By Bethany Stephens
Earlier this year, Evernote announced that it had reached an astounding 100 million users worldwide. As a point of reference, Twitter has 271 million monthly active users. These numbers are interesting because despite its widespread popularity, Evernote still feels widely unknown and underused. The vast majority of savvy people I interact with are not familiar with Evernote, or they’ve heard about it and don’t really understand the big deal – it’s just another cloud-based note-taking app, right??
Image source: Evernote
The fun upside to Evernote remaining relatively foreign is that discovering another user in a crowd makes it feel like we both know where the fountain of youth is located, and we plan to meet up there later to frolic.
I discovered Evernote in 2009 and became an avid user in 2010, and I still find it ironic that the oldest note I have on file is a Far Side cartoon in which a student asks to be excused from class due to his brain being full. In April 2010, I got tired of looking for that particular cartoon online (apparently I reference it so frequently that this was a huge inconvenience in my life) and filed it in Evernote for easy access:
Credit: The Far Side
It actually couldn’t be more appropriate, because that Gary Larson snippet perfectly captures how I feel about Evernote: I use it because my brain feels full, and I simply don’t have the capacity or the desire to try to remember everything. I’d rather save my limited mental space for remembering which book my daughter is currently reading so that I can ask her about it after school, or for brainstorming big ideas and innovative solutions with colleagues and clients.
So, I’m on a mission to spread the Evernote love. Rather than finding that other user in a crowd and feeling smug together about what we’ve discovered, I want everyone to understand why I am so darn passionate about Evernote. Trust me, those around me hear about it ad nauseum, so I’ve had to resort to being an evangelist for unsuspecting crowds and people who aren’t tired of hearing about it.
Photo credits: Dining With Debbie, nwaFoodie (and apparently Jody Dilday and I swapped sweaters)
From training sessions for CPG companies based in Northwest Arkansas to serve Walmart – the world’s largest retailer and their top customer – to classes for small groups and teams to a recent session during the Arkansas Women Bloggers conference, I’ll talk about Evernote to anyone who will listen. Earlier this year I agreed to join the team at Kendal King Group in order to launch a new breed of retail marketing agency called Velocity, and we’ll be making Evernote and Evernote Business training and consultation available to many of our clients.
- Shameless plug: We’d love to have you follow the Velocity blog and our social accounts (Instagram, Pinterest & Twitte
r ), and we have many upcoming projects where we will collaborate with bloggers, social media users and freelance writers and designers! We’ll work directly through partners like Stephanie Buckley and The Women Bloggers, so stay tuned to the Arkansas Women Bloggers (and other state sites) for details.
After the recent session at the Arkansas Women Bloggers conference, I agreed to put together a recap post for those who weren’t able to participate in the Evernote session or just wanted a handy reference guide.
However, the thing about Evernote is that it certainly can be a game-changer, but there is a lot of ground to cover! So, following this “Convince You That Evernote Is Amazing” post will be a series of three additional posts to help you a) understand what the heck Evernote is b) cover the basics of using it and c) turbo-charge your Evernote use with pro tips and best practices.
So go ahead, jump on in – the water’s fine. Here’s one more nudge:
I’m accustomed to the look on someone’s face during an Evernote session at the exact moment where they realize what it is capable of and how it is applicable in their lives. At the Arkansas Women Bloggers conference, however, I mistook the perplexed looks on the faces of attendees as an indication that I was missing the mark or doing a poor job of representing the complete fabulousness of Evernote. It turns out all those furrowed brows and the silence in the room were actually indicative of their brains simultaneously exploding.
And hey, what can I say? That’s exactly what I’m looking for when I introduce someone to Evernote.
I want brains to explode.
The rest of this series is on the Magpie Marketing blog. Enjoy!
- Becoming an Evernote Ninja, Part 1: A Primer
- Becoming an Evernote Ninja, Part 2: Adopting The Ways of the Cult
- Becoming an Evernote Ninja, Part 3: Enabling Ninja Super Powers
| Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote. |
Thanks Beth for being so willing to be our coach for Evernote. Can I come live with you for a few days? Okay, like maybe a month? Maybe by then I could be promoted to Level 2;). Xoxoxo
Thanks for this! I really wanted to go your session, so I’m playing catch up! Amazing!
Thanks Debbie! Absolutely you can come live with me. You cook, I’ll run the Evernote show. 😉
You may regret that offer:)
Hi Katie! Thanks so much for the note – let me know if you run into any problems or have questions! By the way, your site is adorable – I’m having fun reading some of your past posts. 🙂