speechbubble

Cool Tool: Checkiday

Cheryl Harrison — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 22:05:17 +0000

Did you know today, January 28, is Data Privacy Day? Happy Data Privacy Day!

It’s also Fun at Work Day, National Blueberry Pancake Day, National Kazoo Day and Thank a Plugin Developer Day. So, thanks to the developer of previous Cool Tool Edit Flow plugin… I guess?

OK, so maybe today’s weren’t the most useful, but things like National Pie Day (January 23), National Beer Can Appreciation Day (January 24), and National Bloody Mary Day (January 1) CAN be useful social media content when they’re applicable to your industry.

That’s why one of the first things we do everyday is visit checkiday.com to see what weird holidays whoever-it-is-who-declares-holidays has declared that day to be. Just in case!

The post Cool Tool: Checkiday appeared first on speechbubble.

Cool Tool: Feedly

Cheryl Harrison — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 15:01:59 +0000

Part of me is convinced this is a Captain Obvious recommendation, but the other part of me regularly has conversations where someone tells me they can’t remember to check all the blogs they want to follow, and I tell them to just use an RSS reader, and they say “um… a what?”

So I’m going to tell you about an RSS reader now.

That’s what Feedly is. An RSS reader aggregates all of the sites you want to read in one place, bringing the newest content to the top. You can sort the feeds into folders (I have one for marketing, one for Columbus, one for the drinks industry, one for humor, and one for news) so that, when you’re short on time, you can only read the content that is most important to you. (For me, that’s usually humor. Hey, we all need a laugh.)

When you see the little orange RSS icon on a site, you can click it and Feedly will know what to do with it – or, you can click “Add Content” within Feedly to paste an RSS feed or search for a site.

The post Cool Tool: Feedly appeared first on speechbubble.

Cool Tool: Spots.io

Cheryl Harrison — Fri, 21 Feb 2014 15:13:09 +0000

This one is pretty straightforward.

Want to see what photos people are sharing on Instagram at your venue?

Type the name of your venue and your city into the search box.

BAM.

(There’s also an iOS app)

The post Cool Tool: Spots.io appeared first on speechbubble.

Cool Tool: Canva

Cheryl Harrison — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 15:29:04 +0000

You’re likely looking for good visual content to share on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and other image-heavy social networks. If you’re not particular design-savvy, it’s pretty hard to crank that content out, especially when you need to do it daily, and often quickly. Canva changes everything.

Canva is an extremely easy-to-use… graphic design program? Stock photography website? I really don’t know what to call it, because it combines a lot of great features to create one tool that community managers should have in their toolbox to knock out compelling visual content.

Pick one of their templates or start from scratch, add in cool text elements and upload your own photos, or buy one of millions of images from their library for only a dollar a piece. A dollar!

The post Cool Tool: Canva appeared first on speechbubble.

Cool Tool: Death to the Stock Photo

Cheryl Harrison — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 18:43:59 +0000

Visual content is key in digital marketing, but good visual content is also hard to create without a good camera or good eye, and is expensive to buy via stock photo websites (and the content that’d available is often kind of cheesy.)

Death to the Stock Photo emails free high-resolution lifestyle photography to you monthly, to do whatever you want with. No catch. Use the photos on your website, your menu, your social media outlets, whatever.

Here are a few recent photos they’ve sent out:

Did I mention these are all free? Why haven’t you signed up yet?

The post Cool Tool: Death to the Stock Photo appeared first on speechbubble.

Cool Tool: BatchGeo

Cheryl Harrison — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 14:55:57 +0000

For MONTHS I had folks asking me when I was going to create a map of local breweries for Drink Up Columbus, but I wasn’t exactly sure how, so it kept slipping off my to-do list.

Then one day I published this directory of growler fill spots in Columbus, and Andy from The Salt Mines co-working space here in Columbus offered out of the blue to make me a map if I sent him a spreadsheet of addresses. No more than three minutes later he shot back an embed code for a map.

HE’S A WIZARD, I thought… but it turns out he just used BatchGeo, which is an AWESOME free resource if you need to make a map of a few different locations and you’re maybe a little bit technically challenged. Put the business name in column one, the address in column 2, copy/paste into the website, and you have a map, which you can go back and edit as needed. There’s also a paid version if you want to do more with it.

I made these three maps in less than five minutes total. AWESOME.

The post Cool Tool: BatchGeo appeared first on speechbubble.

How to reach your goals

Cheryl Harrison — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 13:45:39 +0000

I and the other speakers from the Ohio Growth Summit were interviewed about how to reach your goals, and the composite video turned out pretty cool:

You may recall this as the conference at which I was commended for only saying “shit” three times. In an alternate cut of this video I yell “shut the f*** up” (off-camera.)

Seriously.

The post How to reach your goals appeared first on speechbubble.

A conversation about the freelance lifestyle

Cheryl Harrison — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 15:36:27 +0000

I was recently featured in a video with a few other local entrepreneurs about the freelance lifestyle.

You can watch the video here: http://vimeo.com/66341017

The post A conversation about the freelance lifestyle appeared first on speechbubble.

Cool Tool: Transcriptions

Cheryl Harrison — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 14:49:10 +0000

Whether you’re interviewing someone for a blog post or trying to capture insight from customers for internal use, recording a conversation is usually the best way to ensure quote accuracy and context. (It also spares hand cramps from aggressive note taking.) After recording the interview, the next step is transcription, which usually involves opening a text file on one half of the screen and an audio player on the other and pausing/rewinding frequently while typing feverishly. There are, of course, tools you can use that automatically convert audio into text, but I am forever skeptical of them from an accuracy standpoint and insist on doing things manually.

BUT that doesn’t mean there isn’t a cool tool for the slow-and-steady way of doing things. It’s called Transcriptions, and it basically combines my above-described scenario of text document and audio player into one handy window that adds timestamps to lines of text as you enter, which you can then double click to jump back to that point of the audio file. It’s a super lightweight program, and free! It’s Mac only, though.

The post Cool Tool: Transcriptions appeared first on speechbubble.

Great moments in speechbubble history, volume 5

Cheryl Harrison — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 15:10:26 +0000

I was invited to speak on a panel about social media at the Ohio Growth Summit this week.

Posted without further comment:

The post Great moments in speechbubble history, volume 5 appeared first on speechbubble.