The Best Apps for Bloggers

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When you first start blogging, you might just pull out a laptop one day and decide it's a good day to start a blog. Your photo quality may not be great, your photos probably aren’t all that impressive, and it may not be until later that you'd like to step it up and work on delivering more professional content. I definitely have made a lot of blogging mistakes along the way, but a lot has changed since my first year of blogging. When you're ready to take your leap into the world of more serious blogging, using applications will make your workflow as smooth as possible and provide a lot of support for you. Many applications even have a free package that will work well for you. Here are some great apps to check out!

Photos

Photography and editing photos are the bread and butter of blogging. They affect not only your blog itself, but also your Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter accounts, and so much more. You want them to be slick and easy to access. Icloud sharing is fantastic for this. Of course, that will only work if you own something in the Apple family - an iMac, Macbook, or iPad. The file transfers take seconds. SmugMug comes highly recommended for ease of access to high-res images when you don’t want to compromise on quality and aren’t at home. Of course, for things like screenshots for information step-by-step guide style posts, you should read https://setapp.com/how-to/screenshot-on-mac. I also really love working with Canva for easy, high quality posts and labels for Pinterest-friendly titles. Before using Canva, consider using filters on Preview, Lightroom, or Adobe Photoshop. If you need free use photos, Unsplash is a great option!

Social Media

Once you have written a post, you can't just post it and be done. In fact, writing the post is only the beginning of the work most of the time. After all, you created the content for people to read and enjoy. In order to do that, you need to share it- as much as possible, and sometimes even more than once on a platform! It is worth remembering that even though the blogging world might seem small and oversaturated - you can’t over saturate the internet - it is limitless. So share a lot and often. Hootsuite is very popular and manages all of your social media in one space. It's especially great if you hate swapping between tools. Buffer now has more options than it has in previous years, and the free package is worth checking out. Once you have that in order, creating a drip feed campaign with MissingLettr will serve you well too. You can also stick to simple schedulers like Tailwind, which is a nice option I use.

Photo by Anete Lūsiņa on Unsplash

Writing

You may not always be home when inspiration for a great post shows up. There are a few spaces that offer great ways to capture those ideas that pop up on the fly. I've even used text- to- speech before to get great blog posts started while I'm driving. Google Docs is a leading contender - they are constantly introducing new tools within docs. Slack is great if you are working with a virtual assistant, or need to be in communication with people often. Trello is perfect for arranging your to-do list and having it there on your phone to access instantly, and Pocket is a quick way to save pages that you want to read later. I love just sitting and writing on Blogger for my posts, but some people even kick it old school and hand write some draft of posts! 

Focus

If you struggle to stay focused, then you really need to think about putting deadlines throughout your day. Staying productive can be exhausting sometimes, but setting goals means you are more likely to get everything done when you need to. Pomodoro is the most popular method to get things done. There are a few options for this in terms of apps:

• FocusBooster
• Be Focused Pro
• Pomodoro Tracker
• Pomelle
• Toggl

When you are creating content, it is better to maximize the time you have, and apps like the ones mentioned are a quick way to streamline what you do and help you get it done better. You can also check out some great blogging books for more info!

All in all, blogging is a rewarding creative outlet, but there is definitely a lot more to it than people may assume at first. It's a great idea to use the tools available for you in order to make it less work and less time-consuming overall. Hope these tips are helpful, friends! 

Currently,

Kelsie