Easy Peazy Apps for Online Story Telling

I feel silly introducing myself every week...but there are three of us here on the Illinois Communications Team and you never know which of us you'll get so...this post brought to you by Jenn!   

If you're like me  - you marvel at how fast technology is moving, you revel in all the time you save when you find the perfect app,  and sometimes you feel absolutely panicked  by the

sheer number of digital tools out there.

I'm one of those "try any app once" kind of girls...you know, the one who runs around at geek conventions downloading new apps in exchange for a breakfast burritos (yes this really happened), but at the end of the day here are some of the latest apps that have stuck with me and proven really useful in our digital strategy at work. Bonus - they're all FREE.

Storify - The Digital Content Aggregator

• Pull Tweets, Facebook Posts, YouTube Videos, and snippets from Websites all by searching for keyword
• Drop and drag easily into one storyboard - highly intuitive
• Let other's know you've quoted them in your story via Twitter (hello retweet potential)
• Available via the web and iPad for on the go fun
• Here's an Example of one we did for NCVS convention

Instagram - The Photo Filtering Craze

In the last year or so Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are becoming more and more visual.  A picture is worth a thousand words and the attention span of your online audience is about 5 seconds or less...

• Snap a pic and add a cool filter in just seconds- black and white, low-fi, a bit of blurr - in a snap
• Share out to all of your favorite social networks like Twitter and Facebook simultaneously
• Full hashtag integration for Twitter spreads your message like wildfire
• Combine it with Statigram to track your stats
• Here's one we did of our volunteers in action at Union Station it got 235 twitter clicks!

Viddy - The Pretty Quick Video

Up to this point it's been kind of a pain to easily share a video from your iPhone onto Facebook and Twitter - and not have them look like home movies...then along came Viddy...

• Shoot a 15 second video add a filter, drop in a song, and share it to your social networks for all the world to see
• Like Instagram it gives your audience something unique, artsy, NOT BORING to look at
• 15 seconds might not seem like a lot but in the world of Social media it's plenty
• Use it to shoot your volunteers in action, your quick pitch for recruitment, your advocacy 800 number and more!