Resources

Many people ask me about what tools I use. Here are some of my favourite resources. Some are free, some are paid, some are affiliate links – but all of them I love and use everyday.

I keep this list updated – and I’d love to hear feedback or your experiences with them. If you try them out and love them, do let me know too!


Getting Online

Domain Registration

Namemesh – generate domain name combinations but register them with Namecheap.

Knowem – check for availability of the same username across all the main social networks

Namecheap – I register 100% of my domains with Namecheap because they are reliable, and by far the most trust worthy domain registrar. DO NOT EVER USE GODADDY More on how to get a free domain as a university student here. A basic .com domain costs about US$10/year. A .sg domain costs about S$45/year.

101domains – find short domain names like deb.bi. Cost varies depending on which country the third level domain belongs to. I pay about US$160/year for the .bi burundi domain.

Domain Hosting

Siteground – I used Bluehost for many years, and hated the support so I switched to Siteground in 2018 and have never regretted it! Support is fast, friendly and amazing! Unlike Bluehost where you could be waiting 30 min for an operator, there is never any wait time for support! The basic plan starts at $3.95/month (~$48/year)

Website Builder

Strikingly – if you want a beautiful, mobile optimised, one-pager website or online resume in 2 hours. The Limited plan is ok but the Pro plan gives you HTML embeds, which means you can put any third party plugin in the site. Best value is the Pro Two-year plan, $336/2y, which comes with a free domain worth $24.95 / year.

Weebly – if you plan to have 5-8 pages and want it built fast. My Pencils of Promise fundraising website was built on weebly (free!). It’s also great for kids! Check out Zac’s Lab (age 10) and Ryan’s Reality (age 7).

Carrd – if you want just a landing page / calling card website. I’m a huge AJ fan – having learn how to code from his Pixelarity and htmlUP5 templates. He’s also super responsive on Twitter, and Carrd is so easy to use. By far the most reasonably priced option to get a website up and running. 


Digital Research & Competitive Intelligence

Buzzsumo – Expensive but oh so worth it. Find most shared content and key influencers.

SEMRush – Absolutely MUST HAVE tool that gets better and better all the time. Fantastic for competitive intelligence, keyword research, social media monitoring, content creation and more.

Brand Monitoring

Brand24 – Excellent tool to monitor your brand mentions. An essential daily habit for me.


Writing Tools

Hemingway App – Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear. It’s like a spellchecker, but for style.

Grammarly – Check for spelling and grammar mistakes


Social Media

Scheduling

Agorapulse – Great for scheduling evergreen posts and social inbox management. First time I’ve ever achieved social inbox zero was with Agorapulse. (Read my more detailed review of Agorapulse here)

Buffer – Social scheduling and analytics.

Instagram

Preview – Best Instagram Planning App! Follow @preview.app on Instagram / Insta stories for great tips and inspiration!

Later – For scheduling and auto-posting

Iconosquare – Best Instagram Analytics

Twitter

Audiense – By far my favourite Twitter tool for audience management / list building. Absolutely essential. Can’t live without it.

Bit.ly for Link Shortening


Design

Graphic Design

Canva – Easiest graphic design tool in the market. Lots of useful tutorials and templates. There’s a free plan, but I highly recommend upgrading to the paid Canva for Work plan. The magic resize feature is a must-have for social media graphics.

Brand and Logo Design

Emblem – Love this tool for a fast and easy way to make a logo / brand book / style guide and social media assets!

Videography

Lumen5 – Turn your blogposts into explainer / slideshow videos with AI

Magisto – Make music videos with AI

Assets

Envato Themeforest – for wordpress themes. Recommend Uncode theme

Creative Market – Enjoy 6 free downloads every Monday (fonts, graphics, templates). Great for Instagram and presentation / brochure templates

Free Stock Photography

Unsplash

Pexels

Pixabay


Chatbot Development

Chatfuel – Easiest way to deploy a Facebook bot

Dialogflow – for NLP

Integromat – Easiest way to integrate with any third party API

Janis – Best way to integrate with Dialogflow, manage your chatbot from Slack with sentiment analysis and human takeover

Dashbot.io – Best Chatbot analytics


Email and Cloud 

G-Suite – G Suite Basic

MixMax – Best Gmail extension to enhance your emails with polls, gifs, etc. Read more about how you can turbo-charge your email productivity with MixMax here

Notion – I migrated from Evernote to Notion and have not looked back since. The best tool for storing documents and information, creating Wikis, managing to do lists and projects , etc.

Trello – Great project management tool. Check out my Trello Board of free online marketing resources!

Toggl – useful for tracking personal or virtual assistant’s time worked

Wave Accounting – for invoices and expenses tracking

Automation

Make (Previously Integromat) – Powerful automation tool that can connect any third party app with an API. Not for the faint hearted though.

Zapier –  Powerful automation tool! Sign-up with this link and we both get free zaps! More expensive than Integromat, but easier to use.

Scheduling

Acuity Scheduling

Freelancers

Fiverr

Password Manager

1Password

Discover Deals

Product Hunt

AppSumo


Books

Try Audible for FREE! – I listen to all my books on Audible, when I do my daily walks at the Botanic Gardens! PRO TIP: Listen at 2X speed to get through twice as much content in one day!

Audible Free Trial benefits: • Get two free audiobooks to start — after 30 days, get 1 book each month for $14.95/month • Get 30% off the price of additional audiobook purchases • You’ll need to enter your credit card details but you can cancel anytime, before the trial ends and you won’t be charged. Your books are yours to keep, even if you cancel.
Kindle Unlimited – Unlimited Reading. Unlimited Listening. Any Device. Enjoy the freedom to explore over 1 million titles and thousands of audiobooks on any device for just $9.99 a month.

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