Speaker 1: Hey guys and welcome back to my youtube channel in today's video I'll be sharing my top or my best tools and resources for content creation So whether you are just starting out on content creation or whether you've been doing it for a while If you're looking for new tools, right or you're trying to upgrade the tools I already using for different aspects of your content creation. Then you will find this video useful Now in this video, I've gone ahead to categorize these tools and resources into six different categories and the first category going to be talking about is writing. Now for writing or to help me with writing, whether I'm writing my captions or writing my emails or generally getting help with my text, right, I use ChatGPT and I use Grammarly. Now ChatGPT is an AI platform, very popular at this time, right, and people have used it for all sort of things. The text-based AI platform, right, and it can be used for a variety of things, to be honest, even outside of, you know, writing captions or writing YouTube scripts, right? Some people have gone ahead to use ChatsGPT to write their website content. Some people have used it to code to an extent, right? Some of you have used it to come up with different content ideas. I personally have used ChatsGPT to come up with content ideas. I have used it to try to generate a YouTube script, right? Cause I mentioned one of my videos that I have now started using scripts for my YouTube videos just to ensure that I'm staying on track with my topic and not just blabbing all over the place, right? So for myself, I have used it to generate content ideas, to draft YouTube scripts for my YouTube videos, sometimes to come up with captions, sometimes to even come up with hashtags to use on Instagram, you know, different things. So it's an important or it's a very helpful text based AI platform that you should take advantage of. And the second tool is Grammarly. Grammarly is a tool that you use to check your sentence, to essentially check your grammar, right? And I use it a lot when I am typing my emails. In fact, I have downloaded a web extension that is on my Safari browser, right? So it works on a variety of sites. It works on Canva. It works for your email platforms like your Gmail and your Yahoo Mail, all of that. Okay. I don't use Yahoo Mail. For my Gmail, it works on my Gmail. The extension works in a variety of sites, right? You can disable them on some of the sites or you can disable them when you don't need them, but they have, or Grammarly has a web extension that you can use. So that anytime you're doing anything on the internet, like if you're typing something, Grammarly can always check for errors, whether it's punctuation or spelling or grammatical. Very, very important. Especially if your niche or side of content creation has to do with a lot of writing. maybe you're writing blog posts or articles or you're generating captions for yourself or for businesses, you would find Grammarly very helpful. Now, the next category is graphic designing. And for this category, I have just one tool that I use, and that is the good old Canva. Canva is such a gift to creators. You don't even know how to create graphics. You don't have to be a professional graphic designer to be able to use Canva. Canva has a lot of templates that you can work with. And you can use it again for a variety of things, right? I have used it to create short videos for clients in the past. I currently use it sometimes for the cover of my Instagram reels, depending on what the reel is about. I use it to create my YouTube thumbnails. I use this to, at a point when I had like a channel intro, I created that with or on Canva. My YouTube end screen was on Canva, right? Sometimes I have title screens or title cards in my videos. I do that on Canva. I use Canva for a lot of things. Right? So if you're not already using Canva, maybe you want to check it out if you want to either level up your graphic, maybe creating better YouTube thumbnails or creating better presentations. I have also used Canva to create like a PPT presentation, but of course, too many PPTs is on Canva. My rates card, my media kit, all of that wasn't on Canva, so I'm a huge Canva girly, right? especially because at this point or at this stage in my content creation business, I'm still doing a lot of things by myself, trying to cut costs because again, I haven't gotten to that point in my business where I can outsource or use very technical or professional platforms. Now, the next category of tools and resources are for your stock photos and your stock videos. Now, I personally do not use a lot of stock footage or stock photos from my content creation business. I did use in the past when I was managing like social media for some clients, right? So yes, I did. I used this platform but for myself at this stage in my business I hardly use stock photos and videos. However, if you are into that sort of stuff, I have three websites or sites that I use. One is on Splash, the second is Pexels and the other is Pixabay. now on splash you cannot get stock videos but you can get stock photos a variety of stock photos right on pexels and pixabay you can get both stock photos you can get illustrations you can get stock videos and a variety of things in fact i think on pexels or pixabay i'm not sure which now you can get black american photos right so if you're trying to look for pictures that are more relatable if you're a black African right you or if you're an African you can check on Pexels or Pixabay and you would see pictures that look more like you right maybe have your skin tone and stuff