Related Blog: Why Inbound Marketing and Growth Driven Design?
The following shortcuts will help you accomplish this goal quickly and efficiently:
Even if you are not a designer, there is often a need for design skills in the marketing field. However it is important to know your limits. You want to be able to do basic design skills without wasting too much time.
Maintain Brand Consistency
If you are using a Mac, make use of the DigitalColor Meter: This tool allows you to match any colors online by copying them. To copy using this tool you press Shift + Command + C. Then from there you paste the copied color into the desired location. This will help you maintain color consistency throughout your marketing efforts without spending a lot of time or waiting to hear back from busy designers every time you need a color matched.
Manipulate Images Like a Pro
Again, this is a Mac specific tool. Preview is a standard tool that comes installed on every Mac computer. By now, I am sure most of you are wondering, what the heck am I supposed to do with this tool? Doesn't it just open my files for me by default? Technically, yes, but it is capable of much more! Marketers can use Preview to manipulate images in a number of ways:
- Adjust the size of the image to make it more efficient for websites. Some images are too large to be posted on websites as they are. Use Preview to make these images smaller. This can be done by selecting Tools > Adjust Size… and following the steps from there.
- Convert files from one form to another. If you need a social media icon to add to a dark colored webpage, chances are you do not want the white box that may exist around the logo. You can use Preview to convert the image from its original file -- probably a jpeg -- to a png file. To do this, select the Edit Toolbar on the top right of your Preview window. Then select the magic wand tool on the toolbar. Drag the wand across the white space you would like to eliminate and hit enter.
Designer capabilities aside, sometimes there is a need to generally save time. You wouldn't think that small things really amount to much wasted time, but in reality, they do. These next set of shortcuts will help you save a few minutes here and there throughout your day. Whether they lead to 5 extra minutes in your day or as much as 30, every minute counts!
Command your Browser Experience
Sometimes, you want to keep the current tab you are viewing open, but continue to navigate other aspects of the same website. This is where the Command key comes in handy. If you have a window open and hold down the Command key as you click on another tab in the website, it will open that tab in a separate tab of your browser. For marketers this can be helpful at many times throughout the day.
Clear Your View
While opening new tabs can be great to help you navigate more efficiently, sometimes this leads to having too many tabs open and getting lost in the shuffle. When this happens, there is another solution. As a starting point, close whichever tabs you do not need open anymore. After that, select the tabs that you would still like to keep open, but would like to move from your current window. By selecting one tab at a time and dragging it down, you will be able to move the tabs into a new window that you can then move to the back or minimize until you need it again.
Cut out the Login Process
If you use Google Chrome as your browser -- as you should given its speed and ease of use -- then you have the ability to log in to the browser window with your Gmail account. Logging into the window itself, allows Chrome to remember your information, specifically your login credentials for other sites should you choose to save it. Using this feature means that no matter what device you are on, you can easily navigate to your desired pages without having to remember passwords each time.
Share Your Screen
Sometimes there is no better way to explain what you are working on than to show it. However, oftentimes the process of setting your computer up with a projector to share with your team can be one of the biggest wastes of time you will encounter in your day! This can all become a thing of the past with the tools AirParrot or AirPlay. Using either of these tools will allow you to wirelessly and seamlessly share your screen on your office's projector screen to get feedback from team members or have an interactive meeting.
Go Incognito
While this may sound like an unusual piece of advice for the workplace, using incognito windows can be very helpful at times. If you need to have more than one account open at a time for the same website, it is impossible to do so in the same window. However, if you open up an incognito window, you can navigate the two profiles easily without having to waste time going back and forth in a normal window.
Prepare for Your Next Client Presentation
In marketing -- particularly inbound marketing -- there are many different things you want to show a client to demonstrate how successful your marketing efforts are. While it is important to show your client as much as you can, ultimately if it takes too long, the positive message will be lost. The clients focus will shift to how long the meeting is taking, rather than on how successful and exciting their generated marketing success is. Prevent this by making use of multiple tabs. If you are a HubSpot user, open all of your different graphs or conversion metrics in individuals tabs in the order that works best for your presentation. Just as a slide show helps you organize a presentation by having individual pages of information, this shortcut will allow you to give your client a lot of information without making them wait for pages to load. Have everything set up ahead of time so you are ready to start wowing your client from the first minute of the meeting.
Other important shortcuts are ones that eliminate the possibility for mistakes. When you are working on different marketing efforts online, it is easy to make a mistake here and there. The problem is, these types of mistakes can lead to user experience issues, which marketers want to avoid at all cost.
Make use of the simple tools: Always Copy and Paste emails and URLs
When it comes to copying URLs or sharing email addresses with others it is best to use copy and paste. Of course it is easy to assume you know both of these links well enough to confidently transcribe them. However, with how fragile links are, one minor typo will lead to an unfound link and an error message for the person you are sending them to both of which do not lead to good impressions.
Take Advantage of Revision History
When you are editing content to post on your website or content to send to a client for approval, make sure to work in a space that allows you to go back and see past revisions. Google Docs is such a space. Using Google Docs allows you to go back and view the document at its different stages of revision in the event that you need to view a previous version. Should you unexpectedly close a window or have a computer malfunction, this feature can also save you from having to start over again.
