Creatives are busy people. Whether your passion is your side hustle or your full-time endeavor, there are always ways to streamline your process so you can spend more time doing what you love instead of sending invoices, checking emails constantly, or worrying about all the work you have to do and hoping you didn’t throw out that little sticky-note which contains the next days crucial tasks.

 

Below are our favourite time saving tools for creatives. All of these programs are exactly what we use to help us be able to spend more time doing the work we are skilled in, instead of trying to figure out how to do all the administrative tasks the long way surrounding our areas of expertise.

 

1. Planoly

Planoly is the scheduling app we use for all of our clients for social media. Instagram is the top social media avenue our clients use, and planoly makes it easy to drag and drop and grid until it is perfect, add in your captions including mentions of other businesses and creatives, and has hashtag groups so you can keep all the hashtags you use in one easy place (instead of always going into your notes and manually copy and pasting the tags in… we get it, we used to do that too!). Planoly has also released an auto-post feature recently which has been awesome! As long as your image is square, Planoly can auto post it for you! This is definitely the dream if you run more than one Instagram account (which is seems most people do these days!). Basically, we don’t know what we would do without Planoly.

 

2. Asana

Asana is the best task management program we have come across– and we’ve tried many! Asana is this incredible virtual hub where you can manage projects by client, then break down the client section into various projects based on client needs. You can create tasks, assign to the person who will be working on it, add notes, upload files, and can assign tasks back and forth until they are complete! We love the assigning feature as we are able to track an entire project from start to finish under one task! You can also add due dates and invite individuals to their own team so all the right people can see the information they need!

 

3. Dubsado

We were introduced to Dubsado by a client and now we can’t imagine life without it! Dubsado streamlines all of your contracts and informational emails into one easy process. We love how you can set up your email sequences to auto-send; say you send a client an invoice. Once you receive the payment (also hosted right in Dubsado!) you can set up the flow to send a ‘getting to know you’ questionnaire automatically! This is especially awesome for any of our clients who are photographers, where multiple emails to get familiar with the client are sent out. Use code WELLCURATED for a sweet deal when you sign up!

 

4. Blogstomp

When blogs are heavy with images, Blogstomp is the way to go! Choose your images, choose the format, and Blogstomp puts it all together for you in a matter of seconds so you can spend less time in photoshop trying to create the perfect mix of pictures. We use Blogstomp constantly and have never come across another program as wonderful as it!

 

5. Dropbox

Dropbox is a classic. We have one Dropbox account our entire staff has access to, and each client gets a shared folder to add documents, files and images to. The beautiful part of Dropbox is it’s accessibility across platforms from your computer to your phone! We also love how the desktop version of Planoly allows you to upload images direct from Dropbox! No need to download everything to your computer first before uploading.

 

6. Canva

Canva is a DIY dream come true. Whipping up quick graphics for social media, a Facebook banner or a graphic for a blog has never been easier. We love Canva for Business as well. Canva for Business allows you to upload your entire brand identity (fonts, colours, logo versions, branding shoot images), and provides you those options consistently on the sidebar for easy access every single time you are creating a new project. It’s easy to use and keeps you looking professional.

 

7. Siteground

Siteground is where we host all of our websites. It links seamlessly with WordPress (our preferred space to build websites) and has extra protection to scan against viruses and anything else that could cause your website to crash unexpectedly. Oh, and their customer service is actually amazing! If you’re looking to find a hosting site for your website, Siteground is the place to do it!

 

These are our absolute favourite time saving tools and we honestly can’t imagine life without them. We use them each and every single day and they have become integrated parts of our workflow, which enable the entire team at WellCurated Creative Agency the ability to work more efficiently.

 

What are your favourite time saving tools?