Hey, welcome to my newsletter for curious marketers, content creators, and entrepreneurs. Content and tool curation as a service, that’s the mission of this newsletter. Expect stuff about social media, design, marketing, and tech. If you like these newsletters, forward this to a friend! If you received this from a friend, subscribe. Stay fresh! Rolf
⚒️Tools & Apps & Services
Free text to speech converter
Verby is a site that transforms your written (English) text into speech. You can choose male/female voice and download an mp3 version. Useful if you want to create part of your written content (news-content?) into audio.
There is also a more advanced version of the editor called SSML. This editor allows to add special tags for pauses, speed, and choose from more different voices.
A quick example:
Verby reminds me of Speechkit, a similar service I took to the test a while ago.
Instagram – “Link in Bio” tool
Yes, it is annoying that you can’t add links to your Instagram post descriptions. Click the link in bio is maybe the most written post text on Instagram.
Curalate provides a feature that allows you to create a landing page that is an exact representation of your Instagram feed. Users land on that page via the link in your Insta bio and then can click the image (of the product or story) they are interested in.
I discovered this via the Instagram accounts of NYTimes. Here is how it works:
- Open the NYTimes Instagram account
- Click their link in the bio and you will land on the landing page created using Curalate.
- Users click the post image and are redirected to the full NYTimes story
This, of course, is not primarily for media companies, but a great tool for Instagram accounts that want to bridge the gap to an online shop. The website does not say anything about the pricing, but you can sign up for a demo.
Phone Mockups
MockUPhone is a site that allows easy creation of mobile device mockups. You can choose from a broad list of supported devices and upload your website or app screenshot. If you device is not supported, you can ask for it to be added. As of writing, iPhone 11 is not on the site.
Create a flow chart or diagram with this web app
Draw.io is a powerful web app for creating flowcharts or diagrams in your browser. If you are not happy with the features your office editing software provides (the draw component in Google Docs is very limited) in this area, bookmark Draw.io. Another use case is that you quickly want to work on a flow chart or diagram together in a meeting and open this web app on the big screen. The final drawing can be saved in a drawio file or exported as image or PDF for later use.
Draw.io comes with many templates to get you started.
Email marketing software
I am a very happy Mailchimp user, but in recent years several new email marketing apps, tools and platforms showed up in my feeds.
ConvertKit is one of these email marketing startups that aims to help content creators to monetize their email list. I hope to have some time to try it out in the coming months, or that a client project is fitting for the use case.
New WordPress default theme 2020
A new default WordPress theme is coming. Why is that a big deal? WordPress powers ~30% of the web and the new default theme comes with all new WordPress installations as soon as the next WordPress release is out. It is also a theme meant to showcase the power and flexibility of WordPress without using and 3rd party plugins.
Kinsta already took a detailed look at the 2020 theme and its features.
Webdesign – Content Agency Websites
This Twitter thread shares links to different content agency websites.
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