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Welcome to Coffee Powered Systems, equipping women with actionable steps to overcome, overwhelm and streamline business and life. So grab your favorite drink and come hang out with me. I'm your host, Miranda Merten. Welcome back to Coffee Powered Systems. It is another Friday and we are almost done with October if you're in America. We are going into Election Day in about a week and a half. So go out and vote, exercise your right and let your voice be heard.

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There are actually some tree trimmers outside today, so I apologize if you get any weird noises in the background. Can't really do anything about that. That's podcast life. Sometimes you just got to go with what you are given for the day. So go ahead, pull up your favorite chair, grab your favorite drink, join me as I drink some tea. Today, we're going to talk about tech stack part two, if you missed part one, no worries.

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You can go ahead back to Mirandamerten.com/37. That was Episode 37, tech stack. Choosing the right tools for the right task. Part one. In part one, we talked about tools that were best for managing your to do list, collaborating on documents and file sharing, scheduling meetings, project management, taking and organizing notes, password management and team communication. So if you are looking for some new tools or you're interested in checking out what's out there, I provided two to three tools in each of those categories.

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So go back and take a listen to Episode 37 and I'll drop that link down in the show notes for you today. I'm going to touch on just a few more tools that you can add to your tech stack if you're in the market for these items or if you're just curious to know some of the things I use or some of the things that are popular out there as well. So first up, we're going to talk about social media planning. Currently, I use Plann and you can find that at plan that dot com.

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I use this to plan my Instagram. It's really the only social media platform that I plan out. Actually, I have been using Pinterest lately as well, so I will drop some planned pins as well. And for planning my pins, I use Tailwind. So I'll drop those two down in the show notes for you. But I love plan that I used to use personally. But I enjoy using Plann. I love their planner. You can add sets of hashtags.

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You can see your grid on there. And they are really great with keeping up with Instagram and adding new features. So that's why I love them so much and also for planning Instagram and Facebook. A lot of people aren't aware, but Facebook actually has a tool called Facebook Creator Studio. It's found in the business part of Facebook. You can plan to publish your Facebook and Instagram through creative studio and it's free. You can go live there. You can add stories, you can schedule your posts.

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There's a lot of features in there. And they also give you a lot of insights. So if you are looking for something simple to use, go into Facebook creator studio and use that for planning your Facebook and Instagram. I have been using Instagram way more than any social media lately, so that's what I'm focusing on. I'm focusing on just one platform right now and then I will post, you know, updates on the other ones, but not so much like being active.

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I'm trying to see how well, focusing on one and really curating everything on there is going to work for me. So testing that out right now. Next up for your websites, what I use for all of my websites, I use WordPress. I recommend it to everyone. I love WordPress for the flexibility and what I say, WordPress. I am talking about WordPress dot org, which is the one where you will actually have to find your own hosting.

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You can use a bunch of different templates from all over the Web. But if you want to use WordPress dot com, they do have an option where you can they're hosting for free and they also have different plans. You can upgrade as well. Similar to Squarespace. A lot of people I know you, Squarespace, and it is also a website builder that includes hosting. So if you're looking for something that's kind of an all in one go with a WordPress dot com or Squarespace, and if you are interested in putting things together, using the plug ins, using custom templates or having designers work on your website, then go with WordPress dot org.

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Next up, if you're looking for a landing page, create. Let's say you don't quite want a website, you don't want to deal with it or you're just starting out and you just want to get a landing page up and just get something out there. Lead pages and insta page are great places to start. I personally just use WordPress and then I create and build my landing pages with WordPress. I use elementary with my WordPress. So with Elimentor I can create so many different kinds of pages.

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So that's why I love it. If you don't have a website yet and you're just looking for something to build doing it. Landing pages on insta page and lead pages are fantastic options. Email automation for email automation. I use active campaign which I love. I have used it for ever. The lower price tier starts at nine dollars a month and it goes up from there depending on your list size. So of course, like with most of the email providers, as your list size increases, your costs will increase.

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I love Active Campaign because it's just so easy to use. You can create campaigns, you can create just a single email broadcast. They have lots of insights to help you figure out what's going on, what's working, what's not working. So I highly recommend active campaign. If you're looking for a really strong email provider that's been around for a long time. Another one that's super popular is convert. Quite a lot of people love using Convert Kit and a new one on the market that just started within the last year.

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They have beautiful email templates, not as much flexibility because they are new, but they are constantly adding and updating their features. It is fellow desk, so definitely check that one out. There were a few little things that I could not pull the trigger to switch over to fellow desk because active campaign already had it. Integrations were super important to me, so I think they'll probably have more integrations and features as the years go on. But just for me, it just wasn't worth the switch.

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Flodesk is really great because it is just one price. At the launch it was twenty five dollars a month. So one price forever. Whether you have one hundred people on your list or one hundred thousand, it would be the same price. Lastly, for this episode, I just want to touch on design. Canva is really big in the easy to use design space right now. I highly recommend using Canva if you are interested in something that's similar to Photoshop, but either maybe you're just not keen on the price because it is a pretty pricey software that you have to pay per month.

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If you're not really interested in the price of Photoshop, but you are interested in using something more robust that designers use, I would check out a Affinity photo. I have a family photo. It's a one time price. I believe it was thirty nine dollars just one time. It's not a monthly fee. It's very similar to Photoshop. A lot of the same features. It actually will use Photoshop files as well. So if you upload a PDF file into a vanity photo, it is able to use that as well.

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So definitely check out Affinity. I will drop all of these links down in the show notes for you. If you have anything that you are curious about or you want me to take a look at for you, go ahead and reach out to me on Instagram. I'm at Miranda Merten. You can send me an email. I'll drop that down in the show notes or you can also send a voice message if you just want to say hello or if you have a question, send me a voice message.

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The link is down in the show notes or you can go to speakpipe.com, forget coffee powered systems. That is all I have for you today. I hope you got some great tips and great tools out of these two tech stack episodes. Again, tech stack part one was Episode 37, Mirandamerten.com/37. This was part to have a wonderful weekend and I'll see you next time.

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Thanks for listening to Coffee Powered Systems. You can find links to everything mentioned in the episode. Down in the show. Notes are on the website at mirandamerten.com. If you enjoyed this episode and would love to continue mastering your workflows and processes, subscribe on your favorite podcast player and join me here next time.