like that so again on Splash for stock photos Pixabay and Pexels have stock photos and stock videos and a variety I think Pixabay also has stock sounds right so if you want to add like sound effects to your videos you can get those on Pixabay. Now the fourth category is photo editing and I have talked about this category a lot of times in my other videos. For photo editing I use three apps right now I have one primary app I use it all the time the remaining two if I still need to do extra work on the photos if you know I need to work on specific things after editing the first Now, my primary photo editing app is Lightroom mobile. I love this app mainly because you can create your own custom presets or filters, right? So presets are like your photo filters, you know, if you see influencers or creators or people generally who have all your photos kind of looking the same on their feed, they are using presets, right? And Lightroom allows you to create your own presets so that you don't have to start creating from the scratch. You don't have to start editing from the scratch every time you need to work on a photo. I believe Lightroom now allows you to also add presets to videos. I haven't really explored that feature yet. I still use it mainly for photos and that is my main photo editing app. Now the two other apps are Facetune and Snapseed. Now I use Facetune if I need to do specific things on specific parts of the picture. So maybe Maybe my teeth, after editing in Lightroom mobile, maybe my teeth is not looking as white, I would go into Facetune to whiten it a bit. If I want the detail of maybe a necklace or jewelry that I'm wearing to pop more, I would go into Facetune to do that. Right? Facetune allows you to target specific scenes in your photographs. If you want to blur out a specific thing in your picture, I do that in Facetune. If you want to bring out the detail, I do that in Facetune. If I want to whiten things, specific things, not the entire picture, I do that in FaceTune. Now Snapseed is also a very helpful tool, right, for photo editing, but again, that's not my main photo editing app or tool. I use that if I want to enhance the general ambience of a photograph, right? That's the main thing I use Snapseed for. I also use Snapseed if I want to, you know, heal certain parts of my picture. So maybe I want to remove, there's a picture I took one time of a rainbow and the sky had a lot of like wires, you know, those electricity wires, poles and wires and the whole picture was looking messy. So I went into Snapseed to remove those wires. So that's what sort of thing I do in Snapseed. Snapseed is a very helpful tool. You can use it for your double exposure. For instance, I have done a tutorial on Instagram on using Snapseed to clone myself in a photograph. Right. I'm going to put pictures of those photographs. I use Snapseed to do or to create all of these photographs. Right. So if you're into that sort of thing, then you will enjoy Snapseed. Now just for the record, all of these apps, right, have free and paid versions. However, I'm using the free versions for all of them, right. All of them, whether they are web extensions, whether they are website tools, I'm using the free versions for all of them and it is giving me the best at least at this stage of my content creation business. Now after photo editing, the next category is video editing. Now for this I have two major video editing apps or tools. Now the first is for when I'm editing videos on my phone. So let's say I've used my phone to create content. I sometimes do not see the need of transferring content or footage from my phone to my laptop. So I edit on my phone and products I use InShot. InShot is easy to use. It is a fantastic app. It has been around for quite a while and I'm happy that they keep adding new features and updating the app just to accommodate other editing features or things that people would want to do within the app, right? Again, this app has a free and paid version. I'm currently using the free version of the app, so I don't have access to all the features on the app. However, the features that I have access to are serving me greatly, right? So, InShot is what I use if I want to edit footage on my phone. Now, when I'm editing on my laptop, which is mostly for my YouTube videos and for some sponsored content that I do with brands, I use Final Cut Pro. Now, if you use an Apple device, whether it's an Apple computer, a MacBook or an iMac or whatever, or if you use an iPad I think I believe the Final Cut recently introduced Final Cut Pro on iPads right so if you use any of those Apple devices then you can work with Final Cut Pro it is available only to Apple devices so if you don't use an Apple device you may not be able to use Final Cut Pro on your device all right before I started using Final Cut Pro another editing tool that I also used was iMovie This is a free tool that comes with all Apple devices All right So if you have an Apple device and you're trying to start out with video editing then you can start out with iMovie It won't help you to get familiar with the templates or with the interface So when you move into Final Cut Pro, it is easier to use. Now Final Cut Pro is not totally free They have a 90-day trial period. So if you want to try it out, just go to the official website Download the trial version use it for three months which is 90 days. And then when you're done and you want to upgrade, you can now upgrade to the paid version. Another video editing app that I use is Beatlip. Again, I have done a tutorial on how to use this app, but what I use it for essentially is