The headlines for the last 5-ish years have constantly been around ‘learning needs to think like marketing’ and ‘L&D professionals need to be more like marketers. This is admirable and I’m sure the intent is to help our industry but often it hinders us.
Making what I refer to as ‘captain obvious’ statements which tell you to do something but provide no clarity on how to do that very thing is useless.
In the spirit of paying it forward and helping my fellow humans, I’m going to share a number of great tools that have helped me build and market my work to the rest of planet earth.
(quick note, this is not a paid post or an advertisement, I receive no money from recommending these tools).
Now you may not need all of these tools.
Yet, I hope that many can help you in your own work.
You’ll find a bit of everything from website design, social media marketing to simple but beautiful video editing.
If you’ve ever tried your hand at website design before, then you’ve probably heard of WordPress.
Lots of ordinary people and big brands use WordPress as their platform of choice to create their website and blogs.
It powers over 30% of websites today.
You can choose either self-publishing wordpress.org where you’ll need to pay for your own hosting or you can use wordpress.com as I do for this site.
It’s a modified and somewhat simpler to navigate version of wordpress.org.
Either way, getting a website, blog or both off the ground is pretty quick and simple with WordPress.
Recent data shows that 60 million websites are powered by WordPress and that 30% of today’s online bloggers use WP as their publishing platform – so that’s gotta mean something, right?
But not so much since the paywall went up and the fact that every article is about 10x your life, morning routines or telling you the latest 99 reasons to quit your job.
However, don’t let my cynicism put you off as it can be a great engagement tool.
Especially, for those of you who are writing content or wanting to showcase a new technology service/product without paying to write somewhere.
I always enjoy sharing my work here and it has led to a great engagement at times too.
Unlike some of the social tools I’ve mentioned so far, I am a power user of LinkedIn.
I am a power user because this is where my audience hangs out.
It’s important to understand where a large base of your audience goes for their information and mine just happens to be this platform.
For any of the social tools I’ve covered so far, these are the ones that work for me so they may not be right for you.
You will need to do some research to find the best channels for your work.
What I can say is that LinkedIn is a growing platform and one which I feel is underused by many.
It has nearly 800 million active users.
If you have created a side project which offers a service or product then you should be marketing on this platform. Also great for building our your professional and personal branding.
For Windows users the ever simple movie maker tool was the holy grail for editing videos, but what do we do now that it is gone?
Shotcut is a free video editing tool that I’ve used a few times and is starting to get popular.
It has far more features than movie maker and has a steeper learning curve for sure.
It’s the best of the free video editing tools that I’ve used which will actually get the job done to a high standard without investing in the expensive premium suites from Adobe.
Another bonus app for iOS users and one you may not be aware of.
This app is great for shooting videos for social channels.
With lots of cool features including filters, adding text and music, plus you can add your own subtitles too.
The subtitle feature is a really important one as many apps charge a premium for a feature like this and although the clips app can be temperamental from time to time, it’s a great feature.
Studies have shown that 80% of video shared on social channels today now has subtitles included as standard.
So it’s will be crucial to have this option at your disposal.
You can see some examples of how this app works from my own work here and here.
For the longest time, I’ve been looking for a place to get my hands on a library of beautiful icons to use in my work and break free from the limits of PowerPoint.
I finally found the holy grail in the Nounproject which offers over 2 million free royalty-free icons.
You just need to give credit to the artist in your work for each icon you use or buy individual icons if you prefer not to have to give credit.
A free photo app that provides lots of options to create high-quality photos and videos with all the high standards you come to expect from the team at Adobe.
With consistent updates for both video and phot editing, this is a good tool for your wider toolkit.
Need a simple video conferencing tool to connect with people around the world?
Look no further, Zoom is here to save the day.
With both free and paid plans, Zoom offers a host of great features for users including the ability to record both audio and video to convert conversations into podcasts, webinars and online classes.
The free plan gives you unlimited access for one-to-one calls and a limit of 40 minutes on group calls (more than 2 people).
Unlike Skype, your participants don’t need to install anything. Just send them a link and they can join via their web browser, voila!
Looking for somewhere to store videos and share in your work or perhaps you want to turn your hand to vlogging?
YouTube provides a platform for you to share your own videos to the public or keep them private for only members of your classes and newsletter to view.
Simple to sue and used by billions of humans make this an essential tool in the content creator bag of tricks.
Yes, another social media platform but perhaps one you overlook.
Pinterest allows you to pin images onto lots of boards and generate ideas, so at first glance, it may not seem right to market your side project (depending on your topic).
But, did you know lots of bloggers (including me) have been having success with thousands of visits from this platform by creating bespoke pins?
I wasn’t sold at first either but the results have been encouraging.
Labelled on the site as the only link you’ll ever need and it’s probably true.
You may have seen these cropping up on Instagram bio’s recently to get around the fact you can’t add much in.
The beauty of Linktree is that it allows you to direct your audience to one page full of all your content and contact links in one place (check out mine here).
Capturing screen recording has never been so easy!
A free account with Loom allows you to record videos of up to 5 minutes for free and stores these in your own personal locker.
If you stick with the free plan, you’ll get 25 slots to use in your locker, but can upgrade for more if you need it.
With a simple user friendly interface and user experience, this is one tool that could become an essential as part of your content creation workflow.
Enjoy 🙌
That’s about all the tools I can think of at this moment.
As I’ve said, most of these have been invaluable to me and the best part is that they are free to use.
I’ll leave you to go forth, embrace the enormity of the possibility of what you can create with the support of these tools and have fun building your side project.
Before you go… 👋
If you like my writing and think “Hey, I’d like to hear more of what this guy has to say” then you’re in luck.
Well not unless you actually tell people about your product and they know why it’s amazing. This is something I’ve seen far too many times, especially in my world of L&D, where teams spend months working hard on new content, throw it out into the world and then no one looks at it…..ever.