Our Favorite Marketing Resources
The 20Twenty Team’s Top Picks
The more we think about what’s happening globally, the more we want to be a force for good. But how do we, as strategists and designers, send good vibes into a world that desperately needs some light-heartedness? By sharing what we love, explaining what makes us happy, and by introducing you to the marketing resources that take the stress out of our workdays—because nobody needs extra pressure right now.
We want to bring a little positivity to your screen by recommending some of our favorite apps, sources of inspiration, and other things that have piqued our interests. We hope these things can help make your life just a little bit easier, spark a new curiosity, or open your mind to some new ideas. These are our favorite marketing resources at the moment.
The Science of Social Media
The Science of Social Media describes itself as an exploration into “best practices and insights from top social media marketing experts.” It’s a weekly podcast from Buffer, the social media management tool. This podcast is geared towards social media professionals and marketers.
And although it’s meant for people within the industry, it’s not too stuffy or overly complicated, so anyone could listen to it and understand the content. Social media is an endless topic, but they make learning about it simple.
The Buffer team packs a lot of information into their 15-minute episodes. They put out brief episodes focused on social media studies, data, strategies, and industry news. The main host, Dave Chapman, has an incredibly soothing voice and buttery-smooth British accent, which makes for easy listening.
He brings on various guests who work in academia, social media marketing, branding, and the business world. In other words, their guests contribute valuable information that’s usually only accessible through a class or webinar.
If you do decide to give this podcast a listen, you’ll have plenty of social media topics to work through. Their catalog has nearly 200 episodes. Although they’ve recently trimmed back their publishing schedule because of the pandemic, you can still look forward to episodes each month.
Toby Browser Extension
We have a question for you. How many tabs do you have open in your browser right now? If you’re anything like us, you have a ton of tabs open at any given moment, and a few browser windows pulled up too. We also usually have a lineup of important sites that we don’t want to forget about—articles we want to read, references for our latest projects, and other websites that can help us with our work.
Yeah, we could bookmark these websites, but we’re pretty sure nobody actually uses their browser’s built-in bookmarking system. Bookmarks are incredibly limiting, so things can get chaotic quickly, especially if you’re trying to keep track of dozens of sites all at once.
Up until a couple of years ago, we thought this what just how people lived. Then Toby came into our lives, and we’ve never looked back. Toby is a free, productivity browser extension available for Google Chrome. Essentially, it’s a place to bookmark and organize tabs, but it’s so much more than that.
You can save your tabs into collections, add notes, and share sites with others. And when you open Chrome or open a new tab in your browser, you’re instantly brought to your Toby collections instead of the Google homepage. Everything stays organized and easily accessible.
It works so well and has such a streamlined interface that it’s hard to believe that it’s free.
Best of all, Toby is designed for both personal use and small to medium-sized businesses. You can create your own personal collections and keep them private. You can also create a separate section that’s exclusively set up for collaboration.
The extension’s Organization feature allows you to share collections with colleagues. Upon invitation, your team will have access to the Toby board. Everyone can contribute to the company’s collections, which makes sharing articles, marketing resources, and references easier. Your team can quickly drop links onto your shared Toby board, and everyone can access these sites whenever they choose.
Who to Follow on Instagram
Twine UI Design Ideas
A mix of design inspiration, business advice, and webinars
Seth Godin – Everything You (probably) DON’T Know about Marketing
Behind the Brand with Bryan Elliott is a YouTube show that hosts some of the world’s most influential entrepreneurs and shares the stories behind their success. However, instead of focusing on the channel in general, we want to zoom in on one episode in particular—the November 2018 interview with bestselling author Seth Godin.
In this interview, Seth takes us through his book This is Marketing. And he has a perspective on marketing that’s far different from what most people are buzzing about. “It’s not about social media. It is not about growth rating points or even conversion. It’s about work that matters for people who care.”
Here, he speaks about how marketing and culture relate to one another. His viewpoints are very much rooted in sociology, and we live for that type of stuff. Want to learn about demographics and psychographics? Seth is your guy. Curious about branding and social activism? He’s got your back.
His interview is the most informative thing we’ve watched in a very long time, and that’s coming from people who have watched hours upon hours of videos from marketing resources, talks from industry pros, and webinars. We think it’s a must-watch, and his book has definitely earned a spot on our must-read list too.
Google Photos
If you haven’t noticed, we’re kind of obsessed with all things Google. So, it’s pretty obvious that we use Google Photos to store and share our pictures in our personal lives. It’s a free service, available for desktop and mobile, that gives you unlimited storage for photos up to 16 megapixels and videos up to 1080p resolution. Out of all of our favorite marketing resources, this is the one you can easily use in both your personal and professional lives.
It also has many smart capabilities built right into the platform, like facial recognition for people and pets, its ability to identify specific landmarks so you can easily search for photos by location, and its integration with Google Assistant smart displays.
We especially love the mobile app for its Backup and Sync feature. Once you enable it, Google Photos will begin uploading your existing photos to your Google account. Best of all, any time you take a new picture on your device, it and automatically upload it to Google photos for you.
A system like this can be extremely helpful if you take photos for your business on your phone but need to access them on your desktop computer. You don’t have to worry about manually uploading pictures to cloud storage or emailing them to yourself. Instead, you can effortlessly access your photos from any device without taking extra steps.
All of your photos are securely backed up within your library. The interface also comes with an incredibly powerful search feature because, well, it’s Google. You can search for photos of specific people, locations, and other attributes. This search feature makes it easy to find what you’re looking for and helps your photo storage stay organized.
The Social Dilemma
Sometimes, you just need to unleash your inner conspiracy theorist. This documentary will help you do exactly that. The Social Dilemma reveals the uncomfortable truths about social media’s influence on our everyday lives. Yeah, anyone who uses social media realizes that it can be a black hole of time. What most people don’t realize is that they were designed to be this way.
“This documentary-drama hybrid explores the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations.” These are some of the most experienced and learned people in the social media world. And they’ve all come to a consensus—there’s a problem.
Much of social media is rooted in manipulating human behavior, from the carefully crafted user interfaces to the algorithms. While we’ve touched on the potential dangers of Facebook’s algorithms in the past, we’ve only scratched the surface. This documentary digs into the digital environment that allows for discrimination, political misinformation, and extremists on social media platforms.
Another incredibly eye-opening component of this documentary is its focus on mental health. The more we coexist with social media, the more we realize its influence on our wellbeing. Although social media isn’t inherently bad, these apps are designed to be addicting.
All of the professionals interviewed realize that they’ve contributed to these dilemmas but have done revolutionary things in the tech field. On the one hand, these designers and programmers have created groundbreaking technology. On the other, they’ve contributed to the decline of people’s mental and physical health. The takeaway of this documentary is that we need to become better informed about social media’s bad parts and salvage the good parts.
By no means is this a movie review, but we think The Social Dilemma is incredibly effective in introducing the concept of manipulative technology. If you’re a social media enthusiast, you’ll learn more about the way these platforms work. If you’re a social media novice, you’ll come out of the film with a new perspective.