fbpx
DOTTO TECH TOOLKIT

What's in our Toolkit

Toolkit
Categories
Productivity
Screencasting & Video
Team Management
Social Media
Online Courses
Livestreaming
Webinars
Distraction & Focus
Hardware
For other recommend hardware, look here
Categories
See what's in our toolkit

Screencasting & Video

Screencasting is a great way create online videos you can use on your website, share to social media or upload to YouTube.

Online Courses

Online courses are an integral part of Dotto Tech and one tool in particular made it possible.



Productivity

The right productivity tools can save you hundreds of hours every year so you can work on your passion projects and grow your business.

Livestreaming

Livestreaming has steadily taken over our feeds. It's the perfect way to build a community and to connect with your audience in real time.

Team Management

The Dotto Tech team has grown over the last couple of years and these are the tools we use to stay on top of things and keep in touch.

Social Media

To use social media to its full potential, you need to build a following. These tools will help you manage your social media, craft effective updates and grow your audience.

Webinars

Webinars are an essential part of Dotto Tech. We do a free webinar training every Wednesday. That’s why finding the right tool has been of the utmost importance!

Hardware

These are all the hardwares I use on a daily basis.




Distraction and Focus

We all know the incredible benefit we receive when we achieve “Flow State” or being “In the Zone”. In this section, you'll find our recommendations to stay focused and distraction free.

Black_spot
Productivity
The right productivity tools can save you hundreds of hours every year so you can work on your passion projects, grow your business and be with your friends and family.

Evernote

Evernote  is the heart of my productivity system and my digital brain. It holds everything I need to remember. If I come across an interesting article, need to jot down an idea or save a really interesting email, it all goes inside Evernote.

We consume a lot of information and it’s impossible to remember it all without a little of help. The Evernote tool suite makes it easy to find what I need anytime, anywhere. Its powerful search functionality let you search through your notes in seconds.

Say no to wasting dozens of hours going through your Google Docs, hard drive, bookmarks and the hundreds of bits of paper lying around and use a tool that helps you remember.

Want to know more?

Our free course, the Evernote Quickstart Guide, takes you through everything you need to know to get started. The whole course takes less than an hour but the difference Evernote can make to your life will last a long, long time.

For more info, check out our videos:

RescueTime

Easy access to the internet puts a wealth of knowledge at our fingertips. It also puts us in dangerously close proximity to a lot of distractions.

RescueTime  is a time management tool. It installs on your desktop and runs in the background, tracking the way you use your time. The premium version lets you block distracting websites for set periods of time and log and track offline meetings and work engagements.

If you find yourself jumping into social media and email when your time would be better spent working on a specific task, RescueTime can do wonders for you. Just seeing the analytics at the end of every week has had a major impact on my personal productivity.

Want to know more? Check out our videos:

Focus@Will

Working in a home office comes with one stark problem: sometimes it’s just too quiet. Focus@Will  is a music subscription service specifically designed to help you make the most out of your work.

The music is scientifically engineered to increase your focus and decrease distraction. The app has a huge variety of music genres at different tempos so you can find the perfect soundtrack for your work life.

I know it sounds strange, and to be honest it does not work for everyone, but for me the results have been phenomenal (and unexpected.)

Want to know more? Check out our videos:

TextExpander

Do you find yourself writing the same thing over and over again? TextExpander can be a productivity boosting gift you've been looking for.

It's a keyboard macro tool that’s become an indispensable part of my personal productivity kit. With a few quick keystrokes I can summon pre-written responses to common questions and effortlessly link to online assets. It saves me a minimum of 30 minutes a day.

If you find yourself sharing the same bits of information over and over again, try it out! It’s a game changer.

Learn more:

TextExpander touch

Grammarly

Ever agonized over a particularly important email, only to hit send and spot a spelling error one second too late? Me too. 

Grammarly keeps that from happening by catching spelling and grammar mistakes in emails, blog posts, web copy, and social media updates. 

It doesn't stop there. Grammarly can help you improve the quality of your writing by offering advice and insights on your vocabulary and the text's readability– this is especially useful for blog posts. 

If you write a lot on a daily basis (and most of us do), Grammarly can help you stay on the right(ish) side of grammar purists and spelling aficionados everywhere. 

