Entrepreneurs, bloggers, content creators, freelancers, side hustlers, pay attention! This is one you don't want to miss. Let's get productive!
We all want things that make our lives easier, don't we? If you're a blogger, or run your own brand, life can be hectic, so anything which can make it simpler is welcome. Purely for research and crowdsourcing purposes, I touched base with the best in the business, the top dogs of blogging—my dear Irish and Scottish Bloggers to help a brotha out with this post! Working in ecommerce, I've used so many apps in my day, and let's face it, sometimes they're just plain shit! You know, you open an app and spend about an hour trying to figure out how it actually works. Apps need to be user friendly, potentially with a UX a three-year-old could navigate.
And you know I'm slightly obsessed with productivity, right? I just love clever tools, resources and services, which make life easier, that is, when you have 3,000 items on your schedule for the week. Yes, you need to: write a blog post, do socials for the month, reply to emails, do your taxes, workout, arrange travel, keep track of expenses, pay your freelancers, edit photos for an Instagram job—it's exhausting. Anything which makes all that more manageable is worthwhile. So without further adieu, let's countdown some of the best and brightest apps to make life a little sweeter!
Google Calendar |
Starting with the basics, every good business owner knows they need somewhere handy to manage their schedules from; somewhere to pencil in coffee meetings, brainstorming sessions, presentations, speaking engagements. Can I get an 'Amen' for Google Calendar?
This, over the past couple of years, has become my right hand scheduling man. I now live by my calendar as best I can, and by all accounts so does The Life of Bee's Rebecca, who suggested this handy-dandy-and-free application to me. She loves how this helps her stay organised. Calendar's interface is so easy to use, you can colour code different types of calendar's i.e. travel, content, social, and me time—ya'll need to pencil in more me time, guys!
UNFOLD |
It's no secret that Instagram Stories have kicked Snapchat's sweet little ass; and this app has seriously amped up my insta-stories game the last week or two. Thanks to Full Throttle Ireland's Becky for this one. She divulged the not-so-secret app last week, and by not-so-secret I mean it's gone 100% viral with bloggers and brands, no exaggeration.
I'm in love. It's another free add-on available for IOS and Android, making insta-stories that touch more styled, curated and polished. With several free templates and a few paid ones, too, this will be every blogger's/brand's best mate. Just load images from your gallery into the app, position them, add text, save, and boom, upload to IG.
AIRTABLE |
Airtable combines the simplicity and reliability of a run-of-the-mill calendar with the added functionality of a database. While not strictly an app in the traditional sense—not like the above mobile applications—Airtable works on your desktop or mobile, making planning, organising and storing data so simple. Imagine it: you're planning your month's content, click on a day, insert the details of the content, title etc, then take that a step further and select the author, due date, links to socials, extra comments, freelancer fees. Everyone needs Airtable in their lives...everyone!
LIVEEXPENSES |
"I use LiveExpenses to track what I spend on business. I love that I can break it down into different projects and email a full report of expenses on each project to the relevant Producer directly from the app." — Kojii Helnwein from Motowitch
This app is a simple way to track your expenses; fast and intuitive this application works with iPhone / iPod touch and iPad. Users can also add pictures of receipts / invoices / bills / documents. I'm the worst person in the world for tracking expenses, as in, I never do it. So, I may need to download this on the immediate.
PREVIEW |
Raimonda Archimio uses the Preview app which "allows me to see how photos would look on Instagram before posting them directly so it helps me to plan and keep within the same ‘feel’. The cosmomum.co.uk creator is a massive fan of the app which combines a scheduler, hashtag tool, analytics tool and editor—everything you could want in an Instagram tool.
Do you guys have any apps which you love? Let me know in the comments!
