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Newsletter #71

TikTok Brings Customers | OKRs | A New Face Search Engine | Markdown Basics | New Website | Republica Berlin | Intercom Alternative | Leadership Book

Welcome to Fresh van Root newsletter #71.
Putting this newsletter together is the very last thing before I head to the airport for a flight to Berlin. 5 days of vacation followed by 5 days of conference visit. It’s been a busy time here, so this break is very needed. In the Fresh van Root section, you can see what we have been up to. And my favorite read in this issue is an article on TikTok. If you are into OKRs, check the tool recommendation on the topic. Stay fresh, Rolf

For all new subscribers, here’s what this newsletter is about: We are exploring content and apps at the intersection of marketing, productivity, content creation, and social media – for curious minds. This bi-weekly newsletter is a summary of that exploration.

🧠 Hand-Picked Content

How A Sandwich Deli Uses TikTok To Get New Customers (Interview, 10min)

A restaurant has its own “TikTok manager” and films 2 days each week. After using paid ads on Facebook and Instagram for some time to get new customers, the team decided to try TikTok – and they are pretty successful doing it. More

Face Search Engine PimEyes (Article, 10min)

NYTimes took face search engine PimEyes for a test drive, and the results were surprisingly accurate. PimEyes specifically does not rely on scraping data from social media sites; instead, it scans the whole web for images. The search results point you to the websites that published pictures of you. It’s a Google image search for faces only. Screenshot | More

Book Recommendation: Managing Employees And Teams

When I pick up a book on leadership, I often think, “this book could have been a blog post.” Not with this one. Packed with practical advice on building, managing, and developing a team from start to finish. More

Webdesign: Optimal Line Length (Blog 5min)

This short informal blog post shows examples of how to pick the best line length for body text on your website (50–75 characters). More

🛠️ Tools & Apps & Services

Reaching Your Marketing Goals

OKRs are today’s standard method for setting team goals collaboratively. The concept is easy to understand and implement. Koan is an app to manage your OKRs. It’s straightforward to get started with it, and it has a presentation mode to look at the progress you make. Screenshot | More

New to OKRs? Here is a useful guide that explains it all. More

Find The Fitting English Phrase

Ludwig is mainly for non-native speakers who write in English. It helps to check if a phrase you typed gets used by publications on the web and thus allows you to understand if you are using a saying in the proper context and helps to up-level your English writing skills. Screenshot | More

Markdown Basics To Know

Tools like Slack, Trello, Asana, Notion and thousands of others support Markdown. It’s a syntax that allows you to format text by typing specific characters. i.e., **this text is bold in a markdown editor**. Why is it cool to know this syntax? Because you do not have to learn special shortcuts in each text editor you use to make text bold. Here is a helpful cheat sheet that explains the basics. More

A Chat Widget Service

The chat widgets that showed up on websites a few years ago never disappeared. One of the leading companies in that space was (and is) Intercom. Papercups is an Intercom (and Zendesk) alternative. To set it up, you might need the help of a developer. More

Text Editor For Pros

The key features of Sublime Text that you will love are that you can organize your notes in tabs and never manually have to save a text file. It has hundreds of other cool features. On the outside, it looks like a text editor that is made for developers only, but it will feel like a 10x upgrade compared to the text editor that comes with your OS, even if you use it to jot down notes during a meeting. More

Online Video Meetings With Transcription

If having online meetings transcribed and searchable instantly is important to you, check out Vowel. More

📣 Fresh van Root

New Website In The Work

We are in the midst of refreshing freshvanroot dot com. New design and copy for our newsletter, blog, and agency homepage. Here is an early preview. Screenshot

Client Project Showcase

In the last couple of months, we have been preparing the launch of the Instagram account for one of our clients. Go check out ERSTE Foundation on Instagram. More

Republica Berlin

I am attending Republica Berlin, “the festival for the digital society”, next week. The first conference visit in 3yrs and I am excited about it. If you are there, let’s meet for coffee. Follow me on Twitter for some Berlin impressions.

🏞️ Your Next Wallpaper?

Badeschiff Berlin | Unsplash

Art Project: A Social Network For 100 Posts

Minus is a social network where you can post only 100 times. More

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