People ask us all the time, what apps do you have in your tool box? We’ve done an internal audit amongst our team and collected our go to’s for 2023 that we use daily to help us work smarter, not harder!
1. Content Scheduler
At the moment as an organisation we’re using Loomly and loving it! All our ongoing clients receive their own logins where they receive a content calendar a month in advance (for some clients) they can give feedback, approve and schedule their content in one place without additional meetings and email trails outside our monthly strategy and reporting session saving them time and money!
Getting a great content scheduler can assist with
Giving a bird’s eye view to your month ahead so we can see what content will look like in a grid view in one-easy place (great for those who want an ‘aesthetically pleasing’ feed).
Allow us to apply content pillars using labels which makes it easy to understand what type of content works best for your platforms when it comes to reporting.
Allows us to batch content ahead of time which saves time so we can complete other marketing activities for our clients.
Set and forget (within reason) having a program that automates your posting including Reels, Tik Tok and carousel posts will really help optimise admin so you don’t have to remember to post if optimal time is outside work hours.
Allows us to be proactive rather than reactive and reducing the amount of posting “on the fly” which helps with consistency and staying on message to reach overall objectives.
Helps with reporting
Community management in one easy place.
See a screenshot from Loomly below, it also has a mobile app making it easy to create content on the go!
2. Password Management System
Having a great Password Management system saves us and our clients countless hours trying to track down passwords that may have been set up by a previous employee or maybe they haven’t been recorded or changed without any record.
It gives simple access to multiple accounts and the convenience of the autofill feature means you can update your password manager from your logins and browsers with a couple of easy clicks.
One password to rule them all is great - at the moment, we’re using Last Pass and all our ongoing clients are given their own password folder where we store their information and can quickly and easily give them access and pull requested logins on request!
See screenshot below, it also has a mobile app to for ease!
3. Closed Captions
As so many of us watch videos without volume nowadays having closed captions on your video is so important.
Out of all the programs out there, at the moment we love Rev, it’s super easy to use, spits out a range of different formats and most of all is normally super accurate which saves us so much time when creating our client videos! They've just rebranded, check them out below.
4. Spelling and Grammar Assistance
Whether you’re tapping out a quick email, content or writing a long report - Grammarly is a great tool to have loaded on your computer to give you feedback on the go for reassurance and another set of eyes. It is an American program though so just keep that in mind with the spelling suggestions, click the screenshot below.
5. Digital Design
After creating branding and guidelines using the traditional Adobe Suite of programs we often will use Canva to create easy-to-use digital templates after setting up a brand kit using the guidelines we would have created in the initial brand design process to be able to create content on the go.
The other benefit of the brand kit functionality makes it easy for everyone in your organisation to be working under the same guidelines (which makes it harder for different fonts and colours to creep into your creative which dilutes all the hard work you would have done in the logo and brand guidelines phase).
6. Editing
While we use Canva for basic edits for digital assets, you can't go past the traditional Suite of Adobe products to help implement your creative ideas.
We use the obvious and more traditional programs and apps for this, think Lightroom and Photoshop for photo editing, Premier Pro for video editing and InDesign for layout and page design projects.
Honourable Mention
Heard of Canva Magic Writing Tool, Jasper AI, Chat GPT and AI Copywriting? While I don’t think it will replace humans this is the future and deserves its own blog as we learn the capabilities of its functionality over the next few weeks.
To be honest I’m excited about the possibility of it as marketers to be able to now offer a service to implement an effective full omni-channel strategy for our clients across all of their platforms at a price range that is no longer out of many businesses' orbit!
Stay tuned as we explore this new space and share our experience next month.
Who is The Brand Bar?
We are a full-service marketing and communications agency and understand time is a valuable resource. We can do a full marketing review of your strategy on your behalf and make necessary recommendations for you to achieve your goals.
We can even implement it on your behalf via a project or monthly retainer arrangement, book a FREE Discovery session and let's chat today at hello@thebrandbar.com.au .
Subscribe to The Alliance by The Brand Bar
Sharing what we know, to help your business grow. Get ahead with all the latest marketing, branding and social media news, strategy tips and industry insights delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe here.
Written by Philippa Crosthwaite
The Brand Bar Pty Ltd