Time is of the essence. If you’re in the field of Content creation, or any professional field, you know this statement to be true. Projects are nearing deadlines, reports are nearing due dates, and everything has yet to be adequately prepared and written up. You’re pulling out your hair thinking of any and all ways that you can get that extra edge to help you get the job done.
Take a deep breath and look no further. Today you’ll learn about the top 10 tools to help you save time on your content creation, make those deadlines and due dates, stress less and smile much more.
Research
1) AutoCopy – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/autocopy/
AutoCopy is designed to help you save time by automating one of the most commonly used functions on a CPU: copy and paste. By simply highlighting or selecting a piece of text it will be copied to your clipboard. When you navigate back to the page or document where you need to drop the text, as long as you have the AutoCopy add-on you’ll be able to paste it with a middle click! Save yourself time on doing your research by copying and pasting those sources with AutoCopy.
2) ColorZilla – http://www.colorzilla.com/firefox/
The next most resourceful add-on for Content Creators is ColorZilla. If you work with designs and find a lot of your time going into finding the proper color reading so that you can add the color to your code, you’ll be forever grateful for ColorZilla. With the ability to get color readings from anywhere in your browser, save palettes that you use commonly, generate gradient code for easy copy and paste you’ll resemble more of a web developer or graphic designer than a content creator.
3) Jing – http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html
Don’t look any further for a tool that helps you create how-to videos or edits to your screen-shots because Jing is your one-stop shop. Jing is all about simplicity and frankly simplicity saves time. You can learn the application (which is easy to use) with the help of their step-by-step tutorials. The features include capturing and editing screenshots, recording video from a certain area of your screen or full screen which is capped at 5 minutes to maximize your focus, and share it with the world through embedded sharing buttons.
Visual and Text Content Creation
4) Canva – https://www.canva.com/
Starting designs can be done easily with Canva and making them look professional and eye-catching is the goal. If you’re one of those content creators who has an eye for design and knows how to best use the visual nature of those creatures we call human beings then Canva will help you generate higher traffic and convert more when it’s mastered. With their many pre-designed layouts and pre-loaded icons you’re sure to find what you’ll need for your design. Save yourself some time by only having to look in one place to create elegant and stylish visuals.
5) Stupeflix – (No Longer Available)
Stupeflix is for the users who love video and its power as a media source. If you’ve found Jing very useful, quadruple the time you have to create videos here with Stupeflix. The power of editing the video is bestowed upon you with the use of Stupeflix as well as themes and unique movie customization features. These videos too can be easily shared as they’re all made for the web and can be embedded in Facebook or Youtube with a single click.
6) EssayMama – http://www.essaymama.com/
Let Stupeflix, and Canva help you with your visual content creation, but look no further than Essay Mama for your text content creation. At Essay Mama you’ll save yourself an incredible amount of time. Essay Mama’s unique ordering process can get an assignment, project, thesis, research or term paper… you name it, created for you in hours! Talk about saving time. The urgency section of the order form spans from 10 Days to 3 hours, the fastest turn-around time you can imagine when seeking for outsourced content.
7) CherryTree – http://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/
CherryTree isn’t as delicious as the fruit, but it bears great benefits for those who can overcome its more technical appeal and approach to note taking. In short it’s a hierarchical note taking application which will save you time storing your data all in one place. Do not be put off by its appearance and the code you’ll see because it comes with a complete guide and can be learned. Like every fruit bearing tree, you must give it time before you can reap the harvest.
Focus
8) Quabel – https://quabel.com/
For the younger generations who need more experience in focus there is a program available called Quabel, which will lessen the amount of features available to you and minimize your distractions. The goal of this program is to help you focus on your writing, not editing it, not reviewing it, but creating it and getting thoughts to documents. Your time will be saved when you notice yourself hitting your writing goals, deadlines and due dates much more, and writing more efficiently.
9) Rescuetime – https://www.rescuetime.com/
How best can you save time, than with an app called Rescuetime? This software can be downloaded as a mobile app or you can use the web Lite or Premium version. With the Lite version alone, you’ll be astounded when you see how much time you’re spending on certain websites and working in certain applications. Review your weekly e-mail report and be amazed at where your time has gone! This should encourage you to change some internet usage habits for the better.
Social Sharing
10) Buffer – https://bufferapp.com
Buffer is a great application to help your content be shared and share others. With this ongoing revolving door of shares, you’ll create great conversation and value for your customers by sharing posts that are relatable to your product or service, vision or mission. You can also use buffer to interact with your audience more closely. You can connect your twitter, facebook page or profile, linkedIn profile and have all those feeds streaming through buffer. From buffer you can then dial up a queue of what you want shared and when to help you save time for when a project is finished. Synchronizing your share queue with your blog posts weekly schedule is just one idea on how to save yourself time with buffer.
Extra Tool!
Bonus) HootSuite – https://hootsuite.com/
HootSuite is for medium to larger sized businesses who need help managing all of the social media engagement they’ve garnished in their growth from small business or startup to now a business that’s snowballing. With HootSuite you can manage your social media much like buffer; however, you receive increased features on monitoring social media to see what’s being said about your product or service, collaboration to get the responsibilities of social media managing to more team members, and basic analytics to see which content works the best for your brand.
Question: Do you find these tools useful? Please comment on the “Top 10 Great Tools to Save the Time You Spend on Content Creation”!