Learn more:

Black_spot
Screencasting & Video

Screencasting is a great way create online videos you can use on your website, share to social media or upload to YouTube.

Camtasia

We switched at the start of 2021 to Camtasia fro all our YouTube videos and most of our tutorials.

The big advantage with Camtasia is the Techsmith Ecosystem, where we use not only Camtasia, but also Snagit and Techsmith Video Review.

Here is a video on why we switched and how we are using Camtasia now

ScreenFlow

Screenflow  is a phenomenal bit of software. You can use it to edit videos and record screencasts. It’s my go to tool but sadly it’s just available for Macs.

Want to know more? Check out our videos:

InVideo

We use InVideo to create our social sharing videos.

  • It is outstanding for Instagram and Facebook promotional videos.
  • Easy to edit
  • HUGE library of stock video, images and music, with all rights-cleared!
  • Ever growing template library, you do not need to be an editor to create great videos.
Example of video created with InVideo
Black_spot
Social Media Marketing
To use social media to its full potential, you need to build a following. These tools will help you manage your social media, craft effective updates and grow your audience.

AgoraPulse

AgoraPulse is a social media management tool. It lets you schedule social media posts, follow the conversations taking place across your profiles, moderate and reply to comments, track ads and much more.

If you are building an active social media presence, this is one heck of a tool. The team recently updated key functionalities, making it even more effective.

Want to know more? Check out our videos:

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo  is a phenomenally powerful marketing research tool. Even just using the free version lets me find relevant articles that I can schedule to share through Twitter using AgoraPulse.

It’s a great way to stay on top of what’s going on in your industry and catch any breaking news.

TubeBuddy

TubeBuddy  is a free browser extension that installs directly into your browser and helps you manage your YouTube channel.

We use it to optimize our YouTube videos. It saves us a lot of time looking for the perfect tags by suggesting relevant one based on the topic. Its Videolytics tool, on the other hand, lets you see how competitor videos are performing on YouTube so you can incorporate winning strategies into your own plan.

Want to know more? 

Black_spot
Online Courses
Online courses are an integral part of Dotto Tech and one tool in particular made it possible.

Thinkific

Just like Evernote is the heart of my productivity system, Thinkific is the key to delivering excellent online courses. We host everything on here, from our free list builders all the way to our all-star courses.

It’s robust, easy to use and the team is constantly adding improvements. Plus, it’s free to get started and they have some great materials to help you out.

Learn more:

Black_spot
Team Management
Custom IT services and solutions built specifically for your business

Asana

Asana is a project management tool. You can create projects, break them down into tasks and assign them to various team members.

Asana has a free and a paid version- right now we are still using the free version and it’s been perfect for a team of our size.

Want to know more? 

Slack

Instead of emailing, messaging or sending trained pigeons, we use Slack  to stay in touch throughout the day. Moving all the conversations to a single tool means we don’t miss anything!

Learn more:

Zoom

While Slack is the place we text, we use Zoom  for most of our meetings. It’s incredibly simple to set up, has a handy app for both desktop and mobile and makes it really easy to jump on a quick team conference call.

Learn more:

LastPass

LastPass is a password management tool. It creates and stores secure passwords that sync across different devices. You can securely share your passwords with friends, family and co-workers! It’s invaluable if you’ve got a team.

A tool like LastPass takes the stress out of remembering multiple passwords and makes it that little bit easier to keep your data secure.

Want to know more? 

Black_spot
Webinars
Custom IT services and solutions built specifically for your business

WebinarJam

WebinarJam used to be our go to platform. Back in the day, they used Google Hangouts to power the platform. This April, they switched to their own proprietary software and since then there have been some growing pains.

WebinarJam adjusts the feed based on how many people show up in the room so the first five minutes of a webinar can be a bit choppy. 

On the plus side, it’s got a fantastic chat function. Because we deliver hybrid webinars that’s something that really works for our community as I can jump into chat while the main video is playing.

Demio

Demio is a fantastic webinar platform. It’s intuitive, easy to use and the quality is great. 

We used Demio to deliver some of the modules for our feature Winning at Webinars course and it proved to be robust and pretty darn delightful. The problem is that the chat isn’t as powerful as the WebinarJam one.

