For digital marketers, you are usually using a web browser throughout the day. You should take advantage of resources available that can make your browsing experience easier and more efficient, including utilizing the right browser extensions.
You’re most likely already using a variety of tools for measuring marketing metrics like SEO, social media impact, website loading speed, ad reach, and much more. Most of these types of tools are focused online, but you may need to open up a new tab to keep them running. Extensions make all your regular tools more efficient and put them within your reach every moment you’re using your browser.
There are a lot of great browser extensions out there, but what are the top 5 must haves for Marketers?
#1. LastPass
There’s a lot of debate about which password manager is the best out there. To be fair, there are a lot of different password managers to choose from! But, LastPass offers a great mix of features and affordability that’s got an edge on some of the competing programs. You can take advantage of the free version if you just want something for a small operation with a limited number of devices, or pay $24 per year for the full features on unlimited devices.
LastPass is great when you have a lot of different logins for your own digital marketing company and the brands you’re working with. It keeps you from using the same passwords over and over by generating new, long passwords for everything. All you have to do to log in is click on the extension and select the right account. You can also auto-login if you prefer. A lot of different secure login options are supported, like fingerprint scanning and two-factor authentication.
#2. Nimbus Screenshot
Nimbus is the best screenshot extension around. You can capture partial or full-page screen shots that you can edit and mark up. The extension also allows you to capture video—yes, video!—from your screen for free. The support is fantastic and they seem to be updating the extension regularly.
#3. Pocket
You don’t always have time to read everything you come across, so pocket helps you save the most interesting stuff for later. Pocket allows you to save URL’s you want to check out at a later time. You can save links with categorized tags and even open them again on a separate device. When I have some downtime, I take out the pocket iPhone or iPad app to review the pages I saved. This is a great extension for any marketer, and it’s free!
#4. Mozbar
Here’s a convenient extension to help you get instant access to important SEO metrics on sites around the web. You can get a ton of different information like domain authority, page authority, link analysis, and more. It’s really useful when you want to compare your site to a competitor or if you want to link back to authoritative sites. All this SEO information is easily available, which makes your job a little simpler.
One of the elements that make this extension really useful is the ability to check difficulty for ranking for certain keywords. That’s something that can shorten your research time by a lot and help you get keyword research done more easily.
#5. Image Compressor
As a digital marketer, you know it’s key to have all of images compressed before adding them to any website. It’s a slick, easy-to-use extension that can compress to any percentage you need. Its default is 30%, which does the trick most of the time.
I use all of these extensions at least every other day. There are 10 or 15 more that I use regularly as well, but these are the ones I can’t live without.