In the first post of this two-part article, we mainly looked at apps with whom a busy and complex daily life (including work and personal life) can be fundamentally organised. Next up I will present you the promised 5 remaining apps of this list, which might optimise your professional workflow.
6) Dropbox
I would imagine that all of you at least heard once the name of the following app: the good old Dropbox. As free version, with its 2GB cloud storage, it can be a nice solution to backup small private documents. Nevertheless, for professional work it is definitely too small and plain.
The fee-based solution called „Dropbox Plus“ (formerly „Dropbox Pro“) offers you enough storage (1TB) to save your entire office documents and backup giant files like e.g. Pro Tools sessions or images and movies. Furthermore, Dropbox enables you the synchronisation of external app data, which is a nice enhancement when you want to communicate between different operation systems. In the „Plus“ version you are also able to save certain file types offline to your mobile device. In summary, Dropbox is a highly reliable software which is steadily in further development to be fitted to actual trends.
Please note: Despite using such cloud services, I recommend you to regularly save all your important data on multiple harddisks. Store these harddisks at different places (not all in your house!!), so they can’t be affected by the same outside influences.
==> Monthly fee („Plus““ account)
7) Slack
In the early stages, I have used Whatsapp not only for private but also for business communication. For running productions we usually created Whatsapp groups in which the members often spammed the chat or talked about non-project-related topics. It was very difficult to catch or share important information in these chat groups. Once you stayed away from the chat for some hours, your Whatsapp was showing up 200 to 400 unread messages only from this group chat history. Don’t get me wrong, most conversations were super funny and entertaining but nobody can efficiently work in this environment. Someday, I stumbled over the business messenger Slack which combines the fast mobile communication and multiple professional features. Topic-related channels, text and file archives and a wide range of app integrations are only a small proportion of the benefits. With this tool I was able to clearly separate my business and private communications.
==> Free or monthly fee (i am using the free version without any limitations in my workflow)
8) Setmore
Sometimes it can be very time consuming to arrange an appointment with unknown people like new clients or journalists. It is possible that plenty of e-mails need to be sent until a date is finally fixed. Setmore offers you a public calendar in which anyone interested can book one of your free, predefined dates. The tool allows you to customise date categories as well as input fields to e.g. ask for contact information. Sometimes a short summary of the topic, the person wants to talk about, would make sense. The Setmore module (the mentioned calendar) can be easily implemented in your Facebook page or website.
Nonetheless, you shouldn’t forget that people may perceive this solution as cold and detached. Ask them for a mobile number in your booking form, so you have the opportunity to call them personally to confirm the booked date. By doing this, you can show your kind and polite personality. It is far better than an automated confirmation mail, isn’t it?
==> Free
9) Musicmath
Surprisingly, Musicmath is the only app in this article which directly deals with music. To be exact, it is specially developed for audio engineers and saves you the work disruptive production related calculations. This can be, for instance, the calculation of the delay time or the note-to-frequency conversion (use case: matching the sub-kick to the key of the song). Additionally, the app offers a timecode calculator, a metronome with tap-tempo function and a tempo change converter. If you ask me, this piece of software is a must-have for every audio engineer! Installed on your mobile phone it is available whenever you need it.
==> Onetime price
10) Hootsuite
Facebook here, Instagram and Youtube there… a lot of platforms, which are nowadays essential for musicians, labels and many more creative people. To fill every single channel with content with its own separated software can be really frustrating. Thankfully, there are tools like Hootsuite available which allow you to manage all popular social media sites in one central interface. Likewise, you have the possibility to link your WordPress which might be an interesting feature, especially for bloggers. Additional powerful features like realtime-analytics and social media contest creation are quite useful as well.
==> Monthly fee (e.g. „Professional“ account)
My 10 presented apps - the epilogue
Finally, we are done with the list of my 10 commonly used apps. Last but not least, I hope that I could inspire one or two of you with this article and maybe you like some of these apps. Have fun with your brand-new calendar, task management tool and your cloud backup infrastructure :D See you on the next Sunday - this time I will keep the future topic a secret. :)
