Looking for the best iOS apps for creating videos, photos, and designs for social media marketing? Here’s my short list of apps I used consistently in 2018 and plan on using even more in 2019.
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Top Marketing Apps for Social Media Photos, Designs, & Videos in 2019
Side Note: Why Creating Visual Marketing Content On Your Phone Is Vital In 2019
Since the majority of our audience is now on their smartphones when they see our content, it’s more important than ever to make sure our photos, designs, and videos are formatted for mobile viewing.
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One way to do that is by creating all of those visuals from your smartphone. It’s easier and requires less tech know-how. Before 2016, I used my desktop for all of my visual content. Now I’m able to do so much more with my iPhone than I was ever able to do before with desktop programs.
And creating content on your phone ensures you’re creating visuals that your audience can see and understand – because you’re seeing EXACTLY what they will be seeing as you work.
Ok, enough explanation – in order to use your smartphone to create engaging marketing visuals, let me share with you my top apps I used in 2018 for marketing my business via visual content that I think will be even bigger in 2019.
STORAGE TRANSFER APPS
Google Photos (iOS, Google Play). First, you definitely want to have a storage app and a way to transfer photos and videos from your desktop to your smartphone and vice versa. My number one recommendation is Google Photos.
It gives you free, unlimited video and photo storage. It’s also a lifesaver for backing up all of the things you’re creating on your phone (here you see it backing up designs for this blog post).
Some other apps for storage and transferring that I highly recommend are Dropbox, iCloud drive for iOS devices, and the Simple Transfer Pro app.
Now let’s talk about how to take photos and edit them in a way that makes them stand out and grab your audience’s attention.
PHOTO EDITING APPS
A Color Story (iOS, Google Play). For simple yet effective editing, I highly recommend the A Color Story app. The filters are magical, and they have really increased their overall editing tools. You can also plan your Instagram feed right within the app after you edit your photos.
Get a full video tutorial on this app in the free #Couchhustler course.
Snapseed (iOS, Google Play). For more advanced edits, Snapseed is amazing. It has a ton of tools for advanced editing that will truly transform your photos.
TouchRetouch (iOS, Google Play). For issues like trying to remove objects and items you don’t want in your photos, I definitely recommend the TouchRetouch app (see TouchRetouch blog post).
Magic Eraser. And if you need to remove the background altogether from your photo, try Magic Eraser. I use it almost daily (see Magic Eraser blog post).
Now that you’ve got edited, aesthetically-pleasing photos, let’s move on to the best apps for creating designs and adding text onto photos for social media.
GRAPHIC DESIGN APPS
Adobe Spark Post (iOS, Google Play). My number one recommendation is Adobe Spark Post, hands-down. Not only does it allow you to do a lot of custom branded design work, but it also saves your projects so you can access them for future templates on your phone.
It also provides all the social media sizes that you need. You can even convert your designs into four-second videos. These are great for standalone social media video posts or as intros and video text slide inserts into longer video projects.
Get a full video tutorial on the Adobe Spark Post app in the free #Couchhustler course.
Over. I also love, LOVE the Over app. It has some advanced features for creating thorough designs such as shadowing and layering. I don’t know of another design app that layer as well as Over.
You can also import custom fonts with the Over app (you don’t need a subscription, just import the .ttf file via email. Press on the file and you should see Over as an option).
InShot (iOS, Google Play). Another app that I sometimes use for design work is InShot. This app is probably the most versatile visual content creation app you will have on your phone. It not only offers design, photo, and collage tools, but it is also an extremely robust video editor app.
Now that I’m talking about video, let’s go ahead into the apps I plan on using the most for video marketing in 2019.
VIDEO EDITING APPS
InShot (iOS, Google Play). As previously mentioned, InShot is amazing, and they have fantastic video and text animated transitions. You can import custom fonts and add your watermark with the sticker feature. They have a lot of fun animated stickers and filters (snow filter applied below).
You can trim video, add voice-over along with music, and resize to any size you need for social media. It does not save projects except for the draft you’re working on. But I often like that for quick edits that I don’t want to take up storage within the app or on my phone.
Quik (iOS, Google Play). For awesome and easy slideshows, try Quik. Even if you feel limited in your video editing skills, this app will make you feel like a video-editing pro. They have the three social media sizes that you want – portrait, widescreen and square.
The Quik app take your photos and videos and assembles them together with different themes you can choose from. If I want to create impressive, professional-looking video that doesn’t need a lot of editing in just a few minutes, Quik is my go-to.
Get a full video tutorial on the Quik app in the free #Couchhustler course.
PicPlayPost (iOS, Google Play). If I need to do video collages and slideshows, I really enjoy PicPlayPost. They have really come along in the the full video-editor app zone. The feature I love the most about PicPlayPost is its amazing clip and text animated transitions.
You can also insert Gifs and they have an automated feature that will put all your photos and videos together for you.
Enlight VideoLeap. The app I call my “new iMovie” and the one I probably use most of all for video is Enlight VideoLeap. This app has SO many tools. What I love most about it is the ability to layer videos and photos on top of video and photos. It is seamless and works so well at producing video with LOTS of layers (I honestly haven’t figured out the limit).
