In this piece Fiona Z shares five recently discovered valuable tools artists can use to improve their online experience, streamline social media usage, edit video, sign online paperwork and more!
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Guest post from Fiona Z
Lately, I’ve been diving into summits, podcasts and I’ve also signed up to go to CD Baby’s DIY Musician Conference (let me know if you’ll be there). I am trying to take the rest of the month for research, education and learning what is new out there, what works and what doesn’t. I’m not going to lie, it’s overload, but it’s also exciting to get a spark back in how I can help my clients.
On that note, I thought I’d share some recent tools I’ve found that I know you could use today. Here are five cool tools I’m using now, and I encourage you to check them out!
1. Connecting Twitter + Instagram. If you use Instagram and Twitter on the regular, you need to grab this. One of the setbacks with these two platforms is that they don’t talk to each other. If you post on Instagram and then share on Twitter, Twitter doesn’t show the photo, rather a link which looks pretty awful. Ideally, you want to share the image, not a link to the image. This nifty applet fixes that and will post an Instagram photo to your Twitter feed as a native photo. Grab it here. Sign up on their website to get updates on all the neat applets rolling out on a regular basis.
2. EditFrame. The developer of this site personally reached out to me and asked me checked it out. As someone who despises opening up iMovie for simple video edit, this site is a great tool if you make a lot of videos – specifically image/audio videos. It’s very basic now but the developer is keen on making it bigger and useful tool for musicians as a video editor, and I’m confident more features will start to roll out. Check it out here and if you do use it, definitely let me know your thoughts on it!
3. Metablocks Widgets for Music. I’ve been looking for access to a widget like this for months, and I’m so excited to have finally found one that I can use. You’ve probably seen lots of musicians share links to their new album or single, and it’s a landing page to link everywhere it is distributed – iTunes, Spotify, Bandcamp, Google, and more. For the longest time, the one widget that was out there (that I knew of) was stuck in the invite-only mode. So, I jumped on the opportunity to request access to Metablocks version. I recommend using this for your next release so that you have one link to share where your music is – much better than having to manage several links. Access it here.
4. Website Grader. This site is a completely free online tool that grades your site against key metrics like performance, mobile readiness, SEO, and security. It’s a great way to do a quick checkup on how your website is doing, and even tells you what you can do to improve your grade. Grade your site in seconds.
5. Online Signature. I’m still at a loss why anybody still does not use online signing tools to lock down contracts and agreements. Stop the goose-chase and get your contracts online! It is a lot easier to get signatures where you need them if someone can access it online. I personally use SignNow.com, but I found Online Signature and suggest that because if you do less than 5 contracts a month, it stays free. Check it out here.
That’s it (for now)! Please – let me know if you use these tools and if you love them as much as I do (or not)! And a few months from now, I’ll definitely share any new tools I find that are useful and make your day easier.