Sharing is caring, and this month I wanted to share some of my favourite apps that I use for business. There are so many apps and programmes you can use these days, it can sometimes be hard to find the wood from the trees. Of course, the whole point of these apps and programmes is that they help you with your working day, hopefully reducing your time spent on tasks or helping give you a little boost!
Social Media
Undoubtedly number one on my list is Canva. This is a fantastic, and free app that you can use on your desktop, or on your phone. It comes with hundreds of templates for a range of platforms and uses, from Facebook posts to Instagram Reel covers, to presentations and banners. The templates are easily adaptable, change the colours and fonts to suit your brand, add your own photos and off you go. Canva also has a huge stock of photos, videos, audio and elements you can use. Let me also say, the Pro version is only £12 a month, and I would highly recommend this investment for your business.
If you do use social media for business, I’ve got a whole host of apps I love to use on a daily basis but one I would say is super important for you is Facebook Business Suite – this is where you can run your Facebook pages and also Instagram profiles, from one location. If like me, you are admin on multiple pages, then this little app helps you save a lot of time. You can even schedule from your phone in advance!
Two of my favourite apps for making Instagram stories are Mojo and Unfold – again there is a range of premade templates already with these, and you can just add your own text and photos. These are a great way to add a bit of a boost to your stories, really helping you stand out from the crowd – and my, what a huge crowd it is these days!
If you’re looking for video editing apps, I love InShot and also Videoshop is a great basic option too. This way you don’t have to worry about getting those videos perfect when you record, because you can spend time editing them afterwards. I am also a huge fan of screen recording – both on my mobile, with XRecorder, and on my desktop with Loom. Screen recordings are yet another way to boost things like presentations – just adding that little bit extra.
Another swanky little app I like to use called LifeLapse. This app lets you create ‘stop motion’videos which are very fun on social media. A stop motion video is a series of photos which are stitched together in a video, you can move items in the video for the animation effect.
General Business & Life
Dealing more with admin, I highly recommend looking at a cloud-based solution for your emails and storage. Not only because it’s great to back everything up to the cloud, but also because you can then access this, and your emails from anywhere. Generally we recommend Microsoft Office 365 for this, but there is also GSuite with Google as well, if you prefer the Gmail experience.
It is great to have a whole host of apps to use, but let’s not be coy – we all probably spend far too much time on our phone, don’t we? There are some apps and features that I love to help me spend time outside of the screen. In particular on my Android phone, I can turn on Focus mode, where I’ve selected apps that when on, the apps aren’t available for me to use. I do this on evenings and weekends, so I can’t see incoming emails, or use any ‘work’ based apps.
Another app that is very popular at the moment for helping with less screen time is Forest. Simply start it off, and you can’t access your phone until a tree has grown! Their motto is stay focused, be present or simply Forest!
I hope these apps help you, and feel free to share your own favourites on social media and tag us, we’d love to hear what everyone else is using!