4 Digital Tools I'm Currently Loving
I love working smarter, not harder. And I love tools that work for me and free me to do what I do best! Here are four tools I've been using lately in my business that I am absolutely loving. I think you will love them, too!
Canva
I love Photoshop and am still a heavy user of it. Since I can't draw, I find Photoshop to be more my speed for editing artwork together for social media, blogs, websites, and emails. However, I took two courses in there and recognize that it's not that easy of a program to pick up on your own. You absolutely can do it and there are tons of tutorials, both free and paid, that will help you figure out pretty much anything you need to know about Photoshop. But there is a learning curve and it can be steep.
In recognition of where a lot of you are at, I wanted to introduce you to Canva if you haven't already heard of it and aren't using it. Canva is like an easier version of Photoshop. It allows you to build artwork for social media and more easily with their drag-and-drop interface. You can change fonts, resize elements, and swap the colors around with ease. There is a free version for Canva, but the paid plan lets you add custom brand fonts, colors, and logos and gives you access to their stock photo library. You can even upload your own photographs for use in Canva and there's also a mobile app which means you can design on the go!
I actually pay for both Photoshop and Canva, that's how much I like this program. I thought about canceling Canva at one point to reduce costs, but it's really not that expensive. And it's so easy to use and it gives you access to so many graphic elements that I would have to hunt down and source for myself anyway. Plus, I like using their templates for inspiration. I still do a lot of my social artwork in Photoshop if I know I'm going to be making something pretty detailed or if I know I'll need a tool that only Photoshop has, but probably 40% of my art is in Canva. Actually, pretty much all of the artwork I use for blogs and social media for Minute Marketing is done in Canva. For my clients, it's a mixture and it really depends on what I'm doing.
You can check out Canva here.
Linktree
I actually heard about Linktree awhile ago, but wasn't in a rush to become an early adopter. After a few months, I saw people talking about their results and successes with Linktree and I knew I had to give it a try. I now use it for all of my clients and both of my personal accounts!
Linktree is an app for Instagram that allows you to put a single link to your "Linktree" which contains multiple links to different things that you might want to highlight. The advantage of using Linktree is that it saves you from constantly having to change out the link in your bio and then worrying about the fact that if someone saw an older post and wanted to check the link that you mentioned your post, it would be gone because you would have swapped out your Instagram link for something else.
Oh, and did I mention Linktree is free? Yes, really! You get more customization options with the paid plan, but the free one does its job just fine.
You can check out Linktree here.
Toggl
This is a relatively new-to-me tool as I've only used it for about a month, but it is fantastic. And also it's free. You know you're really happy you're reading this blog right now. Look at all the free stuff I'm turning you on to!
Toggl is an easy-to-use desktop time tracking app. It interfaces with Chrome, but you don't even really need that. There are two ways to use Toggl: you can use the timer or you can manually enter your time. I like it because you can organize your time blocks however you want. You can type in what you're working on, apply a tag to it, and nest it under a project. And then you can see your overall breakdown by day, month, week, etc. This has really helped me see where and with whom I'm spending the most time. And also where I'm wasting time.
You can check out Toggl here.
Rev
I just started using this, but I have to say, it is a game-changer! If you are one of those people who likes to dictate things into your phone, whether it's a blog post or chapter in a book, you need to check out Rev.
Rev is an online transcription service that can work with audio or video files. They charge a $1/minute to transcribe and they are SUPER fast and accurate. I paid $15 to get 15 minutes of audio recordings from one of my clients transcribed so I could edit them into blog posts. It was easy to upload the files and I think I got my transcripts back in under an hour and they were FANTASTIC! We were sitting outside and I used the Quicktime audio recorder on my computer and my computer's internal microphone so I was nervous there was going to be too much background noise for the system to deliver a good transcript. I had nothing to worry about. I think they got like, two words wrong, and the mistakes were teeny-tiny. I am a major fan. It probably would have taken me like an hour to do the transcription myself.
You can check out Rev here.
What tools are you loving lately? What's making your business easier and saving you time? Leave me a comment below, I am always looking for new solutions to the many problems I encounter in life and business!