Five Apps that Help Us Be More Productive

Productivity is big at SNAP Forward. Finding ways to more effectively use our time is key to scaling a small business. These five applications help us make the most of our time and keep us moving forward.

Slack

We have recommended Slack in the past. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It’s more simple than picking up the phone and less intrusive than walking into someone’s office. Slack enables our team easy communication no matter our location.

It is installable on most mobile devices, Windows, and Mac OSX. Even better, you can share documents, photos, and more from within Slack. And, it’s searchable so that you can find something that you discussed earlier.

Wunderlist

Wunderlist is useful for those that like to create to-do lists to stay on track. I’m a person that has a bunch of tasks going on at once. I love that I can create sub-tasks, assign a task to someone else, and quickly view my to-do list from any device.

If I think of something that I need to remember later, I add it to my Wunderlist inbox for later. Once I’m back at my desk, I can file it into one of the many categories that I have created and set a due date with a reminder.

There is also a “Today” category that shows all the tasks that are due today… or are past due.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite allows you to manage all your social media accounts in one location. At the time of this writing, Hootsuite integrates with Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and LinkedIn Company pages, WordPress Blogs, Instagram, and YouTube.

From their interface, you can schedule posts days, weeks, or months in advance. This allows us to schedule our time managing social media accounts rather than having to log in every time we want to drop a post.

If you are looking for ideas, Hootsuite can provide suggestions based on topics that you provide.

Canva

Visual marketing on social media is hot. Yet, many software applications that create visually appealing marketing material are expensive. For a monthly fee, Canva is a low-cost alternative that can create stunning visuals.

Canva has a variety of built-in fonts, stock photos, and stock icons. For an added fee, usually a dollar, you can buy a premium stock item for your design.

Best of all, Canva can re-size any design for the exact proportion depending on use. For instance, if you create a Facebook header and want to use it in a Facebook ad, the software will re-size it for you. Want to make it a Twitter header also? Done.

Canva is a real time saver when creating visual content.

Pocket

Pocket allows you to save an article or web page to review later. Simply install the app on your mobile device. While on a web page, click share, and then select Pocket. When you go back to www.getpocket.com, it will be there.

They also have a Google Chrome add-in that allows you to save web pages from Chrome.

Once saved, you can tag pages to organize them as you see fit.

What Do You Use?

We’re always looking to stay on top of our productivity game. Do you have an application that we didn’t mention? Please comment below and we’ll try it out.