You can also now animate your text and layered photos and videos with their Mixer tool. App to open rfa file on a mac file.
You can do any size video that you want with VideoLeap, so if you don’t have this app and you’re still resorting to iMovie – no offense to iMovie – but you REALLY want to consider making the switch to Enlight Videoleap.
Veme.ly. Lastly, I’m super excited about a new app (for me) I’ve come across that is truly going to be a breakthrough app when it comes to video memes, captioning, and subtitles. This has been an area of weakness for me on my smartphone when I’ve needed to create subtitled videos for my tutorials. However, with the Veme.ly app, I have FINALLY found my solution.
This app can generate captions up to minute or you can import captions via the mobile site Rev.com.
The Veme.ly app adds your subtitles seamlessly to your videos. They offer the four most important video sizes and they also have a really neat animated progression bar to let your audience know how far they’ve gotten through your video.
You can also add a scrolling text title throughout your videos (see example of captions and animated progression bar below).
I am loving this app for creating video tutorials with captions easily and resizing them easily to different sizes for YouTube, Stories, Instagram and Facebook, etc. This allows my video to have a larger reach and get the ROI for the time I put into making the video.
Ok! These are all the top marketing apps that at this moment I believe are critical to have on your smartphone for awesome marketing visual creation in 2019. I’m sure I’ve missed your favorite, so let me know in the comments what visual marketing app you can’t live without.
I’m super excited to see how this world of smartphone marketing continues to grow. The apps just keep getting better and better!
If you’ve just finished developing, let’s talk about the next step, marketing iOS apps in order to get sales in the App Store.
Following these steps won’t guarantee a blockbuster success, but if you apply them carefully they may save your app from complete obscurity.
1. Have an app worth talking about
This point cannot be stressed enough. If your app doesn’t have a clear use case or doesn’t get people excited about using it you might as well stop here. You’ll be fighting an uphill battle. Sure, some good marketing could get you some sales, but it isn’t worth the effort. Go back and invest a lot of time and energy into creating a great product and then revisit these steps.
2. Learn to communicate the value
Mike Lee talks about the idea of creating the marketing video for your app first, before you even start developing it. The reason he gives is that if you can’t clearly communicate the value of your application in 45 seconds, should you even be making the application?
I ran into this problem with Fluent, a memory system iPhone application I released in October 2011. Fluent manages the entire memorization process for flash cards, showing them to you less frequently as you learn them, and more often if you need more practice with a particular card. Though Fluent is very useful to me (I use it every day), I couldn’t effectively communicate the value to someone else.
Fluent has made me about $60 (it sells for $2) to date on the App Store. Ouch! It has a clean design, doesn’t have bugs (that I know of), and works great for me. I believe the reason it flopped is that I couldn’t effectively communicate the value.
If I had spent the time to plan a video, or more specifically, plan how I would succinctly communicate the value of Fluent, I would have realized the problem before I spent any time coding. Tell your app idea to a handful of people. If they don’t immediately get it in less than a minute then you have work to do. Either refine your pitch until it is quickly understood, or find a different app idea.
3. Design an effective app icon
When marketing an iOS app you have just a few items to grab a potential buyer’s attention: the app name, the price, the app icon, the app ratings, and your company name.
Out of all of these by far the most prominent is the app icon. It is the tiny billboard that will help sell your app. Your first goal with an app icon is to properly represent your app. If there are textures, patterns, and colors that are prominent inside your app, they should also be present in the icon.
Next you want to focus on grabbing attention. I wish I could say that the best-designed icons always sell more apps than poorly designed, brightly colored, attention grabbers. But that’s not necessarily true. I have several friends who experiment heavily with their icon designs and the better designed ones don’t necessarily sell any better. So why should you invest the time and effort into a quality icon design?
An icon is the first introduction your users will have to your app. Right away it will give them an impression of a quality, well designed app. Just like books, apps are judged by their covers, in this case the icon. So design a quality icon that accurately represents the styles used inside your app. Here are a few tips to get you started:
- Test how it will look surrounded by competing apps. Does it get lost in the crowd?
- Use a clear icon that follows a metaphor that is easy to understand.
- Your app icon should match the design style of your app.
4. Select relevant keywords
Inside iTunes Connect you are able to write 100 characters of keywords that describe your application. This is used for searches inside the App Store. https://voxclever588.weebly.com/pioneer-app-for-mac.html. While keywords are a factor it seems the app name is weighted more heavily in the search results. This is why you see many apps with a name like “BrandName – Additional Keywords.” They are trying to have the best of both worlds by using a brand able name and having important keywords in the name.
Not much is known about the App Store search system besides that small changes can result in a considerable increase in downloads. Below are a few tips.
- There is no need to include your app name as a keyword.
- Separate your keywords with only a comma, not a comma and a space. Writing them like this, “memory,language,card” will help you to make the most of your 100 character limit.
