Whether you are a public relations professional, social media enthusiast, or just always glued to your smartphone, there are more and more ways for you to balance your work, personal and social life - from the palm of your hands.
Based on a recent article published by PR Daily “50 Useful Apps for PR and Social Media Professionals”, I evaluated three free apps for iPhone and Android - Astrid, Flipboard and Springpad. Busy professionals can effectively use all three to capture the essence of a personal assistant, newspaper subscription and a research concierge (without the extra bills).
With the million things to do for a client, Astrid works as a personal assistant by providing reminders for important tasks that are categorized by work, home and personal preferences. What is very useful about this app is that not only can you make reminders of your daily tasks; but also when developing reports for a client, the “reusable checklist” feature comes in handy. You are able to save a list and reuse it over and over. This saves a lot of time if your work requires repetition. On a personal note, Astrid works best because you are able to sync your perfect to-do list with your friends on Facebook, making it easy to share books to read, or places you would like to visit next summer.
It is exactly as it sounds! With just a flip of your finger you are able to connect, engage and read a
wide variety of media. The Flipboard interface claims to be the most popular news reader out there and I’ve got to admit it does a good job at dominating the throne. It’s almost like a digital magazine of all your favorite newspapers by topic. I was able to stay up to date on the latest happenings in the Bay Area as well as read my favorite health and lifestyle magazines in one timeline. Flipboard is a great tool to share content on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. PR and social media professional can use Flipboard to swiftly engage in the media without getting lost in the many tabs on your desktop web browser. Tip: to make this app more useful, download the Google Reader feature so that you can maximize your coverage on topics that you or your clients are interested in.
While doing intensive research on trends and competitors for one client, have you ever come across information that could be used for a different client? Springpad’s claim to fame is that it clips and saves articles for future reference and enhances this content with related information once it becomes available. For example, if you save a restaurant or movie into “My Notebooks”, it will provided maps to the location and reviews. Although it can act as task reminder, it comes with the personal assistant feature making it a lot easier to revisit information without the extra research. I recently posted the iPhone 5 to my wish list and was able to get feedback on from different sources in the technology industry.
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