In this video we’re gonna go over my 7 absolute favorite apps I use pretty much every day
to create and manage all my social media content that I’m sure are going to help you stay
consistent and make your content production fast and satisfying.
Ready? Let’s do this!
Hi my lovely people, it’s Natalia and welcome back to my channel where I share super-actionable
ideas on content creation for entrepreneurs and creatives! In today’s video, I’m going
to share with you my absolute top apps for managing and creating social media content.
These are the essential apps that are going to help you be more creative, more efficient
and generally make content creation so much easier for you. All of them are apps that
I use all the time, pretty much daily for the most part, and I’m sure you’re going
to find some inspiration for your own process.
Most of the apps mentioned here are free to use with just a few exceptions and some of
them can also be upgraded to a paid plan. Some of them are desktop-only, some phone-only
apps, but most are available for both a phone and a laptop. I’ve included them in no particular
order other than trying to make the whole thing flow logically with how the creation
process goes, but I can say now that the last app is by far my absolute favorite choice
and if I could only keep one of them, that would definitely be it! I also have a bonus
app that’s not DIRECTLY contributing to content creation itself but it helps get things
done in my book so make sure you stick to the very end for that.
Alright, let’s not waste any of our precious time and jump right into the video!
Descript is definitely one of my favorite discoveries of 2021! It’s a podcast and
video editing software but that doesn’t even begin to describe what it can do. It’s
pretty much a complete production tool that let’s you record video and audio, transcribes
it for you automatically with great accuracy, then lets you edit it basically like a text
document, add overlay graphics, music, transitions, record voiceover, it creates automatic captions
for you, automatically improves the quality of your audio and so much more. You can do
your own audiograms, create long & short video forms, repurpose your video content to other
platforms because it’s sooo easy to transform what you’ve already got… I could go on
and on like this, but I think you get me. Descript is one of these apps that provides
a very intuitive interface and makes your editing process a breeze.
I am now a proud ambassador of Descript so if you use my link below to sing up, you’re
helping my channel with absolutely no change to you. If I weren’t an ambassador, I would
still wholeheartedly recommend the app so definitely check it out yourself.
Staying in the video lane a little bit longer, I have another app, this time for your phone,
which is CapCut. I realize there are plenty of options available in the app world, both
for iOS and Android, but for loads of reasons I like this one best. CapCut is completely
free and it’s owned by ByteDance, which is the same company that owns TikTok so it’s
no wonder that their product is perfect for any quick video editing, be it for TikToks,
Reels or any other shorter videos. It’s a perfect little app that’s packed with
few functions. Apart from the obvious editing options like cutting, pasting, speeding things
up, slowing them down, adding transitions or filters, CapCut allows you to record your
own voiceover right in the app which is super useful for Reels and frankly, I sometimes
record short clips just to explain something to my clients and that’s quite handy because
I can just focus on showing what I do and then hop over to CapCut and add my commentary.
What I love as well is that it connects with TikTok which means you can add any trending
sounds to your edit without a hassle. Another quite important feature allows you to overlay
multiple clips or images over your original video and this opens up so many possibilities.
But that doesn’t end there, you can also remove backgrounds from clips to overlay them
almost like with the green screen effect on TikTok, and you can also add masks which allows
you to create more advanced transitions straight from your phone and without more complicated
software. Honestly, what’s not to love.
the Adobe Lightroom app is my favorite free app that you can use on your phone to really
improve the quality of your photos. I’ve been a photographer for years, commercially
at some point and now completely as a hobby, and used to use the Adobe Suite for my photos
so no wonder I’m drawn to the phone app as well. It’s just a powerful little tool
that’s going to make your photos really come to life. We all know that sometimes when
you take a photo of a beautiful scene, the result often doesn’t do it justice. And
it’s no wonder because our eyes are just so much more sophisticated than our cameras.
Even though it’s never going to be just as good, you can definitely play around with
some contrast, curves, colors to get it closer to what it would normally look like. Lightroom
has such a powerful toolkit of functions that really helps you apply a great level of color
corrections, crop and rotate your photos, use curves to make more advanced changes and
so much more.
