7 BUSINESS APPS I USE EVERY DAY » Creative Entrepreneur + Small Business Productivity Workflow
As a creative entrepreneur, these are 7 of the business apps I use every day! These 7 apps have completely revamped my workflow! While some are not business apps directly, each one of these apps integrates into my day-to-day use and helps to improve my productivity and keep me on task and organized. Running a small business requires organization above all else to make sure no task falls through the cracks.
These apps are some of my favorites and almost flow in order from how I would use them. Starting with Workflowy, an endless bullet list that I use for idea generation, to Sloth, my favorite task manager to keep me focused during the day. Later is how I schedule out my social media so I don't get distracted in the middle of my work day to post, and Canva is how I make some of those posts! I also edit photos in Adobe Lightroom (the only one of these apps I pay for the full version of) and I check how my website traffic is doing through Google Analytics. How do I keep track of all these tasks? Well baby, that happens in Asana. Watch this video and see me break it all down!
Hey there I'm Sophia Mitropoulos and today I want to go through 7 business apps that I use every day. I'm solo entrepreneurs so it's my responsibility to make sure that I'm on top of all my tasks and these are some of the apps that make it really easy to help me run my small business. My business entails a lot of content creation for my websites and for social media and these apps help improve my workflow and my productivity. All of these apps have free versions and with the exception of one, I use all their free versions. So let's dive in.
7. Workflowy
The first app I want to talk about is called Workflowy and essentially Workflowy is an infinite bullet list. I really like to use this app as a way to organize my ideas and let my concepts come out organically, and then usually I'll take them out of Workflowy and break them down further. Workflowy is great or stream-of-consciousness idea generation, which is how I like to use it and it's really interesting to use because every bullet is infinitely expandable.
6. Sloth
The next app I like to use is called Sloth and it's a timer essentially for your task list. I really enjoy it because as a small business owner, I can schedule out my days and say 'okay well I'm gonna give myself 15 minutes to clean up before I start working and then once those 15 minutes are up I'm gonna give myself 10 minutes to review my emails and then I'm gonna work on this project for 30 minutes' and it can help keep you on task for the day.
5. Later
The next app that I love to use is called Later. Later is awesome because it is a social media scheduling app. I use it mostly for Instagram but you can integrate it also with Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. Later is really awesome because for Instagram especially you can preview your feed and you can see what it's gonna look like and plan your grid ahead. And then if you have a business account, you can set the app to either publish on your behalf with your pre-loaded caption and your pre-loaded Instagram hashtags or you can send it to notify you and you can publish the post yourself. This has helped me in so many ways especially managing multiple Instagram accounts, it helps me to plan my content schedule weeks in advance and I don't have to be taking time away from my workday to post on Instagram.
4. Canva
So even though I pride myself in my graphic design ability and my use of Adobe programs, one of the apps that I actually do use every day is called Canva which you may have heard of Canva is essentially a really simplified graphic design app with tons of templates. Canva is really awesome for when you're having that Blank Page Syndrome, where you're really stressed about the fact that you haven't put anything down on the page yet and you don't have any ideas of what you want to design. Canva's got a bunch of templates that you can take and completely adapt so they don't look anything like the templates and it can just be a jumping-off point for your designs, or you can do everything within them. Personally, because I'm so nit-picky, I integrate Canva with Adobe programs additionally but Canva is a great free resource for if you don't have an Adobe program or you're not proficient in them.
3. Adobe Lightroom Mobile
Now, I do have to say I am a big fan of Adobe programs. I think a lot of them are really intuitive to use once you've learned one of them, and I just have a blast with them, but I do understand that using Adobe is restricted by a paywall and some of the apps can be complex and difficult to learn first-time. The Lightroom iPhone app from Adobe is a game changer this app is amazing for color correcting. Before I was using Lightroom I was using VSCO or even just the built-in controls in the iPhone, and honestly Lightroom is so much more powerful even in the free version. You have so much more control over your photos and it really makes the difference in the quality of the edit. Because your photos deserve better editing! Lightroom is also awesome because a lot of people will sell presets, you can purchase a preset or make your own preset, and use the same one consistently, and then your grid on Instagram will match the whole way through.
2. Google Analytics
Alright y'all if you're not using Google Analytics what are you even doing? Google Analytics is such a powerful tool. I put in a Google Analytics tracking ID to any app that has my content on it. So I put it on my personal website, I put on my business website, I have it on my YouTube channel, I have it on my RedBubble account, I even have it on my Dribbble account. And Google Analytics is a really powerful tool especially when you can compare across your websites. Recently I found that my Dribbble was getting a ton of traffic because I had scheduled out a bunch of content. And that was the kind of thing that I wouldn't have known had I not been checking my Google Analytics. Google Analytics is really useful to be able to check and see where you're getting your traffic from, how your referrals are coming, I even use it for my personal job application process and I can see when the recruiters have clicked on the link from my application because the referral link will be from the applicant tracking system that I applied through. It's really interesting to be able to know that I applied for a job, and when they've been on my website, how many pages they landed on, how long they spent there, things like that. T
1. Asana
he last app is my holy grail of organization. It's called Asana, if you haven't heard of it yet, you should get on it. Before I started using Asana, I would use multiple different methods to do what Asana does. So I would have a whiteboarding method, I would have a paper method in a bullet journal, and I would try to use Trello on top of that, but once I found out about Asana and I switched to it, it is the ultimate project management app for me, especially as a solo entrepreneur who's running multiple projects. So within my Asana, I have my YouTube channel, I have my first business, I have my second business, I have my client projects, and pretty much anything that needs scheduling, and I can view them independently, I can schedule them independently, or I can look at my calendar in a batch. It's really useful to be able to click on each item and create a subset of tasks within that item. Asana is also really awesome because you can add in more people as your business starts to scale and I believe you can have 15 people on your team in a free version. So again, I'm still only one person so I don't have anybody else on my team, but it's really streamlined so if there comes a time where I'm ready to bring somebody else in to work with me, they can see everything that I've been working on. You can assign projects to people, you can set due dates, and then my favorite feature in Asana is the ability to create subtasks within a task, so for a YouTube video for example, I can create 'research the video,' I can create 'film the video,' 'edit the video,' 'publish the video,' as all separate subtasks and they're all housed within one project that has the same deadline.
All right, that's it, those are my seven apps that have changed my workflow for the better and improved my productivity so that I can be more organized and work smarter not harder baby! I'm a big fan of that. If you're not using any of these apps let me know which ones you are using, what do you think I missed from this list? Drop a line in the comments with what your favorite app is, if there was one that you had never heard of, which one you think is gonna make the biggest difference! Thanks so much for stopping by, my name is Sophia Mitropoulos, please give this video a like on YouTube if you enjoyed it and I'll see you in the next one, bye!