- Use tools like Google Keywords to research keywords.
- You may only change your app name or keywords with the release of a new version. So think through and research your decisions.
- If you don’t think a keyword is performing or being searched often, feel free to replace it with another keyword when you release your next version.
- Do searches inside the App Store to see how your app ranks for important search terms.
5. Understand the importance of a launch
All right, your message is in place, so it’s time to submit your app, right?
Wrong.
Since so much of your app’s success depends on a successful launch you need to plan it thoroughly. First think through any marketing channels you have access to already. This could be personal or company Facebook and Twitter pages, any existing email lists, or friends who would be happy to promote your creation.
Next, start identifying the websites that have an audience who would be interested in your application. Start with review websites (here is a detailed list), then think in more detail about sites specific to your niche. Beyond app review sites, this could be major blogs like Lifehacker and also the personal blogs of individuals who write about related topics.
Do you have a recipe app? There are zillions of bloggers whose audience would find your app relevant. Travel related? Same thing. This also gives you access to smaller blogs with a dedicated audience. Not only will they respond well to your product, but getting access to the site will be easier.
6. Pitch blogs for reviews and promotions
I like to write a couple of different pitches for my apps. First, I use a more generic (but still interesting), “Please review this app.” This is what I send to all the smaller iPhone review sites. They aren’t as inundated with requests for reviews and also don’t have the traffic to justify writing a personal email to each one. Write it well and make it feel personal, but it doesn’t have to be specific to their site. Most of the time you will just be copying and pasting this into contact forms.
Next, you can write personal variations of this for each of the sites you’d like to be featured on. Take the time to craft it for their audience.
Finally, you need to approach your top pick of sites. For these you need an entirely different method. Think about it in terms of how you can be of help to this blogger, not, “How can I phrase this email so that a blogger will write about my app?” Really try to think of what you could do to make their life easier.
Relevant guest posts are a great option. Not a guest post advertising your app, but something useful in a related area that could have a link to the app along with your author information at the end. Whatever topic you decide on should be unique to that site.
Write out a summary of your guest post or a description of your offer. (Don’t try to buy a review.) A short email introducing your suggestion with more detailed content below is a great option. Then they can quickly read and reply to your email, but you’ve also given them the option to read a summary of your post if they have time or the desire.
Remember: you are trying to make their life easier. If you really think about your approach from that perspective I am sure you can craft something that will make them want to link to your application.
If at all possible get these reviews to come out on the same day (or close to each other). Then your app will make a bigger splash and more review sites will be inclined to write reviews as well.
7. Quickly get positive reviews on the App Store
Not only do you need your friends to buy it, you need them to review it on the App Store. When an app is first launched it takes time to build up some solid reviews. If you can get friends and family to write your first 5-10 reviews, that can give you a good head start.
App Store Applications
You can also write a feature directly into your application that asks users to write a review. Typically you would want to do this after a certain number of launches so that you can have a good idea that users actually like your application. Annoy them too soon and the reviews will be negative. Only asking the faithful users is a way to weed out possible bad reviews before they are written.
Apple Mac App Store App
This library is quite good, and used by many apps, to request reviews.
8. Report abusive or false reviews
If you get reviews that are abusive or blatantly false you can report them to Apple. I’ve used this when a review makes a false statement (feature x doesn’t exist). Both times I have done this Apple has removed the review without any further follow-up.
9. Use giveaways to increase engagement
Once your application is live on the store you can give away copies with promo codes. Apple allows you to generate up to 50 promo codes per version of your application. You can then give away these single-use codes to be redeemed in iTunes just like a gift card for a free download of your app.
Close app mac shortcut. Any time a site is about to post a review of your app you can offer to include some promo codes as a giveaway to their readers. With the launch of Commit, App Advice gave away a single promo code along with their review. They chose a comment at random and emailed that user a code. The post received 96 comments from readers trying to win a $0.99 app! The engagement on the post increased substantially.
Mac App Store Download
It wasn’t so much about saving $1. That doesn’t really matter. But everyone likes winning a contest especially one that is so easy to enter.
10. Use affiliate links for conversion tracking and extra revenue
Download Free App Store Apps
Whenever you link to the App Store from your website or within your app you can use an affiliate link. Apple has an affiliate program that will pay 5% of all purchases from that user until your code is replaced by someone else’s code. You can learn more about it on the Apple website, (http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates).
This really only adds value in a couple of cases.
Zip app files on mac. First, if you have a highly priced application like I do, the 5% can add up. My application, OneVoice, costs $199. So the affiliate fee for that referral is an extra $10. So you can be sure that whenever I link to OneVoice in the App Store I make it an affiliate link.
Second, if you have a large volume of users the residual sales from purchasing other apps can amount to a decent chunk of money, though so many apps and websites now use affiliate codes that yours will quickly be replaced by another person’s.
Finally, the affiliate account can help you with additional tracking. It is a way to know how many people who clicked a certain link (tracked by Google Analytics) actually followed through with a purchase. It helps to give a tiny bit of insight into the black box of App Store analytics.