My Favorite Apps for My Business

Let’s face it, many of us do our work from our phones or ipads these days.  It’s easy, it’s already in our hand and with an app for everything, and it’s simple! Over the last two years since I started running Palms and Paper, I have used a number of apps to help me run and keep by business organized and my life sane.  Some of these have stuck around and I use them every day and some just didn’t make the cut.  Here is a list of my most used apps for my business!

Business & Marketing

Etsy Sell - Hands down next to instagram, this is my most used app for my business.  I can see orders that have come in, orders that need to go out, activity in the shop and answer messages.  I receive notifications directly on my phone and can answer messages quickly and in a timely manner.  If you are an Etsy seller and haven’t downloaded this yet, it’s a MUST.

Quickbooks - I have recently started using quickbooks to do my accounting.  I use to use an excel sheet that my husband made for me but I was horrible with keeping up with it.  I decided to invest ($5 a month) with quickbooks for small business.  So far I’m enjoying it and after a little trial and error, it seems user friendly.  I also like that it has an app that I can make changes from as well as upload pictures of receipts.

MailChimp - One of my goals for 2019 is to send out regular email blast and newsletters (in additional to regularly blogging).  The MailChimp app allows me to monitor and track my campaigns as well as work on them from the app. I plan my campaigns out on my computer and have found it very user friendly.  While I plan each campaign on the computer, the app has my favorite part; The app allows me to track each campaigns progress. In addition to tracking the campaigns progress I can also see who’s signed up for the newsletter and make changes to any new campaigns I am planning.  I believe this is essential and a huge help since part of doing the newsletters to is to help grow my business.  This tracking allows me to see who it’s reached and judge what’s worked and what hasn’t.

 Social Media

Planoly - Next to lightroom, Planoly was my best discovery for 2018 in terms of apps and a MUST for running the social media side of my business. I downloaded a few other instagram scheduling apps and played around with them before I choose Planoly.  I personally found Planoly the easiest to work with, loved their layout and the features they offered for scheduling. Planoly allows me to add my caption, hashtags, resize my images and schedule them.  Planning your instagram posts and making sure everything “stays on brand” can be time consuming and when you are trying to do batch planning, you want to insure your feed is consistant. Planoly is perfect for this! I try to plan my posts a week at a time (sometimes if I’m feeling ambitious, two weeks) and love being able to see how my feed will flow.  Once it’s time for the post to go live, it automatically posts it for me - this feature had me sold!    For times I’m tired of looking at my phone, I can work with it in a desktop version which is great for longer captioned posts. 

Unfold - If you are looking to have a uniformed and consistency in your stories this app is great!  It gives templates that are free and others that you can pay for that you can use to create stories. It also saves your stories so you can go back to use them later or see what you posted.I save my based on the day.I unfortunately don’t use it as often as I would like or should because at times I can find it a little time consuming but when I have the time, I love it!

Photos & Videos

Canon  Connect - Last time I used something other than my iphone to take pictures, there was a huge process of getting photos off of the camera and on to my phone (probably why I stopped using it so much).  Thankfully those days are over and technology has been generous to us.  I recently invested in a Canon DSRL Rebel and now take the majority of my photos on this camera.  Canon Connect allows me to view and download the images on my camera directly to my phone or ipad.   I can also delete the photos I don’t use/don’t like which has been great for me keeping my SD card clean and clear, as well as my phone. 

Lightroom - Next up for my photos, I use this for ALL my editing.  I use to use four different apps for editing my photos and it was a huge waste of my time.  Thankfully, I found Lightroom (why did it take me so long to find it?!?!) and I was able to give up the other apps.   My favorite feature about light room is that you can save your presets.  This saves so much time when you are trying to edit photos for social media and for etsy posting; I use different filters on both so editing can be a little time consuming. Lightroom allows you to edit, organize, store, and share your photos across desktop, mobile, and web.

Hyperlapes - Hyperlapse is my favorite app for filming videos.  A lot of videos I take are writing videos and there for usually over a minute long. Typically I put my writing videos in my stories and usually need them to be shorter in time (instagram only allows 15 second videos in stories), Hyperlapse allows me to choose the speed of my video - the faster the shorter.

xx

-M