If you want to give your Instagram feed a more cohesive feel and strengthen your brand
image in general, you can use presets which are basically custom filters that you can
apply to each of your photos to achieve a specific aesthetic. There are plenty free
or paid presets available for the mobile Lightroom app which is a cool option if you want to
play around with some of them.
Another honorable mention here is Snapseed which I often use in conjunction with Lightroom
because it has a few other options for free that Adobe doesn’t offer. That’s mostly
to do with removing objects or healing etc. so you may want to look into it as well.
the Adobe Lightroom app is my favorite free app that you can use on your phone to really
improve the quality of your photos. I’ve been a photographer for years, commercially
at some point and now completely as a hobby, and used to use the Adobe Suite for my photos
so no wonder I’m drawn to the phone app as well. It’s just a powerful little tool
that’s going to make your photos really come to life. We all know that sometimes when
you take a photo of a beautiful scene, the result often doesn’t do it justice. And
it’s no wonder because our eyes are just so much more sophisticated than our cameras.
Even though it’s never going to be just as good, you can definitely play around with
some contrast, curves, colors to get it closer to what it would normally look like. Lightroom
has such a powerful toolkit of functions that really helps you apply a great level of color
corrections, crop and rotate your photos, use curves to make more advanced changes and
so much more.
If you want to give your Instagram feed a more cohesive feel and strengthen your brand
image in general, you can use presets which are basically custom filters that you can
apply to each of your photos to achieve a specific aesthetic. There are plenty free
or paid presets available for the mobile Lightroom app which is a cool option if you want to
play around with some of them.
Another honorable mention here is Snapseed which I often use in conjunction with Lightroom
because it has a few other options for free that Adobe doesn’t offer. That’s mostly
to do with removing objects or healing etc. so you may want to look into it as well.
If you’ve been on Instagram for a while, you’ll know how painful looking for hashtags
can be. After testing sooo many free tools for years that weren’t really helpful, I’ve
finally found one that actually works! Flick is now my favorite hashtag research tool that
not only makes it very easy to search for hashtags, but it also informs you how competitive
they are. Now, I don’t have to rely on the free apps that usually spew massive hashtags
like #travel or #food which, let’s face it, is completely useless if you’re serious
about being discovered, but I have access to a wide variety of active hashtags with
clear information about how many people use them and how much engagement they get. Apart
from that, Flick lets me gather my own collections and informs me when hashtags are banned whether
I search for them or when there are some freshly banned ones on my lists. But something that
I probably appreciate the most is their data. The app gives me great analytics that I wouldn’t
be able to see otherwise (especially since I’m based in the UK and my insights on IG
are limited in any case). What I love so much is that Flick as opposed to other tools I’ve
tried before, actually helps me rank which is really great considering that it’s tough
to do it with hashtags in any case if you’re not a big account. Once that happens, I know
what I can use again in the future for similar types of posts and that creates a positive
loop of reach for my profile.
Later is one of the most popular, and, in my opinion, the best scheduling app on the
market by far. I’ve tried others like Planoly, Hootsuite or again, as mentioned, the Content
Planner from Canva but Later is just so much more intuitive. I’m sure it comes as no
surprise to you that creating content consistently is hard and one of the best ways to save your
precious time is to batch and schedule all your posts ahead of time. Later is the perfect
tool for it, because it helps manage all your social media profiles because it connects
to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, and even LinkedIn. It’s so much
easier to just drag and drop your images to a monthly view, copy and paste your captions,
insert your hashtags, and set to auto-publish to forget all about it. You can see what your
feed will look like once you have everything scheduled and if you don’t like something,
you can move it quickly too. It’s also much easier to repurpose your old content with
Later because you can just pop it on your calendar to be scheduled for later and you’re
sorted. Just to make you aware, there are some limitations to the auto-publish feature
due to Instagram itself and it’s only available for single photo posts. For carousels, videos
or stories, you can schedule your posts and then you’ll receive a notification to post
them which is still a great option. Using the free plan, you can schedule up to 30 posts
per social media platform monthly and you won’t have access to scheduling stories,
carousels or first comments. Nevertheless, I think it’s a great option to take some
pressure of your shoulders when it comes to content creation and free up a lot more time
to focus on your business.
