Having whiz-bang skills in Adobe Suite is great, sure, but what about those on-the-fly, no-desktop-access, gotta-post-this-NOW moments when creating content for social media — and beyond? Say no more. Here are the few must-download apps (and a couple of websites) that’ll make your content creation that much easier (and fancier) minus the hefty pricetags.

Iconosquare:
To plan and measure your social content, from Instagram to LinkedIn
Oh, Iconosquare. Buffet’s bread and butter, a content editor might say. This website and app is a scheduling platform for single image and video posts, Facebook statuses and Instagram carousels and Stories. Single image and video posts can be scheduled for future times and dates and will automatically post to the platform. When scheduling carousels and Stories, you’ll receive a notification on your phone via the app advising you to upload these manually at the time they were scheduled to publish. While the downfall of this app is most definitely the latter, among the plethora of scheduling services available, we deem Iconosquare the cream of the crop. You can tag accounts in photos, add geo-tags to posts and house all your content in an in-app media library. Plus, Iconosquare offers heaps of informative analytics (best times to publish and deep dives into engagement, reach, your audience, profile activity and industry benchmarks) which will help you report on and track your progress. You can also download them in an aesthetically pleasing PDF. The best bit? Once you’ve dragged in all your photos and assigned them days to post, if you hit preview you can see what the feed will look like once everything’s live. Handy! Five stars! To conclude, if you’re going to adhere to one of the recommendations we make, it has to be this one – brands and businesses should really be tapping into the insights sites such as Iconosquare offer – at the very least, posting at the most optimal time for your brand.

ImgPlay Pro:
To make GIFs on the go
Moving images garner high engagement and frankly, they’re fun to look at. They’ll break up your feed and provide insight into your brand simply because they literally show more than a solo still. With that said, ImgPlay is your best mate. For the love of Instagram, though, pay for the legit version. That $7.99 will save you a lot of headaches and a heinous watermark. All you do is open the app; choose photo, video, GIF, live photo, burst or the camera, and you’re away. If you’re making a GIF from plain old piccies, select photo, choose your images, press make, then have your way with all the effects. You can speed your GIF up or slow it down. Crop it, add a filter, adjust brightness et al. and lots more. Hit next, then save to your photo album (after choosing the file type, quality and your looping option). Another excellent thing it does is turn live photos into videos! Ever wished you had ALL the stills from that cute live photo you took? ImgPlay is your app.

Davinci Resolve 18 
To grade, colour and edit your videos like a pro
If you’re looking to take your video editing to the next level, then you should look into this. It’s used by video professionals across the globe, and is considered the gold standard. Hollywood loves it for its color grading. It’s intuitive, it’s accurate and it blows Premiere Pro out of the water (in some ways). We use Davinci Resolve alongside Premiere Pro, and find it especially powerful for colouring. Oh, did we mention it’s also free*?

*Davinci Resolve 17 is free to use and it lets you do almost everything. It can also be upgraded to the Studio version. 

Figma 
To simplify your design process
In our post-WFH era, the trend of online collaboration — and the tools to facilitate it — have accelerated and gradually worked their way into the fabric of our culture. Anyone else’s 75-year-old relatives now saying, Wanna catch up via Zoom? Exactly. Figma is one of the companies that in recent times went from relative obscurity to a go-to alt design tool. Like Davinci Resolve, it’s powerful and it’s FREE. It’s also a great alternative to Adobe Photoshop and InDesign: create a board with a client’s brand assets and design templates, invite collaborators, feedback and edit in real-time.

VSCO
To edit images and videos on your phone, on the fly
How do I use a filter without it loooooking like I used a filter? Is there really a tool that’ll make my food look like I was shooting under airbrushed, perfect light? Indeed. VSCO launched in 2012 off the back of Instgram’s photo sharing and filter boom and it has remained our go-to — especially for food. For a full guide to photo editing with this app, CLICK THIS HERE LINK.

Chrome Instagram Downloader
Find UGC, download, rinse, repeat
If we had to pick the second most important tool in this box it’d have to be this one. User-generated content (UGC) is VERY important. UGC is content that real-life people have captured at your venue or while using/drinking/eating your product. We find it by sifting through geo-tags, tagged photos and brand hashtags. Posting UGC is important because it offers an authentic insight and look and feel for your brand. We dot UGC throughout the month for all of Buffet’s social clients. I digress! Chrome’s Instagram Downloader extension is an excellent tool for downloading posts from Instagram without any nightmare watermarks, low-res pixelation, or weird “this was regrammed with XX” vibes. Just download the extension from Chrome then every time you hit a post on Instagram on desktop you’ll see a downwards arrow next to the save button, indicating you can download! Easy peasy.

Canva:
Your all-in-one, user-friendly design tool
Canva may be a website that brilliantly simplifies graphic design using a drag-and-drop format to create everything from elevated Instagram Story posts posts to Facebook cover photos and wedding invites, but our favourite tool would have to be its ability to create mock Instagram feeds – which helps with visual planning. Select the template and grid you desire then drop in your assets. This tool is super handy when presenting mock Instagram feeds to a client (if you don’t have Iconosquare and need something less fiddly than Photoshop).

Dropbox:
To organise, share and access your assets anywhere, anytime
Thou shalt not overlook the humble Dropbox. The amount of times we’ve seen a poorly uploaded, or downloaded for that matter, post and known it could have been rectified had it properly been downloaded from Dropbox is a true crime. Just download the Dropbox app to your phone, then follow these breadcrumbs: file > choose your folder > select your image > hit the three little dots in the top right-hand corner > export > save image. Voila! Your photos need not be dodgily downloaded ever again.

Unfold:
To make your IG Stories pop
Unfold, a great app for creating Instagram Stories with a little flair. Open the app, choose your template and customise with colours, images and text from there. It’s very easy. While we’d usually encourage uploading more on-the-fly Stories, as opposed to ones created outside the Instagram app, this is a great tool for those clients who perhaps want a more polished look or want to use features not native to the Instagram platform.

All a little much? We got you. Email hello@buffet.digital. We help brands communicate their messaging every day at Buffet. Sign up to the Buffet Newsletter for more tips and tricks for creating exceptional content, and some other tasty things.