Must Design

Wireframing Is A Pain But Less So
Wireframing, the act of prototyping web designs before writing code, is a pain. Less of a pain with these 10 wireframing tools all new to us. 

Must Have Content Marketing Tools
We thought we would add out 2 cents on tools we know, use and love:

Quora
Agree, if you can't create a "knowledge base" or Q&A engine on your site use Quora until you can. Q&A content is beyond important that is why we are answering a marketing question a day on Quora (https://www.quora.com/profile/Martin-Smith-153 )

Reddit
We can't figure Reddit out. If you have, please write and tell us the secret. As an outsider Reddit isn't weloming or friendly. Make a mistake and they yell at you and all you do at first is make mistakes. We have had content shared there and it does blow up, but finding ways to play within the rules have left us out of Reddit so far. 

Inbound.org
New to us and sounds cool. We will join today. 

Alltop
Wouldn't be on our list. Too much work, too little reward. 

Buffer
We don't use it anymore preferring to be live at all times on social media. Is that decision hurting our traffic? Maybe, but "being present matters. 

Hootsuite
We use TweetDeck (purchased by Twitter and so closer to Twitter's APIs now). 

SlideShare
We prefer Haiku Deck, but SS still gives great SEO. Wish they would make their profile template look better (looks like a train wreck now and no way to fix I know of short of hiring a programmer). 

PRWeb
Yeah, Yeah...wouldn't have been on our TOP list. Who reads press releases anymore if they aren't related to you? Answer: NO ONE. 

BuzzStream
We prefer BuzzSumo

Analytics
We use GA (who doesn't), SpyFu and Moz

Dasheroo
Sounds interesting will report back.

SimpleReach
We used to prefer Topsy but don't what has happened to them so may take another look at this if we get obsessed about our social content reach again. No analytics tool does a great job reporting the multi-layered nature of social media marketing. 

Simply Measured
Okay, you had us at "more to socila media than publishing", so we will check out and report back

Zuum
We prefer SpyFu

Traackr
Now THIS looks worthy and cool. Finding influencers is a bear, anything that makes that nasty task easier we are interested in trying. 

Klout
Use it, like it and wish it did more. 

Storify
Used it but prefer Medium now

Visual.ly
Used it, liked it but fell off and not sure why. Infographics are KEY and this is one of the better tools to make, share and discover infographics. 

Uberflip
Don't know, but will check out.

Canva
Waste of time. 

Pardot
Cheaper Marketo now owned by Sales Force. Cheaper doesn't mean affordable if you aren't enterp;rise level. 

Marketo
Have used this inboud tool and prefer it to Hubspot or Pardot or Eloqua

Salesforce
Have used it but very much an "enterprise" beast of a CRM

Optimizely
Used it, liked it and recommend it for A/B testing

Zapier
Trying to figure out this feed master tool now. Feeds are in all of our future so finding out how to use Zapier can pay many dividends 

Basecamp
Used it, liked it and good value for money if you need project management support (and you only need that if you have too many planes up in the air at any one time)

HARO
Help A Reporter Out = great idea and I've used it, but boy they will be spamming your ass to death

Email Marketing
We prefer the dinosaur (Bronto), but many of our SMBs don't need that nuclear weapon yet so Mail Chimp or Constant Contact will do (and that is the order we would recommend with Mail Chimp about half better than CC). 

Wordpress
We are leaving Wordpress because it has gotten too complex for what we need it for (simple blogging). 

Yoast
If you use WP you need Yoast for SEO and because it makes complex WP things easier to understand 

Google Keyword Planner
YES YES and YES you should be using this tool whether you use Adwords or not since it provides reads on search volume by keywords. 

Feedly
Saved one of our favorite "future of publishing" and content curation tools to the last one. YES you should master Feedly and Zapier since you must process more content than you are doing now and you need to find ways to automate as much as possible.
Curagami (us) on Feedly:
http://www.feedly.com/curagami/

 

WAIT, There's More
If we didn't weigh in it is because we don't know and don't care about some of the goofy tools on this list. How a list so exhaustive could have forgotten these content marketing tools tells us whoever created it isn't as DEEP in content marketing as our friends and us:

Paper.li
Best community builder for least amount of effort ont he planet. 
Our Paper.li
http://paper.li/ScentTrail/1316928951 

Scoop.it
Best community builder for more effort on the planet. Best place to test content before you blog about it too. 
Me on Scoop.it
@Martin (Marty) Smith 

Medium
Best storytelling tool on the planet and strong community of smart curators and writers. 
Curagmai on Medium
https://medium.com/@Curagami 

Haiku Deck
Not as good at SEO as SlideShare, but much better tool with their Creative Commons overlay and TED-like way of insuring you don't kill your audience with PowerPoint. 

https://www.haikudeck.com/presentations/Martin.Smith 

Flipboard
We lost Flipboard for a bit, but now that streams are coming back we powered it back up and have liked the experience:
https://flipboard.com/@curagami/curagami-ros0t46qy 

Tumblr
Same with Tumblr. We lost it there for a bit, but the visual marketing nature of this tool and the ease of use once you are used to the strange UI makes Tumblr a must add. 

http://curagami.tumblr.com/ 

Be
Behance may be a "portfolio" manager technically, but it is a great place to tell visual stories. We are using it to help script our videos. 
https://www.behance.net/martinsellingzoef5bd 

Photoshop
Hello, you are going to need to put some time in with the world's most advanced photo editing software unless you do everything by phone and we don't suggest that since the phone is hard to resize to fit social networks preferred sizes.

Illustrator
We are still babes in the woods on Illustratrator, but there are times when vectors win and we are always confused and have to attempt to pick our way through (to little success). 

Agile by WTE.net
We are moving from Wordpress to our friend Eric's "Agile" content marketing platform because....well read our reasons for leaving Wordpress on Curagami. 

We could go on with tools like Vine and Snapchat, but you get the idea. Even at 75 tools the their list is not exhaustive. It does have a lot of thigns we've never heard of and don't care about, a few things we will check out and many tools we've used. 

If you are new to content marketing DON'T READ that post (lol). You need a blogging platform (and blogger would do to start and it is very easy), the "usual suspects" in social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Gplus) and a good community where you can learn (so Scoop.it, Medium, Stack Overflow or something you've found). 

Why learn to play golf with 75 clubs? You need a putter (blogging), a driver (Twitter), a few irons (GPlus, Facebook) and a sandwedge (community where you can learn). Other than that you are wasting time...at least at first. 

Good luck, Marty 

Graphic Design Tools

We're not sure graphic design tools have a season, but we like many of the tools suggested in the "Best Graphic Design Tools for June" Post we shared on Must Design on Flipboard: https://flipboard.com/@curagami/must-design-me64h178y