Every creator, in the beginning, is a one-person army. You can definitely hire a team when you become successful and start making a real living out of content creation. But at the very start, you have to manage everything on your own.
Seems daunting, right?
It doesn’t have to be. Thankfully, there is a whole list of apps, tools, and equipment aspiring creators can use along their journey. But so many options might confuse you as well.
Fret not, we created a detailed guide of all the apps and tools every creator must have to kick-start a successful career as an influencer. It’s going to be a long one, so save it, pin it, share it, or print it to keep it handy for reference.
The basic tools, equipment, and apps aspiring creators must have
Obviously, you need a good quality camera. But is a camera enough to create professional-level aesthetic shots? Yes, a smartphone with a decent camera can capture stunning images. Don’t have a fancy smartphone? Invest in a good DSLR.
Some other pieces of equipment that every creator must-have to capture quality content are:
Ring Light
Good lighting is very important for shooting high-contrast, shadowless pictures and videos. Sure, sunlight brings out the best colours. Yet, not all days are the same, and you certainly can’t control the weather. That’s why you require a ring light.
Tripod
Your camera needs to be steady while you are recording a video or clicking a self-portrait. No one likes watching shaky videos. A tripod keeps your camera at a fixed position and gives you the liberty to play around with the content.
Microphone
You only need this if you record voice-over videos or are thinking of starting a podcast. YouTube creator, you definitely need one to record high-quality noise-free sounds.
Backdrop stands
Budding creators if you wish to maintain some kind of uniformity in your content, consider investing in backdrop stands. However, it is crucial to note that backdrop stands will be more useful for lifestyle and fashion creators.
Wondering how much all of this will cost you? We wrote a whole blog on it.
The top photo editing apps for aspiring creators
The life of a content creator might seem bright and glamorous from afar. However, a lot of effort goes into creating those Instagram-worthy pictures and videos. Starting as a new creator is not a walk in the park.
But only creating content is not enough. You ought to edit it, add some music, and do everything in your capacity to make it more interesting and draw the attention of the users.
To create these stunning shots, you need the help of at least one of these photo editing apps.
PicsArt
Picsart is for creators who want to make their pictures more animated, colourful, and artsy. It offers quirky filters, lively photo effects and approximately 5 million premade stickers. Not just this, it gives you the freedom to create your own stickers as well. It has Gold subscriptions that open a portal to many more filters, editing tools, stickers, and frames.
Adobe Lightroom
This app has a plethora of tools that could make your pictures look even more dreamy and beautiful. It also has interactive tutorials guiding you through each step. The most popular feature of Adobe Lightroom is Presets, which allow you to make instant changes to the picture. It is a very useful feature for those who like to maintain a common theme on their social feed. Adobe Lightroom’s premium version gives you access to batch editing, additional storage, and a healing brush.
Canva
It might seem you need thousands of resources to create just one custom graphic: Photoshop to edit an image, VSCO for filters, and many more.
Canva combines all these editing and publishing tools and is equipped with a lot of templates one can use for different purposes.
There are no hard and fast rules on how to use Canva. It’s very basic, and for someone without any skill set, the job becomes easy. And it’s free! But there’s an additional option of premium, which includes a wider range of professional templates.
To make editing a breeze, try these Canva and Lightroom shortcuts.
VSCO
Its readily available presets upgrade your pictures to an expert level without putting in much effort. You can use its analogue film effect and other editing tools to make your shots seamlessly gorgeous. VSCO gives you the option to edit pictures in bulk with its free batch feature, which otherwise is available at a premium in Adobe Lightroom. It has a membership option too, that will give you access to more than 200 presets and advanced editing tools.
Afterlight
It has around 20 advanced editing tools and more than 130 filters curated by renowned photographers. However, it is more popular because of the overlays and unique texture features. So, if you are someone who likes selective colour-editing and playing with the lights in pictures, Afterlight would be perfect for you.
Facetune
This editor is perfect for tweaking self-portraits and selfies. With its tones of touch-up features, you can make your skin look flawless and glowing. It also has the option to remove blemishes, whiten the teeth, and apply makeup like lipstick and blush. All of these features are available free of charge on Facetune.
Snapseed
Snapseed is a great free option to fine-tune your photos. Unlike Instagram, which changes your entire photo at once, here you can perfect each and every detail.
Not only that, but you can also save your previous filters and use them on future ones. This gives your profile a consistent look and saves a lot of time.
The best video editing apps for aspiring creators
If you are a new or struggling creator, you know you need to make high-quality, eye-pleasing Reels and videos. Constantly. So, besides apps that help you edit photos, you also need tools for video editing. There are plenty of apps that budding creators can utilise to make better videos. Here are a few that actually prove helpful.
Videoshow
An app that has video trimming, editing, audio addition, stickers, transitions, and many other such options is what every creator must-have. Videoshow offers all this and more. It has a few extra free features, like VIP privileges and a watermark removal option at a minimal cost.
Inshot
This is one of the most popular video editing apps currently amongst creators because of its easy-to-use interface and quick editing solutions. It has all the features, ranging from cutting and trimming to slow motions, rotations, and transitions. You can also add stickers, filters, and texts via this app to your videos. Inshot is ideal for people who are new to video editing.
