What Are The Best Time Saving Apps For Blogging?

If you’re a blogger, read this post on the best time-saving apps for blogging.

One thing that quickly becomes apparent when you have children is that there’s never any spare time for anything, and this includes blogging. You can’t magically make an extra hour in the day -although wouldn’t that be amazing? – so you have to carve out time when you can find it (for me this means evenings, naptimes and when I’m up on nightfeeds).

One thing that really helps me is using my phone to blog, especially for noting down all the amazing (ahem) ideas I have, so there is a record for when I do have time, otherwise I’d forget it all – and there are a lot of apps that can help speed things up and make it all a lot quicker.

So this is a hugely blogging-specific post, sorry! But here’s 24 of my favourite apps, tips and tricks for saving time when blogging (and if you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them):

24 Of The Best Time-Saving Apps For Blogging

1. Use the notes on your phone to make lists of everything (future posts, ideas, admin, lists of lists)
2. Or – if you have time, ha – use Evernote which has a lot more functionality
3. Or OneNote, the Microsoft equivalent
4. Wonderlist is another great to-do list app
5. Yahoo News is a news aggregation app that compiles all of the headline daily news together, from all sources. It’s good to keep an eye on if you write a lot a reactive posts for things in the press
6. Bloglovin sends a daily email of new posts from blogs you follow, so they’re all in one place for a condensed reading (and commenting) session
7. For saving posts to read offline or when you do have time try Pocket
8. Or, on a very basic level take a screenshot of things on your phone you want to remember (on iPhone you take a screenshot by holding the round control button and the on / off switch at the same time
9. When you’re writing posts, again, use the notes on your phone to write posts before you upload them
10. Or Word, if you have that on your phone (also useful to have a backup in case the post gets lost)
11. Use the mobile version of your blogging platform – I use WordPress and I know the app isn’t brilliant, but it’s useful for posting and updating anything when you’re on your phone at 3am or can’t get to a laptop
12. In terms of photos, there are hundred of photo apps, from VSCO Cam to Afterlight and PicTapGo so pick your favourite and  use that
13. But the A Beautiful Mess app is really useful for making Pinterest-ready images with annotations (just change the image view to portrait)
14. Canva is also brilliant for ready made templates for all sorts of social media, from Facebook covers to Pinterest images
15. An PicMonkey for quick (and free) photo editing
16. Time yourself! Use your phone’s timer for against the clock writing and to check you don’t get lost in a social media wormhole
17. Use Google Drive or OneDrive for saving copies of everything
18. I also upload all my photos into folders on OneDrive so they’re not clogging up my phone or camera. This means they are ready for editing and then saved in one place
19. If you’re freelance, save a copy of all your records on Google Drive or OneDrive so you’ll always have them with you
20. The iPhone version of iMovie is really easy to use and means you can edit videos from your phone
21. There are loads of social media automation tools, from IFFIT to Buffer and Hootsuite
22. All the obvious social media platforms have mobile apps, from Facebook to Facebook pages, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and so on
23. And finally there’s Checky, a quite frankly terrifying app that records every time you check your phone. It made me think that I probably do have more time than I think that I could be using more wisely…

More posts: how to be a brilliant blogger, breastfeeding and social media and parenting life hacks

For more tips, follow me on Pinterest, I’m Gill_Crawshaw