We would like to share three tools that we find invaluable for day-to-day productivity in our studio.
They are useful across many different industries and can help companies manage their time more efficiently and make processes run smoothly. Best of all – all of these are free for anyone to use!
All of our opinions are based on the free versions of these applications, but if you really like any of these tools, there are premium versions available which offer even more features.
Asana
Asana is an online task manager that allows teams to organise, manage and contribute to projects as they progress. It is a great tool to collaboratively plan out projects in either lists or boards.
We love Asana for many reasons, such as the ability to have multiple team members contributing to projects and tasks. It’s a great way to organise, share ideas and keep on top of everyday jobs. Individuals can be assigned tasks with a due date and time, making it an effective tool for displaying to-do lists for each member.
A great way to use Asana is for planning out social media ideas. We have a board to plan our social media content for the upcoming month. It can be adapted to anything that you want to organise into a visual list, which is why we’d highly recommend giving it a try.
Buffer
Buffer is one of many social media management tools that allows you to schedule social media posts in advance. If, like us, you want to send out regular posts but don’t have the time to do this on a regular basis, Buffer gives you the ability to choose a date and time to schedule all of your posts in advance. We find this an invaluable tool to prepare our posts for over the following few weeks, saving plenty of time day-to-day.
Buffer allows you to post videos, GIFs and images. It has a handy character limit for tweets and counts the number of hashtags when using Instagram, which saves us a lot of time. If you want to add links to any of your posts, there is a link shortening feature too, not to mention the ability to track your links to see who’s clicking on what.
Buffer has a mobile app as well as a browser extension to continue your workflow across devices. If you want to make your social media scheduling easier, this is definitely something worth trying.
LastPass
Finally, one of our favourite tools is LastPass, a secure password manager which means you need never forget your passwords again! This is great for both personal use and team use, with the ability to securely share passwords and login information.
LastPass is an extension that can be used across all of your devices. It can be installed as a browser extension, online through their website, or even as an app for your mobile device. There’s no excuse to ever forget your passwords again! All you need to remember is a “master password” for the initial login to the application.
One of our favourite features is the “vault”, which allows you to access and manage all of your saved items. There are lots of ways to save passwords: you can be prompted when you log into a site, import sites from emails, or even import them from another password manager.
LastPass uses strong encryption algorithms as well as two-factor authentication for extra security. One of the most important features is its ability to generate strong and secure passwords, as well as notifying you of any duplicate or weak passwords which you may have. This puts our mind at ease that our information is safe, which is a great reason why you should try it for yourself.