And last but DEEEEFINITELY not least, the winner, the dark horse of apps, my absolute
favorite app, and my operations powerhouse, Notion! I’ve used so many other apps to
manage my day-to-day, like Trello or Asana, but honestly, for me, nothing compares. And
well, where do I even begin? Notion is like an all-in-one workspace for project management,
note-taking, docs, content management and that doesn’t even begin to cover what it
is. For the sake of this video, I’ll try to explain what I personally use it for in
life and business, but there will be tons of other applications for it that others use.
First and foremost, Notion is where my content calendars live and out of all the other apps
I’ve used, this one combines all that I need in one place. I can plan all my posts
for all the platforms in one place, quickly switch between different views like a calendar
view or board view and flesh out all my content then and there. It’s so easy to control
my process every step of the way, browsing through my ideas, knowing how many posts need
captions, how many need graphics or videos and how many need tags.
Notion is also the place I store ALL of my content ideas. Whenever I get struck by inspiration,
I immediately either go to the app on my phone or open it on desktop, and log that idea right
in there, not to lose it and to actually see it and work on it next time I’m sitting
to execute my content.
Another reason why I love Notion is that it’s absolutely brilliant for writing and note-making.
As mentioned, I used Asana in the past and loved it but something was always amiss because
I couldn’t really write there properly. Now, with the infinite white space of Notion,
I don’t have any distractions (which is very important for my chaotic brain) and I
have clean and easy formatting which is achieved through many keyboard shortcuts. And even
though the bulk of my writing gets done on desktop, I often find myself sitting in a
bathtub, typing words out on my phone, writing whole YouTube scripts there because even the
app experience is effortless for me.
Apart from content creation itself, all my business operations get sorted in Notion along
with my weekly tasks and plans, I plan and flesh out my courses there and that’s where
I prep and store notes for my clients before and after each consultation. But because I
fell in love in Notion so much, I moved all my personal management there too, with my
goals, habits and systems being carefully planed and noted there each year and I also
make all my book, podcast or documentary notes here, track my habits, manage my gym & weight
goals and so on. Basically, I live out of Notion :D I highly recommend you try this
one out yourself because it’s such a fantastic tool that just keeps on giving.
Let me know if you want me to record my Notion tour for you because this could be a whole
another video in it’s own right.
And now, for the bonus app that is included here as a bit of a side note, Forest. The
reason for the bonus part is because it’s not really a content creation tool but a fun
little app that changed the way I work. Forest is basically like a little timer that sets
the clock for a specific activity that you set yourself. Any time I sit down to work,
I set a 25-minute forest timer for myself and at the end of that 25 minutes, a beautiful
tree grows in my virtual forest and makes me very happy. It really keeps me on track
and focuses my brain on one activity which is especially important when I produce content.
When I write all my captions, it’s easy to get distracted, so I enter a deep-focus
mode on the app which means each time I get out of the app and do something on my phone,
the tree withers which is very sad and annoying to me because it breaks my streak and puts
one dry tree in my well-tended forest. The more you focus, the more coins you get which
you can then use to get more tree species. I love the app because it’s satisfying,
the trees are cute and it provides a bit of gamification to the whole experience which
helps me stick to my habits. It also comes with a Chrome extension that has an allow
list (meaning you can enter any websites you’re allowed to use during your focus) or a blocklist
(which blocks your chosen websites when you work). Forest is a free app for Android with
a Pro version and a paid app for iPhone - I think I paid something like $1.99 for it,
but now it’s $3.99 which I would still gladly pay for it for all the good focusing energy
it brings to my life.
Now tell me, what are your favorite apps for content creation? Have you tried any of the
ones I mention here? I’d love for this channel to be a great resource, a place where we all
exchange ideas and help each other out so share your top apps in the comments below!
If you’d like me to share my favorite equipment or tools in another video, let me know in
the comments too.
I have a whole video on how to create and manage your content calendar so I highly recommend
you watch this one next. If you’re also interested in streamlining your content creation
process, then I’m sure you’re going to love this one too.
As always, it’s such a privilege to have you here watching my video till the very end
so thank you SO MUCH for being here with me. Make sure to subscribe because I have so much
more useful content coming up that’s definitely going to help you on your social media journey
and I’ll see you next time!