Welcome to Fresh van Root newsletter #65.
It smells a bit like spring here in Vienna already, and this is the perfect time to plan the new year. In the next edition of this newsletter, we will share how we want to develop the format and content of this newsletter further. We are excited to share this with you soon. Stay tuned and stay fresh. Rolf.
For all new subscribers, here’s what this newsletter is about: I am exploring content and apps at the intersection of marketing, productivity, content creation, and social media. My bi-weekly newsletter is a curated and concise summary of that exploration.
🧠 Hand-Picked Content
State Of Content Marketing (Report)
Businesses create more content than ever before. New types of format arise, tools need to be learned. It’s an exciting field to work in, and constantly changing trends keep you on your toes. The Content Matter Report by Parse.ly (A WordPress company) shares many interesting data points about the state of content marketing today. Twitter Thread | More
Do Not Brainstorm (Blog post, 10min)
Brainstorming sessions do not work and will only surface mediocre ideas – in most cases. If an environment exists that allows creative work, brainstorming sessions are unnecessary. And if not, you should create an environment where it is possible. This blog post gives a history lesson on the term “brainstorming” and explains why most brainstorming sessions are useless and how they can be structured to work. More
Social vs Email Marketing (Blog post, 5min)
Looking for reasons to take building an email list seriously? Email is not dead, it’s alive and well. This post shares some stats and arguments on why turning your followers into email subscribers is a good idea. More
A Short Analysis Of The Wordle Growth (Blog, 3min)
What elements did Wordle have to grow so big in such a short time? Six reasons are shown in this post. By the way, what happened to Clubhouse? More
Chat Etiquette (Blog post, 1min)
A reminder that starting a chat with “Hi, are you there?” is not a good idea. More
🛠️ Tools & Apps & Services
Repurpose Your Audio & Video Content
Turn your long-form content into biteable snacks for social media. Once you have familiarized yourself with Milk Video, this takes a few minutes. You can upload your existing video and audio files, edit the automatically created transcript, style the video or audiogram, and download and share the result. I have taken it for a spin. Watch it on Twitter. Screenshot | More
Internal Communication: Wiki-like Knowledge Sharing
Slab is a tool for organizing your companies shared wisdom. It is meant to be the central place for storing all the information about how your company runs, e.g., your company handbook, how onboarding works, or how you organize your social media content. All of that can be put in Slab and organized. Its wiki-like features make it possible to keep it up to date easily. We are evaluating it at Fresh van Root as the tool to document all our marketing processes and checklists. Screenshot | More
Funnel Infographics For Your Next Slide-deck
The built-in graphics/templates for funnels in Google Slides and Powerpoint are outdated and don’t cover the “funnel” use-case very well. This free library can easily be customized to match your brand/style for your next presentation. More
Personal Productivity: Automagically Click Cookie Popup
Sadly, today’s web experience requires clicking away more popups than we want, and the cookie acceptance dialog is one of them. This browser extension does this job for you. I have had it running for some time, and it works on many websites. Add your preferred options once, and let the plugin do its magic. More
Audio Post-Production On Autopilot
Using Auphonic, you can automagically remove background noise, normalize the volume, and more. More
Avoid Getting Personalized Search Results
Personalized search results are somewhat annoying, especially when you work in marketing. According to this little trick shared in this tweet, adding &pws=0 to the end of the URL after you google something removes the personalisation. It doesn’t seem to do the trick on my end. Maybe it works for you? More
📣 Fresh van Root
New Agency Site
We have updated our agency website content to reflect our current focus better. And a more extensive relaunch is underway. Check it out. More
🏞️ Your Next Wallpaper?
🔗 One More Link
Famous Logos In Medieval Style
A guy recreated famous logos in the grotesque art style typical for the Middle Ages. More