Dashboards with 60+ integrations.

Segment: Dashboards with hundreds of integrations.

Klipfolio: Dashboards with hundreds of integrations.

Supermetrics: Application that allows data to connect to Google Studios.

Funnel: Application that connects 300+ sources to Google Studios.

Data Studio: Google’s dashboard application.

Tableau: Popular dashboard builder acquired by salesforce.

Power BI: Microsoft’s data visualization app.

Data Connectors

Supermetrics: Connect the data of your apps.

Adverity: Another data connector.

alightanalytics: Yet another data connector.

Datorama: A data connector acquired by Salesforce.

Rapid Application Development

Bubble.io: Build apps visually and quickly without any code.

Google App Maker: Google’s low code app builder.

NoCode.tech: The RAD that was used to build internal.io’s onboarding app.

Client Onboarding

Internal.io: Internals tool to help teams manage onboarding clients simply.

Properly branding your social media profiles for both mobile and desktop doesn’t have to be a pain. Today we uploaded new photos to all our social profiles. It only took five minutes. How so fast? We had previously figured out the fewest number of images it would take to rebrand the most popular social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkeIn, Pinterest, and Google+) for both desktop and mobile.

Free Image Editor: All your social media images can be made quickly easily using the free image editor at PicMonkey.

#1 The Universal Favorite Icon (a.k.a. the Favicon) – Size 512 px by 512 px

Every brand needs an icon/profile image. Each of your social media accounts will ask for a different sized icon/profile image, but a single 512 px by 512 px icon will cover all your needs (including your WordPress favicon).

Note: The corner will be cut off in Google+ and Pinterest to make it a circle Favicon.

#2 The Twitter & Linkedin Cover Photo – Size 1500 px by 500 px

Use this for your cover photo on Twitter and LinkedIn. I like having margins on the left and right of 20% when including text in this image.

#3 The Google+ Cover Photo – Size 960 px by 540 px

Use this for your cover photo on Google+. If you are including text on this photo be sure to include a 25% margin on the left and right sides as this area is cut off on mobile.

*GOOGLE PLUS IS IN THE PROCESS OF SWITCHING TO “THE NEW GOOGLE+” WHICH USES A COVER PHOTO SIZE OF 920 PX X 520 PX. MANY USERS ARE STILL USING THE OLD GOOGLE PLUS. FOR THIS REASON, I RECOMMEND USING THE OLD SIZE (960 X 540) UNTIL EVERYONE HAS SWITCHED TO THE NEW GOOGLE PLUS.

#4 The Facebook Cover Photo – Size 851 px by 315 px

This cover photo has a couple additional criteria in order to be optimized for Facebook on both desktop and mobile devices. First, any text on this cover photo should be in the top 50% of the cover photo as Facebook will place the profile pic and business info over portions of the bottom half. Second, keep in mind that about 20% of both sides of the image will be cut off on mobile devises. This means that if there is text on the image it should be in the center 50% in order to be mobile friendly (as seen above).

#5 The YouTube Cover Photo – Size 2048 px by 1152 px

The YouTube cover photo looks a bit different on TV’s, desktops and mobile devices:

TV’s: On TV’s you will see the full cover photo.
Desktop/Laptop: You will have roughly the bottom 40% and top 40% cut off.
Mobile Devices: On mobile devices you will have as much as 40% cut off from all four sides.

The App.net Cover Photo – Size 960 px by 225 px

The App.net cover photo is a tricky one. If you’re using a generic background you can use the same cover photo you used for Twitter and LinkedIn (1500px by 500px), but if you have text on your photo it’s going to be tricky. The reason it’s tricky? When you use App.net on a mobile device a roughly 40% margin is cut off on all four sides. For example, the cover photo above gets cut down to our logo only.

#6 The Alignable Cover Photo – Size 1115 px by 304 px

#7 The Single Photo That Works For Posting on Your Website, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ – Size X pixels wide by .5225X pixels high

Want to create images that look good on both desktop and mobile across all your social profiles and website? Here’s how to get the width and height of the best possible image size.

Get the width by finding the maximum width of the content area on your web page. In our case, the maximum width is 880px.
To find the ideal height take the width and multiply by .5225. In our case, 880 x .5225 = 460
Put the two numbers together and you’ve got the best possible image size for posting to your website, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. In our case, 880 x 460.

#8 The Twitter Card Image For “Summary Card With Large Image” – Size 506 px by 254 px

Your brand needs a Twitter Card. More specifically, your brand needs a specific type of Twitter Card. In my humble opinion, the “Summary Card With Large Image” is the card that benefits most brands best.

But what size to use?

505 pixels wide by 254 pixels high.

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