A Color Story
Over 300 free as well as paid filters make this video app quite useful for influencers who don’t have much editing knowledge. It also has 20 tools to play around with and enhance video quality. You can save an edit just like a Preset on Adobe Lightroom and use it again for other videos. So, A Color Story saves the effort of editing every new video and gives you the option to maintain an aesthetic feed even in the Reels section. It also has a grid option where you can see how your feed will look after uploading edited videos.
Adobe Premiere Rush
Apart from the basic editing tools, Adobe Premiere Rush has some advanced features like voice-over addition, colour changing options and title insertion tags. It also has resizing tools that you can use to transition videos from horizontal to vertical and vice-versa.
Social media scheduling apps that creators can use
Time is money. And let’s be honest, posting fresh content & constantly updating profiles takes up a lot of time. Ever heard the saying, “An hour of planning saves 10 hours of hard work?” It really is true.
With management and social media scheduling apps, you can plan like a pro. They help schedule your posts in advance and are particularly useful for creators who are juggling content creation with a full-time job.
We would like to point out that most of them are paid. So, not all aspiring creators might be able to afford them. In that case, use the in-built scheduling feature on social platforms (where possible). Or better yet, use the content calendar feature of the DYT App to remind you when branded content is due. You’ll thank us later!
SocialBee
SocialBee comes with a carousel, videos, images, and stories scheduler. You can re-queue the same content to be posted at a future date. It also gives a preview of the grid where you can see how posts will look on the feed.
Agorapulse
It has multiple scheduling and co-creating features to reduce the burden on your shoulders. You can schedule a single image or video directly or multiple posts at a time with the help of Agorapulse. It also has the option to tag users, add location, caption, and hashtags to a single image and video content.
Sked
Sked is known for being the original Instagram scheduler. It also links to Facebook or Twitter accounts, making the laborious task of managing multiple accounts easy. Some of its top features include:
- Stories are posted for you automatically.
- Support for video and image stories
- Add over 60 filters, as well as text and overlays.
- Nicely-designed stickers
- Attractive cropping according to each platform’s specs
- Plan, create, and review posts in advance.
ContentCal
This tool is best for creators who are co-running an Instagram page with a partner. It has a content calendar for planning your entire social media activity. ContentCal’s new feature, Instagram Publishing, gives you the privilege of scheduling all types of posts and stories.
Later
This tool is a blessing to influencers who don’t have the luxury of dedicating daily time to social media. You just have to create a weekly calendar and upload all the content at once in the sequence of the schedule. There’s also a visual planner where you can check the aesthetic of your feed before uploading it. Even if you can’t afford the paid version, use the free model of Later. You’ll love it.
Planoly
If you’re looking for a tool or application that helps aspiring creators with scheduling posts, laying out your feed, and helping you choose the right aesthetic for your grid/feed, you need Planoly! Like Later, the free version does offer quite a few perks. Try it, new creators.
Buffer
This management tool has both a scheduler and a hashtag manager. It makes reusing, saving, and organisation of hashtags hassle-free. Like other tools in this list, Buffer, too, has a calendar for tracking and scheduling posts.
A few social media analytics apps for creators to increase reach
Your content is ready. You’re ready to hit post. But wait. To organically increase engagement, you would need some great hashtags. They play a crucial role in determining the reach of your posts as well as your page.
The guessing game never helps in figuring out hashtags relevant to your content. That’s why every creator must have an app to generate hashtags.
AutoHash
It’s the easiest to use app to generate hashtags. Because AutoHash is AI-based, it recognises the objects in your image and gives you the most relevant hashtags. Not only that, but it also counts the hashtags for you so that you don’t cross the 30-hashtag limit.
Once you start getting views and reach, the next step in the creator journey is to analyse the engagement and figure out what’s working best for you. Some tools that aspiring creators can use for this purpose are:
Instagram Insight
The “Insights” feature keeps track of everything happening on your page and shows them to you in chart form. It gives you a clear picture of the type of audience attracted to your content based on their age, demographics, and interests. Instagram analytics also tell you which post, reel, or story of yours is getting the highest engagement. You can filter out all this information date wise using its calendar feature.
Creator Studio
If you’ve converted your profile to a Creator Account on Instagram, you are eligible to make full use of Instagram’s Creator Studio. Though only accessible through the desktop, it presents the data analysis of a 7-day window. You get to have information on your audience’s age, gender, and peak activity times, as well as obtain real-time audience growth advice. It also has other fun features, like a Calendar view that shows you the time of post.
We wrote a whole post on Creator Studio and all you can do with it.
Blend skills with tools and apps for better content creation
Content creation isn’t just art anymore. If you want to beat the algorithm, you must know how to market your content better. This is what tools and apps for aspiring creators do. They take your artistic skills, merge them with their strategic features, and bring out the best possible result.
And using them isn’t rocket science, either. Anyone with basic knowledge of social media can understand how they work. So go ahead and utilise all their cool features to create enticing content!
