Imagine a world in which we could harness the power of ‘there’s an app for that’ to make our lives easier. A world in which marketers can work *with* their laptops and smartphones. A world in which *technology is our friend*. Well, you’re living in that world thanks to these five apps for content marketers.
1. Capture all the ideas with Pocket
Inspiration is the currency of every content marketer. We trade ideas and, as with any other creative endeavour, ideas can bubble to the surface at any time. And there’s nothing more frustrating than a lost idea.
So ours is the discipline to record ideas immediately, which means a collection of open tabs and bookmarks, hastily typed and sometimes incomprehensible pointers to self in Notes, a handwritten scrawl *somewhere* in that Moleskine, or even – surely not in the 21st century – Post-It notes.
Streamline all this mess with Pocket. It’s a simple app for content marketers, which allows you to save and even tag web pages, social media posts, podcasts and videos. Install it on your phone, tablet and desktop browser and start saving those content ideas.
Once you’re in the Pocket ecosystem you can get recommendations based on previously saved content, follow other users and see what they’re digging, and gradually pull together a swipe file that will cover your content needs for generations.
2. Hack your brain with Focus Keeper
Heard of the Pomodoro method? It’s a productivity technique where you set yourself a single task to complete in 25 minutes, then take a break (breaks vary depending on the number of tasks you’ve completed that day).
It’s stupidly simple, but since it was first devised in the 1980s it has become a bedrock of productivity-boosting techniques.
Focus Keeper is a free, basic Pomodoro app which sets you a 25-minute session (you can change the timeframe) and keeps track of how many rounds you’ve completed.
3. Make your photos astounding with Snapseed
We all know that an update with an image performs significantly better than others, right?
But what if you haven’t got the latest smartphone with a camera lens that can pick out the Sea of Tranquillity on a clear night? Are there any apps for content marketers who want to jazz up their own photos?
Absolutely!
Snapseed is one of the best free photo-editing apps. It’s so good, Google bought it. It’s intuitive for beginners, but it also packs some mean advanced features – check out some of the tutorial videos on YouTube and hold onto your socks!
4. Control your social media accounts with Buffer
If you’re managing social media accounts, you’ve probably already got a preferred scheduling app. But if you haven’t, or if you’ve got a team that is struggling to come to grips with it, check out Buffer.
Why?
Because as far as apps for content marketers go it’s darn simple.
Buffer’s interface is clean and simple, the menus are intuitive, you can set it up on your desktop and phone, and for zero monies you can control three accounts and schedule up to 10 posts.
For $10 a month, Buffer Pro gets you eight accounts and 100 scheduled posts. You can scale your subscription further to add multiple users, more accounts and more scheduled posts.
5. Wait, you don’t know about Check My Links?
This is desktop-only, but it’s an absolute life saver.
Keep missing the ‘m’ off of ‘.com’? Can’t remember whether your double forward slashes come before or after your colon? Habitually linking to ‘Teh Grauniad’?
Check My Links crawls your blog post and highlights any broken links before you push it live, meaning no red faces afterwards.