if I want my videos to be in sync with the beats of the music that I'm using to edit the video. All right. So we get all those upbeats and when you see videos where or where you see videos that, um, you know, sort of change or are in sync with the beat of the music, sometimes, not sometimes, you can do that in the Beatleap app. Of course you can do this manually if you have an ear for music and you know when to change certain things and add certain edits but if you don't want to worry about, you know, listening to the beat of the music and trying to sync your videos, you can just put in your videos, whether it's one video or multiple videos, you can put in, you can add the music that you want if you're paying for Beatleap. Now if you're not paying for a bit.ly subscription, you are restricted to some songs within the app. But if you're paying for an active, if you're paying for your subscription, they can add your own music, right? And then add your videos and the app would sync it and give you a very beautiful video. Of course, you can always change certain things. I love the app in general, right? I have a tutorial on how to use the bit.ly app. I'm going to link it above, as well as all the other tutorials that I've done with some of of these apps either above or in the description box so be sure to check them out now to my final category which is music right as a content creator especially if you're not restricted to maybe creating text content like maybe writing blog posts or articles if you're doing video content then you work a lot with music and on certain platforms is very important that you use copyright free or royalty free music especially on YouTube right so for YouTube for my YouTube videos I always have a background music playing in my videos and I get those songs from two main places right one is the YouTube audio library right it is free is accessible to everyone using YouTube but it's at this time right it is free and accessible to everyone on the YouTube platform so periodically I will go and listen to songs find the ones that I like and download to my laptop so whenever I'm editing I can pick from the library of songs and use. Now if you want something more, if you want a wider variety of songs right, YouTube has a good variety but sometimes it's not as wide as you want. But if you want a wider variety, if you want more trendy beats and music then you can explore Epidemic Sound. Alright I have used Epidemic Sound a couple of times however it is not my go-to resource for getting copyright free or royalty-free music simply because it needs or requires a paid subscription. Like I said at the beginning of the video, my content creation business hasn't gotten to the point where I can maintain a monthly or yearly subscription with Epidemic Sound, right? So I would typically turn to YouTube audio library. However, the times I have used Epidemic Sound for my background music, it has been... I love it. I love it. I used this to... I used songs from that platform to edit my wedding video. I have used it for some clients videos but especially here on if I'm going to put it on YouTube where you have to be careful with copyright strikes especially if you're trying to get your channel monetized then you want to look out for copyright free or royalty free music. On Instagram instead of a different ballgame surely because we now have reels where you can add songs or music to your videos so Instagram is not that much of a worry or your brother however on YouTube you need to be very careful so for YouTube if you're a content creator or if you're a creator on YouTube then you should look at either using YouTube audio library which is free you don't have to give credits to anyone yes I forgot to mention that now I have used other free resources right but for those free resources the disadvantage we're using some of them is sometimes you know at the time you may have been using this song it had been good all you need to do is give credit but sometimes things change maybe they get signed to a record label or something or something something happens and then the song now goes from being a copyright for your royalty free music to now being copyrighted right and then you may run into some challenges so i had to stop using some of those platforms right because i used some songs from such platforms and i still got like copyright notifications it wasn't a strike thankfully right but i still got like notifications or issues with some of my videos. So I have stopped to YouTube Audio Library where I don't need to give credit and I don't have to worry about copyright strikes on my videos and then when I need to work on very important projects, I pay for an Epidemic Sound subscription. And there you have it, my top or my best tools and resources for content creation. Let me know in the comments if I didn't mention any of the ones that you use for these different categories. If there's anyone that you want me to look at or try out, let me know in the comments and I'll be happy to explore because I'm constantly looking to improve on my content especially in these different categories. If you are not yet subscribed to the channel and you enjoyed this video make sure you give me a thumbs up and hit the subscribe button so you are notified anytime a video goes up. Also feel free to check out my content creation playlist that has other videos or similar videos like this one where I talk about tools and resources and things that can help you on your content creation journey and I'll see you in that video or in my next video. Till then, stay safe, stay fabulous, stay blessed, goodbye.