I’ve worked in digital marketing for a while and I’ve used just about every tool there is for maintaining a digital presence.
People think managing a website requires a lot of technical knowledge, and there are plenty of grifters out there trying to take advantage of that.
Here’s a list of the tools I use so you can have a similar setup to myself:
Website
Domain and web hosting
I manage my domain and hosting through Panthur. They do a great job managing the workflow of registering a domain and setting up an instance of web hosting. I’ve run other websites through Panthur and never had a problem with them.
A domain costs $16 a year and my hosting is $6 a month. Not free but affordable for even a hobbyist. Register an account, select your domain and add hosting to your cart, then you’re good to go.
Once you’ve bought a domain and hosting, select ‘login to cPanel’ from the Panthur backend and you’re ready to roll out your website.
CMS
This website is on WordPress. It’s free, easy to use, and powers about 3/4 of the internet.
In cPanel there’s an option to install a few different CMSs on your web hosting. These are all done automatically, where you just have to select a couple of basic options.
A good rule is to leave anything you don’t understand, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and hit ‘Install’.
That’s it. You’ve now got your own website, live on the internet right now. If you’ve ever used WordPress before, this is the exact same. Actually, this is better. You have a fresh instance, not bogged down by the dodgy plugins some agency has installed, no dud files or massive images taking up space, and the best part is – this website is yours.
Plugins
I just rolled out this website, so I’m still adding those myself. But here’s a list of what I’m using so far:
- Yoast SEO: this plugin helps optimise your website for search engines. They don’t offer cheap hacky solutions, and I’ve seen their parameters change over time as SEO best practice updates.
- Visual Composer: a drag and drop editor to make your pages look just that little bit nicer. You can structure pages better, add in elements and improve the layout instead of having a single column of text, all in an easy to use interface. Amazingly free, and helps your website go from a complete home job to something professional
- Site Kit by Google: I’ve used a lot of other people’s websites, and I’ve often had to deal with the headache of setting up Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager. Top that off with not having access to the account email or the hosting platform and it makes me want to tear my hair out. Not on my website. I’m installing this plugin and doing things properly from the get go.
- Seriously Simple Podcasting: I asked myself, why pay for separate podcast hosting if you already have a website? Turns out you can manage your podcast through WordPress and not have to pay extra for Soundcloud. It seems to work well, I haven’t had any problems so far.
Panthur hosting comes with email. It eats into your hosting but you can figure that out later if it becomes a problem.
I have a personal dislike of generic domains for email addresses. I get quite annoyed when I see a business email address with @gmail, @live, @hotmail, or @bigpond. Spend a bit of money and show you’re taking things seriously.
Through cPanel there’s a way to create email addresses, and even redirect email addresses if you want to have an info and a personal email address.
These emails will go to an inbox you won’t monitor at all. I use gmail for my personal emails, and there’s a way to set up an alias email address for gmail accounts. I’ve set up my tombruzzo email address as an alias to my personal Gmail. That way I still know when emails come in and I have the interface of Gmail for my tombruzzo emails.
(You can also do this with Gsuite, Google’s own email hosting service, which gives you the Gmail interface for your work emails. It costs $5 a month though, the main benefit being you can use Google Docs as part of an organisation, not necessary for a one person operation.)
Email newsletters
I’m going to use Substack for my newsletters (I don’t have a contact list to send out to yet).
It’s free, and all the comic creators I subscribe to use Substack (It was also enough to tempt Kieron Gillan away from Tinyletter). There seems to be no subscriber limit. Their model seems to be you can make subscribers pay for access to your newsletter, and they’ll take a cut of that if you choose to do so.
Tinyletter is also a great alternative. It’s made by Mailchimp and uses a similar interface if you’re familiar with their tools. Tinyletter has a subscriber limit of 5,000 if you’re worried about maxing out. Mailchimp has a free teir too, but that maxes out at 2,000. You also can’t use a generic domain (like @gmail) through Mailchimp anymore either.
We all can’t afford to spend $200 a month on our newletters like Warren Ellis can.
Social media tools
I don’t plan to use social media too much, but here are some handy tools if you need to:
- Scheduling: Buffer. This is a great simple tool for scheduling content in advance. Best used if you want to put out a couple of posts, but don’t want them to all cluster together at once. The free tier does a couple of accounts, and can even do Instagram now.
- Monitoring: Hootsuite. Has scheduling too, but Hootsuite’s strength is more the ability to monitor multiple ‘steams’ of content on your screen at once. If you’re active across multiple social networks, you can keep track of things from within Hootsuite. If you’re only on Twitter, Tweetdeck does a similar thing.
Podcast
I’m using the aforementioned Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin and you can check out the podcast for yourself in the menu. I’m not yet on Apple podcasts but I am on Google podcasts. It’s a soft launch for the moment.
I’m also using Reaper for recording, it’s more like a professional DAW than a recording program like Audacity. I run some compression and gate on my voice to balance things out and cut out any ambient noise. I have an XLR mic and an Mbox Mini 2 for an interface. Word is this setup is better than a USB mic, but not as simple to use. Plus, I can record sick riffs with the interface when I get around to it.
Hardware
Doesn’t matter how good your technology stack is if you’re trying to access it on a netbook from 2012.
Here’s the hardware I’m working on everyday:
- HP ENVY x360 Convertible 15-bp1xx. 8th gen i7 processor. 16gb DDR4 RAM. nVidia MX150. Bought it for work a few years ago, figured I might as well get something more at the top end of specs to cover me for a couple of years.
- Huawei Mate 20. I try to avoid doing things on my phone, but a good phone is probably the most important piece of technology you own. Not the best model on the market, but still a damn good phone.
- M Box Mini 2 interface. This is what I use for recording, and will play a big part in podcast recording. I originally bought an interface for recording guitar on my computer, but they have a variety of uses.
- Ashton dynamic mic. Not a great mic, but I already own it. If you get yourself a USB powered mic you don’t need to worry about getting an interface either.
Other useful tools
There’s a bunch of other tools I use to get by and manage my digital presence. These are ones I use that are a big help, but don’t fall into the above categories:
Password management
I use LastPass on my phone and as a browser extension. The personal version is free and syncs across multiple devices.
You don’t need to use LastPass, but it’s good to have a password maanger. You’re going to end up with a lot of accounts for things you don’t check regularly. A password manager can auto-generate unique passwords for each account and store them for you without using the same one over and over or remembering each password.