I’m going to be honest here: I think a lot of folks don’t give influencers enough credit. Whether someone’s running a blog as a hobby, or if they’ve taken the leap and gone full-time, there’s a lot of behind the scenes work involved with running an influencer business: after all, we are technically small business owners.
People might think we’re just posing in front of a camera all day long, but I actually spend a minimal amount of time creating content. Most of my day is filled with desk work: negotiating campaigns, submitting drafts, sending invoices, following up on overdue invoices: I could go on and on.
This year, I’ll be celebrating my 8th blogging anniversary (time flies!), and over the years, I’ve tried dozens of apps to help me stay organized. Today I’m sharing some of my the best apps for bloggers that I use on a daily basis that make my life easier as a small business owner!
Best Apps For Bloggers:
Wave Apps
Tom introduced me to Wave Apps back in 2017, and my life has changed for the better. IMO, this is one of the best accounting apps out there for a small business owner!
Wave is a free website where you can do it all: send out invoices, upload receipts, and enter in your bookkeeping. For a small fee, you can even do payroll via Wave if you have other employees. It’s a godsend come tax time, because it breaks down your income and business expenses, and you can add your accountant as a contributor so they can download all of your bookkeeping info.
I also love their invoicing system: in addition to the website, you can download their Invoice mobile app and send out invoices on the go. This helped me out so much, considering I easily travel for 2 or 3 weeks a month during my busy season. At a glance, you can see what invoices are overdue, and you can also schedule out reminders 14, 7, and three days before an invoice is due, and follow up emails 3, 7, and 14 days after an invoice is past-due. Having these reminders automated saved me so much time!
Wave also offers a Receipts mobile app, and if you take a photo of your receipts, it will automatically generate information from the receipt, and you can enter it in for bookkeeping purposes.
Tl;dr: this is the best financial app I’ve ever used!
Asana
Asana is a free project management system that I use to help me stay on top of the many deadlines and campaigns that I’m working on. Every time I’m assigned a sponsored project, I’ll create a project in Asana and upload any campaign briefs and/or signed agreements that I might have; just so that I have all of my campaign documents all in one place. I can also assign myself tasks in Asana, which I mainly use to keep track of draft due dates and campaign timelines.
It’s saved me a ton of time: I can access the Asana website from any computer, and they have a mobile app as well. Since I work on a desktop at home and my laptop when I travel, it’s easier for me to upload all the campaign documents into Asana so I can read them on either computer, whether I’m at home or on the go — and I don’t have to dig through a lengthy email thread to pull up the campaign brief or agreement every single time I need it.
You can also add team members to Asana: my assistant and Tom are both on my team, and I’ll also assign them tasks with due dates. Asana will automatically send email reminders about any upcoming tasks that are due, and it’s helped me stay on top of things!
CoSchedule
I wrote about CoSchedule a few years ago, and I still feel the same about this app: it is a godsend regarding planning out both my social media and editorial calendar.
With CoSchedule, you can schedule posts on your WordPress blog, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram accounts. While I prefer to use Tailwind to schedule Pinterest posts, and Planoly to schedule Instagram posts, I still utilize CoSchedule to schedule my blog, Facebook and Twitter posts on a daily basis.
What I love about CoSchedule is that as soon as I’m done writing a blog post, I can use the app to promote my post on my social media channels with ease. CoSchedule uses the Buffer system to determine what the best time of day is for that social post to launch, based on your audience’s engagement. I typically schedule 2 Facebook posts/day and 10 Twitter posts/day and share a mix of my old and new content.
While CoSchedule isn’t a free app, it is one of the better investments I’ve made for my brand. You can try the program out for a few weeks for free to see if you like it!
Planoly
If you’ve monetized your Instagram feed, or want an app that can plan out your perfect feed, Planoly is the perfect app for you.
I have a love/hate relationship with Instagram, but to be perfectly honest: it’s what brands are focusing on right now, and it generates more revenue than any one of my seven channels right now. Side note: brands, do you know that I constantly post on seven different platforms, and Instagram isn’t my sole focus? Cool.
Anyway. I digress. I have a few sponsored projects on IG a month, and I usually have to send drafts ahead of time for both sponsored in-feed posts and IG Stories. After I submit a draft, the brand sends their edits, and voila: I know exactly what image and caption to post.
Instead of digging through emails or blogger networks to find my approved image and caption right before I want to post, I’ll copy and paste that info, plug it into Planoly and get my post(s) scheduled. Yes, you can schedule both in-feed IG posts AND IG Stories on Planoly which is a game-changer. I also like to schedule IG Stories for any press trips I go on: I don’t like sharing my location in real-time, so I usually shoot my IG Stories in the moment and post them either right after I leave said location or the next day.
In addition to planning out your feed on Planoly, you can also view analytics about your account. I pay a small quarterly fee for the SOLO plan, but you can schedule a limited number of posts per month with a free account.