Crowdcast

I came across Crowdcast during out latest Webinar Palooza. I liked it so much, it became a go-to webinar platform and we've used it for quite a few Webinar Wednesdays

Crowdcast is easy to use and great for hosting collaborative webinars. The platform offers free recordings, unlimited events, chat exports (perfect for what we do) and useful Zapier integrations for all the plans. 

It's got one particularly cool feature that sets it apart– you can keep replays live on the platform under your creator profile so your followers can access your evergreen content. While we host replays in Thinkific, this feature can be really useful with the right content marketing strategy. 

Black_spot
Livestreaming
Custom IT services and solutions built specifically for your business

Ecamm Live

Want to make better live streams? Ecamm Live can help with that. It's a desktop app that works in your browser and lets you live stream directly from your laptop. 

What's so great about that? By streaming from your laptop instead of your phone, you can use your webcam or podcasting mic to improve the stream's video and audio quality. That's not all. You can upload graphics, images, and video to Ecamm Live and drop them in the live stream to wow your audience

Want to know more?

  •  Ecamm Live– How to Stream Like a Pro 
Black_spot
Distraction & focus
Become more focused and distraction-free in no time!

We all know the incredible benefit we receive when we achieve “Flow State” or being “In the Zone”. When we are increasingly focused on the task at hand, the world seems to shrink away and we have total clarity and a sense of purpose. 

It is when we are most productive, we do our best work and get the most done.

But unfortunately, the world seems to conspire against us, and distraction rules the day, it is increasingly difficult to achieve Flow state with all the distractions both external and self-inflicted. 

I have a secret weapon to help me get in the zone, every day. Music!

Specifically, music scientifically designed to help you concentrate. 

2 apps, both I am happy to recommend.

 

These apps have a huge variety of music genres at different tempos so you can find the perfect soundtrack for your work life.

I know it sounds strange, and to be honest, it does not work for everyone, but for me the results have been phenomenal (and unexpected.)

TIP! Both these apps work best with noise-cancelling headphones

Want to know more? Check out our videos:

Black_spot
Hardware
Custom IT services and solutions built specifically for your business

Getting the sound right

Audio is the most important part of a video setup. People will watch poor video that has good audio HOWEVER they will not watch good video with bad audio!

My traditional setup looks like this:

 

This is a “Pro” setup, using a dynamic XLR studio mic running through a mixing board that converts the analogue audio to a digital signal and also records my Podcast.

My mic is a classic voice-over mic, much loved in the radio community. It still sounds great, I love the bottom end, but It is not as popular these days as many podcasters love the Hiel PR40 Dynamic Mic.

A great match to the Heil PR40 at a great price point would be either FocusRite 2i2 or 2i4 or Apogee Duet II.

However, most of us do not need the “Pro” level audio gear and will get amazing results from one of many outstanding USB mics like the Blue Yeti. It's the standard-bearer for USB mics.

If the price is holding you back, the ATR2100 is a decent alternative and the value leader in bang for the buck.

The right light

If you want crisp video quality, good lighting is essential.

In my old studio I had a bargain setup with a green screen and umbrella lights.

Due to the size of my new studio, I'm switched to LED lights because they are smaller and give me more control. Check out the photo below. I am really pleased with the new studio!

Video quality

The venerable old Logitech C920 is still the workhorse camera most of us use for screen casting and video conferencing. While I've tested the C922 (the newer, sharper version) there's something about the C920 that I just like better.

I have upgraded to the Logitech Brio, 4K Webcam, and it is a joy to use, The quality of the image is outstanding, well worth the extra $ in my opinion!

Even with the right webcam and lighting we sometimes need a bit of help to get the video just right.

I use f.lux, a video screen color correction software that lets me while balance the color of the computer display.

If you use a mac, webcam settings is perfect for color balancing your webcam and improving video quality.

Want to learn more? Take a look at:

Taking care of the posture

Sitting at a desk all day isn't exactly good for you. To keep my muscles somewhat engaged, I use the CoreChair.

It's an ergonomically designed chair that engages your core muscles and promotes active sitting. I have to say, I love mine!

I don't make any affiliate commission off the CoreChair, but we do have a deal where you can save if you purchase one. Use “dottotech10” to get 10% off.