At Thrive, many of us use tools daily to make our jobs easier, more efficient, and just plain better. This week, we polled the team to find out what our favorite tools are. Here are the results by team!
SEO/PPC Team
SEMRush
This all-in-one SEO/PPC tool was our winner for best overall tool! Four Thrivers picked it as their #1. Here are their reasons (fourth one is down in the Consultant team):
“If I am researching blog topic ideas, new keyword opportunities, competitor analysis and even backlink history I have the flexibility to review all of that under one tool. I can find myself working on multiple tasks just by using SEMRush.” – Carlos Rosado
“It is a great all-around tool for competitive research. You can view everything from targeted keywords to Adwords copy and keyword difficulty. It does much more, but those are the main functions that literally shave hours off of my research process.” – Josh Smith
“This is my favorite tool for keyword research and competitive ad copy analysis. SEMRush is an all in one function. I am able to see the most profitable keywords available and it allows me to create compelling ad copy to challenge our competitors!” – Matt Ellis
Ahrefs
This tool came in second for the SEO and PPC teams. Here’s what the couple team members who chose it had to say:
“The primary part of the my job is link building, and as a link builder, ahrefs.com is the must-have tool in my tool kit. I use the tool to understand what competitors are doing, what their link building strategy is, and how we can grab good link opportunities.” – Moosa Hermani
“It’s a one-stop-shop tool for SEO.” – Michael Deffely
Google Search Console
“Google Search Console is one of my many favorite SEO tools. Search Console allows webmasters to track their website’s search performance, indexing status, and crawl errors in order to ensure the website is optimized correctly from Google’s perspective. I make it a priority once or twice a month to check each website I manage via Search Console to ensure there are no issues negatively affecting our SEO strategy.” – Alan Muther
Screaming Frog
“It crawls websites and combines all the information I need on websites in one place and also allows you to download the information. It allows me to peruse information such as titles, meta, headings, alt text, create XML sitemaps etc. and this helps me analyze the client’s or competitor’s website.” – Karen Visser
Grammarly
“When posting content, whether on social media or a website, we are speaking on behalf of our clients. As the goal is to represent the client in a professional and trustworthy manner to the public, having mistakes in your content is undoubtedly an issue and can lead to reputation damage. It’s nice to have a tool looking after me when I’ve had a particularly strong cup of coffee and my fingers are flyin’!” – Caroline Zeichner
Link Research Tools
“This is the most advanced link building quality tool out there. With an easy scan of your backlink profile you can quickly pick up on any toxic links that could harm your strategy, with an incredible detail. It also allows you to simulate how a new link will impact your strategy, as it detects if the new link would be strong and of low risk. LRT helps with recovering from Google penalties or broken links after site migration too, among other useful features. This is a paid tool but definitely worth the money.” – Eve Raczkowska-Creighton
Feedly
“I’m loving Feedly right now. It’s a simple RSS aggragator tool that you can use to follow a bunch of blogs/sites/sources at once to help with content ideas. Just open it, check out what’s popular that day within the industry, and boom! Blog post idea.” – Joli
The Thrivers
“The most amazing resource I have is the amazing team of professionals we have at Thrive. I can reach out and find an expert on any aspect of SEO or PPC or social media at a moment’s notice. Everyone is always willing to help one another and a human mind is more powerful and valuable than any digital tool.” – Mike Wice
Web/Support Team
On our web and support teams, nobody chose the same tool! Each tool was nominated by one person. So, check out what our design, development, video, and support team loves to use!
Envato Market
“They have a dense selection of stock videos (videohive), motion templates, and royalty-free music (audiojungle). Good quality and very affordable. A must for any video professional.” – Eric Morrison
One Time Secret
“I love One Time Secret as it is a way to send sensitive information to other people without having to send it in a plain text email.” – Michele Jones
File Manager (WordPress Plugin)
“Great little plugin to emulate cpanel File Manager for sites who do not have cpanel access!” – Peter Inzerillo
TrackDuck
“This tool allows our clients to provide instant feedback on their mockups & sites, while providing a screenshot and other supporting information that is extremely helpful in turning around resolutions efficiently and quickly. TrackDuck also has integration capabilities which allows any feedback to immediately be integrated with our Project Management tool for easy assignment to our internal team.” – Diana Bates
Social Team
Onlypult
“It automates posting for Instagram and makes it so easy to tag people/pages as well as adding hashtags. You can even repost and make first comments automated for posts. I LOVE IT! It’s my favorite new tool.” – Nhi Shirley
Trello
“I have used Trello at every job I have worked in! Using emails and paper notes is a messy way to keep track of all the information you need for a project. With Trello, everything is in one place – it lets me create project task lists, assign people to them, have conversations with team members, store images and emails attached to a project, and even link to other Trello cards. I’ve used it to plan out social media posts for the month because I can drag and drop things into different places easily. Trello allows me to keep everything in one digital place and access everything I need to stay organized. It’s my favorite tool ever! Everyone NEEDS Trello – it’s the ultimate online collaboration tool.” – Alissa McKenzie
Consultants
SEMRush
“In seconds you can have years of Google organic ranking history in front of you for any domain. From there, the ability to manipulate this data to see the current performance and the opportunity ahead of us gives our team of Marketing Consultants powerful insights in our meetings with potential Thrive clients.” – Joseph Jenkinson
The Thrivers
“Working with experts makes every day a good day!” – Ashton Dobbs
Office/Leadership
Trello
“I use Trello is a couple of different ways at Thrive. I use it for forecasting team capacity, use it as a tool repository, and a content editorial calendar. The ability to create “lists” and “cards” allow me to easily organize the information and quickly share it with our team. I also find myself using the Add Comment feature quite often to keep track of client notes while updating employees at the same time.” – Brent Nau
Gusto
“While this isn’t a tool we use to get our jobs done it has made running our company a lot easier. Being a remote company and having employees in several different states there are a lot of things to keep up with. Gusto manages each states income tax and withholding for us and keeps up with changing rules so we don’t have to. They have saved me hours of work each month.” – Cody Owens
SharpSpring
“It makes my work really looks simple and organized. I use SharpSpring to upload leads and set schedules.” – Max Kargbo
That’s it! Those are our favorite tools. What’s your favorite?
