Being a publisher can be tough at any stage, but that seems to be especially true for small, upcoming businesses. With limited staff and resources, media owners are required to do most of the heavy lifting themselves. From writing and editing to image processing and marketing management, etc. In all honesty, that’s how things are usually when most people start out. Nowadays, the level of quality demanded by users puts a massive strain on publishers. There’s just so much to do and spreading yourself too thin can be the death of progress. But don’t worry, we understand. Here’s a list of powerful tools and apps that can lift the burden of day-to-day activities and make your life a whole lot easier.
The Hemingway App
The Hemingway app is an extremely useful tool that serves as your digital editor. Just paste in your text and it displays all kinds of errors and suggestions on how you could improve the piece. The best part is that it doesn’t just point out grammatical issues, but also analyzes readability, cohesion, and accuracy. Additionally, you get an overall score and average reading time for each text, which can help you adjust how any further material is written.
If you haven’t tried Hemingway before – go and check it out, it can really be a lifesaver! The online version is free and there’s a paid desktop app available as well.
CopyScape
Worried about someone plagiarizing your work? If not, then maybe you should be. There’s plenty of websites stealing content from other sources and putting it up for profit. It definitely sucks having put all the effort to deliver great material to your audience, only to have it snatched by someone else for their own profit. Obviously, you can’t check each and every website out there by hand and that’s where CopyScape comes in. Just past the URL to your page and it automatically searches for copies of your work. That way you can find out if you’re getting ripped off and report any violators.
Buffer
If you’re utilizing social media to reach a larger audience you probably know that the task could be overwhelming. Especially if you’re on multiple platforms at the same time. Creating posts, posting them at the right time, running analytics – and all that each and every time you publish. It’s a nightmare. Buffer helps you centralize the process, providing you a single interface to manage all your accounts and publications. You can create, schedule posts and analyze their performance quickly and conveniently. It also provides a bunch of useful tools and extensions, and you can even manage conversations on all your accounts. Add team members and assign roles, so you’re all working side-by-side. All in all, it’s a great asset and the pricing is quite reasonable.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is an absolute must-have for anyone who’s serious about their marketing. It basically allows you to automate your entire process and target the right people at the right time. The platform is mainly used to manage email marketing campaigns, but that’s far from the only thing it can do. It integrates with your website and tracks users’ behavior, which gives you the opportunity to understand your audience much better. And the best bit – it’s all automatic. Just set it up once through the super easy-to-use interface and you’re good to go. ActiveCampaign is a powerful tool, which also can integrate with social media and any advertising campaigns you’re running. This means that all of your marketing activities can benefit from the software. The possibilities are just too vast to cover all at once, so if you haven’t already – go and check it out!
Google Trends
Everyone knows that Google makes great software and most of us can’t even imagine living without their apps and engines. However, Trends seem to be one that not a lot of people know about. It’s basically a platform that displays data on what people all around the world are searching for. It has a user-friendly interface in the same style as Google Analytics and features some handy presets so you can start exploring right away. Trends is especially useful for publishers, as it provides the opportunity to see which topics people are the most interested in. You can save yourself a lot of time and effort trying to predict what users want to read about. Just go on Trends and check yourself.
Trello
Trello is a productivity app that isn’t only helpful to publishers but really to anyone who owns a small or medium-sized business. It’s basically a free platform for organizing projects, tasks, and activities, where you can collaborate with your team and make sure everything is right on track. Trello is a really powerful tool because of how easy it is to use and it’s user-friendly design. There are plenty of similar apps out there, some of which are paid and a bit more advanced. But in all honesty, in most cases, you’ll never need to upgrade. Another great feature worth mentioning is that the platform can be integrated with a variety of other apps such as Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. If you’re having a tough time putting your work in order – try Trello out! You’d be surprised how effective it can be in lifting productivity.
Gimp
Dealing with a lot of images? Then you probably need to do some editing quite often. Gimp is a free, open-source program for processing photos, creating artwork and graphics. The software may not be as sophisticated as any of the paid alternatives, however, it’s surprisingly capable and will probably be more than enough to help you out with day-to-day things. That said, if you are willing to invest, we highly recommend getting a subscription to the Adobe Creative Cloud. It’s not so expensive and it gives you access to all of the Adobe tools, along with cloud libraries. In any case, before you commit you could always try Gimp out first and if that works – save some money!
Adobe Spark
When it comes to media creation, Adobe’s always got your back. Spark is a software package that consists of 3 apps: Spark Page, Spark Post, and Spark Video. All of these are available for free on smartphones and tablets, so you can still get some work done while on the go. You can quickly put together static and animated social media posts, web pages and narrated videos, all of which are extremely simple and easy to do. The quality you can get out of it is actually pretty decent as well, so don’t worry about people being able to tell the difference. Apart from Spark, Adobe also has a bunch of other useful tools for mobile. Furthermore, all of them totally free, so go and check them out!
Fotor
Fotor is an online photo editing tool, utilizing exclusive technology to bring an unprecedented level of editing control to anyone and everyone. While the ‘collage’ and ‘edit’ features are already enjoyed by millions of users, daily, the new ‘design’ feature gives the user the ability to design any form of graphics and cover, limited only by imagination. The app is pretty versatile and gives you access to some great built-in assets. Probably the best part of it all is the huge library of ready-made sample designs available. If you’re out of ideas you can just pick a template you like and start hacking it to bits. This way you can easily come up with something of your own. Even if you’re using another app, Fotor can still be a great place to come to for inspiration.
Pexels and Negativespace
Taking photos of your own is great, but it’s safe to say that stock photography is often a necessity. That, however, can be quite expensive, especially if you are using such regularly and are working on a budget. There’s plenty of websites that offer free stock photos and videos. In our opinion, Pexels and Negativespace are probably the best and definitely the most widely used ones. Both allowing commercial use, and updates are regular, so it’s unlikely that you’ll run out of fresh assets to use.
We hope that you’ve enjoyed our list and that you’ve found something that can help you with your daily struggles! Still, have any issues you need help with? Let us know in the section below!
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