Staying home is the perfect time to update your social media skills. We have selected a few of our favourite applications that we feel will help you to update and upscale your business during this social isolation time. Thank you, Covid-19. Why not learn a new application every week? This way when things get sorted, you would have learnt something new to improve and update your business.
1. Snapseed
Do you ever look at other people’s pictures on their social media feed and think: “Wow! Those pictures look amazing!”. Well, if you do, there is a strong possibility that those pictures have been edited. This is where Snapseed comes in.
We love this app because it is free and allows us to have professional quality looking pictures from wherever you work. Snapseed makes your picture pop by allowing you to change the saturation and make it brighter or darker. It also has features that allow you to zoom in and add clarity, fine-tune details like eye colour and even smooth out the skin on the face of your model. You can also use filters that can give your image a vintage, noir or grunge look.
Key Features:
The application is free
You can edit individual photos
You can enhance colour and small details
Allows you to have a flawless picture as it cleans your image
Has a good selection of editing tools
Allows you to change the picture mood and period with filters
Allows you to look back at the original picture and keep what you like
2. Preview
This application is for people like me who are addicted to Instagram, or Instagrammers who want to save time. Preview is a planning application. It does a a lot of the work for you by designing and managing your Instagram page or pages. We love that there are soooo many features in this app! If you can think of it, this app does it.
We will share most of the features so that you can pick the ones that are important to you and your business needs. Preview allows you to arrange and rearrange posts, plan your Instagram feed, find hashtags that are trending, edit your photos and schedule your posts. It can even check your analytics.
Like most other applications, there is a free version. If you want to unlock all the features, you have the option of paying for the Pro package or the Premium package. The paid plans come with backup and sync options. All we can say is: #getpreviewing!
Key Features:
Allows you to drag and drop pictures
Has really good filters
Allows you to repost whenever you want
Helps you find the best hashtags to grow your account
Helps you plan your feed with your team
Offers free, unlimited space for photos and videos
Good editing tools
Can be used by a team
3. Create
With the Create Flyers & Logos - Maker, you can design really good looking images and graphics. I use it a lot. This is an Apple application and not everyone uses Apple products. There are similar applications out there for Android devices (Adobe Spark, Poster Maker and Desygner) that do pretty much the same thing.
I like Create because it does exactly what it says on the tin. I have used it for a while and I am familiar with the tools and drawing applications. It allows me to share my projects with other team members, as well as collaborate and edit projects. You can use pictures, shapes, lines, design logos, make photo collages, mood boards and create graphics all in one place.
Key features:
You can arrange multiple photo layers
Edit fonts, typography and text
Draw lines, edit stroke/fill
Change shapes or stretch, rotate and scale them
Add rounded corners
Group layers, or add and subtract layers
Save reusable components
Import editable Create files to other devices
Hex/RGB colours, save colours
Choose your colour gradients
Make two-tone photos
Add transparent backgrounds - PNG
Export vectors - SVG, PDF
Make Snapchat filters
Set canvas size, grid spacing
Zoom canvas
Snap to grid/object
Install fonts
Supports Apple Pencil
4. SurveyMonkey
If you are looking for an application that will let you know what your customers want, this is the ideal platform. It allows you to go directly to your clients and ask them yourself. With SurveyMonkey, you can create surveys that measure your user engagement and get anonymous customer feedback. This can be done on more modern platforms, but we find that when customers are nameless you get much broader feedback about your ideas, products, pricing or website. Customers will also share with you unrealised or missing possibilities within your target market. We like the fact that it lets you know exactly what your customers need, want and expect.
This application is really good to use when you work in a medium-to-large team. All results and reports can be viewed by different team members without sharing login information.
There is free plan that allows you to create and send a survey with up to 10 questions. You can use questions, descriptive text or images. This app is ideal for small companies that do not have a large budget. If you require extra features or more than 40 responses to your questions, you will have to use a paid monthly plan. Plans start from £20/month.
Key Features:
You get expert written questions that are specific to your business
You can create surveys from a template and include your own business colours, brand and logos
You can see survey results as they come in on your mobile or any device you have the app on
Allows you to send your surveys out on other digital platforms; website, email and social media
I hope you find our tips useful. Please send us a message if you would like us to blog about anything that will be useful to your business.
We look forward to hearing from you. Keep safe.
X
Sarah