All Topics, Blogging & Social Media

5 Free Essential Apps For Bloggers

We are the age of The Influencer. Big brands from high street to high end are waking up to our marketing potential. They’ve begun to invest in our social media crazed selves, and why? Bloggers and Influencers make an impact. Our generation (whether its healthy or not) lives with phone in hand. We spend every waking hour scrolling through socials because we’re nosy. Its all well and good to follow but how do you get followed? If you’re committed to establishing your own brand and social media presence then these are the five essential apps you need to download right now.

The beginning of my own blog and ‘content creator’ title followed with a greater understanding of the importance of all things social media. I searched for anything and everything that could possibly help me to improve my content or to better market myself. I cringe at the recollection of my own Instagram page a mere few years ago, a time when I was barely active and posted poorly lit and uninteresting photos! Now, I’m aware of all kinds of Instagram pressures… people work so hard to stick to a theme and us bloggers are doing anything and everything we can to increase our engagement! There’s no doubt that running a blog and successful social media accounts is a full time job, but I guarantee that these time saving, image enhancing apps will make it much easier to manage.

1. UNUM

UNUM is perfect for the Instagram obsessed organiser. A planning app which lets you dummy post to your Instagram feed, it allows you to rearrange and play around with image placement. This gives you the ability to find the most aesthetically pleasing arrangement before committing anything to your feed. I love using it to see how new images will look alongside existing content. I also use it to make sure that the image looks good on the feed itself: sometimes I take variations of the same content, uploading them allows me to see which looks best. This app consistently makes my feed look more put together.

Note: The images with the little Instagram logo in the bottom right hand corner are those which have already been uploaded onto my actual Instagram. The others are ones I’m playing around with.

*This post previously featured Planaloy. However UNUM doesn’t have limited post uploads per month, so is much less restrictive and for that reason I prefer it. Since switching over I haven’t looked back.

2. Twitly

For many of us, growing Instagram has been an uphill struggle. I for one, find myself having to work much harder to stay relevant, get decent engagement and gain followers. With so many accounts playing the ‘follow to unfollow’ game to increase their numbers, its difficult to trust that new followers will stick around. As a rule I follow back any accounts that I genuinely like. I then check and manage unfollowers every few weeks using the Twitly app. It tattles on both Instagram and Twitter unfollowers so that you can keep an eye on fluctuating follower counts.

3. Lightroom

If you live in the UK and are anything like myself, you’ll agree that the winter months are hellish. There are many reasons I’m of this opinion, but the only relevant one is that its always dark. Great images are arguably THE most important part of online success, but the weather that accompanies the British Winter make light and bright photography next to impossible. That’s where Lightroom comes in. Lightroom is an editing app which not only allows you to control the brightness and highlights, but also the colour… a few small tweaks will completely transform your photo.

Before                                  After

4. Canva

Canva is basically graphic design for dummies! It’s my go-to app for creating blog headers, twitter banners, and even my brand logo! Its so easy to use and has so many inspiring fonts and templates. It even looks after the technicalities for you, with templates that are the exact sizing needed for twitter posts, headers, blog graphics… the list goes on. Here’s one I made for my City Guide to Rome. I also love Unfold for Instagram stories.

5. Buffer

Hands up those who struggle to keep on top of all of their social media platforms. Keeping your head above water in both the blogging and real world can be tough. My twitter used to really suffer when I was having a busy period, which was so frustrating because we all know what a great platform it is for promoting blog posts! The Buffer app is an absolute life-saver if you’re having this issue, because it remembers for you! All you have to do is set a schedule, queue some tweets, and the rest is taken care of.

I hope you love these apps as much as I do and that they free up some of your time and leave you less frazzled! Let me know if there are any apps that I’ve missed but that are essential to your blogging routine… I’d love to check them out and add them to my own.