5 Apps Every Blogger Should Try

This post is a part of the Bookending Spring 2019 blogger event (created by Fictionally Sam and Book Dragons. 

The prompt for Saturday 13th April (hosted by Charvi @ Not Just Fiction Reader) was Unorganisation: The Bane of Existence. Or not… which inspired this post.

“Successful people usually tend to be well-planned organised and that’s why it is assumed that people who are messy and unorganized are moving towards failure. But are these really traits that should be looked down upon? What are your views on this topic?”

 

 

Forest

So first things first, you’ll need to actually put down your phone and quit scrolling Twitter or Instagram, right? I have a major problem with distractions, attention-span and procrastination. This app helps so much!

You let it know how long you want to be unable to use your other apps for then a little tree or bush starts to grow. If you open anything else on your phone during that time the tree will die. If you reach the end your tree gets planted into a little forest which you can build up over the day, week or month.

I use Forest to focus myself to read for 20 minutes uninterrupted or to write for half-an-hour without ending up still refreshing Twitter two hours later…

 

Grammarly

Grammarly describes itself as “an app that automatically detects potential grammar, spelling, punctuation, word choice, and style mistakes in writing.” It’s basically a very good online spellcheck. There’s a free option and a premium option.

You can use it just like Microsoft Word Online (opening various documents to type in) but you 

can also install a toolbar plug-in that checks what you’re putting into comment boxes on blogs and other online sites. I really like both (although I still need to install the plug-in on my laptop at some point).

 

Buffer

Buffer lets you schedule your social media posts in advance.

There’s a free and a couple of premium versions. The free version lets you link (up to) three accounts for either Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin, Facebook or (soft of) Instagram. I really like it for Twitter so I can reblog tweets from people I follow while I’m scrolling without flooding my followers feeds.

You can schedule posts at a specific time and day, or add them to a queue that posts at regular (changeable) intervals. In the free version you can have up to ten tweets in your queue at a time.

 

Snapseed

This is a great photo editing app for your phone. You can adults all the brightness, contrasts etc, spot editing, change perspectives, add effects etc. It’s a really good app, on a par with a lot of desktop graphics programmes in terms of simple photograph editing.

It’s really easy perfect for editing all your Instagram photos and any photographs you want to feature on your blog.

 

Layout

This is a really simple one, but really useful if you ever want to quickly make neat collages. Another one that’s a nice Instagram add-on.

 

Do you have any particular apps or devices you use to help organise your blogging or make updating run a little bit smoother?