photo editing apps – Dance Daze, Inc.

07/16/2019 Saumirah McWoodson Dance Ed Startup, The Happy Dance, The Happy Dance Podcast

The Happy Dance Podcast: Episode #6

Read the podcast transcript below or click HERE to download the PDF!

Hi there! My name is Saumirah McWoodson, and I’m the founder and CEO of Dance Daze, Inc. and Dance Daze in Schools, and I’m also a dance education researcher and business consultant at DanceEdStartup.com. And I’m the host of The Happy Dance Podcast where we talk about all things related to dance, education, and cultivating a life of happiness. So, let’s dance!

Hey everyone! Saumirah here. Welcome to Episode #6 of The Happy Dance Podcast. Now, today’s episode is the third part of a three-part mini-series on social media marketing tools for your developing dance business.

In the first part of this mini-series I talked about my favorite social media platforms and I told you why I’m using them and how I’m using them. And then last week, in part two, I talked about my favorite photo-editing apps and there were a lot of them and I actually created a freebie.

So if you go to DanceEdStartup.com/podcast5download, you can grab that freebie.

And then, in today’s episode, I’m going to tell you about my favorite video editing apps.

And I was just going through my phone because that’s where I use all of these apps is on my iPhone X, and I realized I actually don’t have that many apps that I use to edit videos. So these are my legit favorite apps because I only have three.

Okay, so I’m gonna dive into that in a few moments here, but first I wanted to say that today’s episode is sponsored by the Dance Daze, Inc. Amazon Store. So if you go to Amazon.com/Shop/DanceDazeInc, you’ll find the Dance Daze Amazon Store, and in it we have tools for dance teachers and we just added some recent things of interest for dancers as well. And so I was actually adding some stuff last week right after I finished the podcast. And so, I have a couple of things in a category for audio and visual equipment, and then I have healthy food for dancers that you can get from Amazon, and that goes along with the blog that I put out earlier this week. And so there’s some fun stuff in there. And then, of course, I have props for creative movement classes or for teaching dance classes in schools. So be sure to go over to the Dance Daze Amazon Shop, and check all that stuff out. And of course, if you just need to grab something from Amazon, and if you go and see if I have it in my shop first, that also helps me out, I’d appreciate it.

So again the link is just Amazon.com/Shop/DanceDazeInc.

Okay, so now I’m going to tell you why I am doing a happy dance this week. So I have a couple of things that I wanted to talk about, but I don’t want to drag this podcast out too long, so I don’t think I’m going to dive into all of them. But first, the first reason I’m doing a happy dance today is because my mom actually started her own podcast, and I listened to that for the first time. I listened to her first episode earlier today and so kudos to my mom for living her best life and getting her voice out there.

I think I’m going to wait a little while to give you more information about my mom’s podcast because I don’t quite know what direction she’s going to go in and she already knows this, I’m not sure she’s going to be super open because if she is I might not want to be affiliated or associated with that. But I’ll probably tell you more about her podcast as time goes on, but kudos to my mom for getting that started.

And then the second reason I’m doing a happy dance is–and I should preface this: I’m feeling kind of “deep”, but I wanna tone it down because my podcast isn’t going in that direction. But the second reason I’m doing a happy dance is because . . . I was thinking about how I want to say this, and here are the thoughts that came to my mind. When you go back and you think about the one or maybe there are two of the absolute hardest moments that you’ve had in your life and you realize that you overcame them, the feeling that that gives you can be so powerful and moving and it just serves as a reminder that when you’re going through hard times again that you can also get through those hard times.

And so maybe you don’t, I don’t know, I think everyone maybe has a moment that they feel like, “Oh this is the most challenging thing I’ve ever gone through my entire life.” And now it’s months or years later and things are better, or they’re bearable, or maybe you don’t think about this sadness every single day anymore.

And so that’s kind of the reason I’m doing a happy dance is because… Let’s see… Because I’m grateful that we are able to overcome hard times and because I’m resting in the audacity of hope for a better tomorrow. So those are the two reasons I’m doing a happy dance. Kudos to my mom for starting that podcast. And then again, just yeah, having the hope that the sun will come out tomorrow.

Okay, and that’s all I’m gonna say about those deep thoughts of mine.

So now let me tell you about my favorite video editing apps. And so, obviously, since there are only three that I have on my phone, these are the only things that I use, so I really use them a lot. So the first one that I absolutely love is Magisto. I actually prefer to pronounce it Mageeesto. But to be honest, I don’t really say it that often, ’cause I don’t go around talking about apps to people, no matter how much of a nerd I am. But I guess also it goes to show you how much of a nerd I am, because I don’t have that much social interaction.

Yay, here’s my podcast! Thanks for listening to me, friend!

Okay, so I love Magisto basically for these reasons. You can basically put in all of your photos, video clips, and if you have… I’ve been paying for it for a while now. I think the free version I think they still have a free version and it does this or the lowest cost version I believe is like $4.99 US dollars $4.99 per month. They order the videos and the video clips and photos for you, you can pick your sound track, you can pick your theme and it just comes out beautiful and everyone’s always like… “Oh, I like that so much.”

And so that’s why I love it. They have royalty-free music. You are able to, directly from the app, upload the videos that are created directly to YouTube. And I think a couple of other social media sites, but I usually just send them straight to YouTube and then I download them to my phone to upload them myself, so I like to upload the videos natively to the social media platforms that I want them on.

But with YouTube, I just do it directly from the app because I think that’s easiest, and because YouTube what… It’s like my third or fourth favorite platform so… But anyway, that’s why I really love it. And I think that the variety of… I think that your videos can only be three minutes or five minutes long, something like that, but I think you can have videos up to 10 or 20 minutes, maybe even, with the Professional version, that sort of thing. You get access to more layouts and things like that or templates. And so, yeah, that’s probably my absolute favorite video editing app. I’ve tried others but… And I actually didn’t write down the one that… there was another I meant to mention, and I forgot. Oh, I think it’s called InShot.

And I will confirm this. Caveat here. I realized as I was doing the editing my transcript for the last podcast, I was calling an app by the incorrect name so I want to not do that this week.

So I think in the transcripts, the app is still listed as what I called it, but I think I linked it to the correct website. So if anyone noticed that it’s not an error, it’s intentional because I wanted to give credit to the actual app that I was talking about. But anyway, okay, so I’ve tried other video editing apps to kind of, I think, just play around with different filters and that sort of thing. But, again, I don’t think you can be beat Magisto or “Mageeesto.” I think Magisto… if PicMonkey is my favorite photo editing app, then I would say Magisto is my absolute favorite video editing app that I would refer to everyone.

Okay, so I did not… I’ve only used InShot once and I liked it. It served its purpose, but I didn’t like it enough, to really talk about. So I’m gonna move on and tell you the second one that I actually wrote down to talk about and that app is Clipomatic. So I discovered that one recently because I was actually watching some Instastories and I noticed people had text at the bottom of their stories. I was like, “Oh that’s really cool.” And I was listening to some other podcast recently, a few months ago, and they were saying how awesome it is that people are now adding text to their videos for the reasons of just being aware of people who have different audio abilities, that sort of thing. But then also because if you are in a place where you’re not supposed to be making noise or it’s really early in the morning and you’re just waking up, and you’re being super unhealthy and watching Instastories first thing when you wake up in the morning, you can just read what the person is saying if someone’s doing a live video or something like that, or if they’re just talking to the camera.

And so that’s why I love Clipomatic. It’s also really easy to edit the text. It doesn’t necessarily space perfectly, but it’s good enough for just a quick live video. Or I guess, technically, they’re pre-recorded but if I record my face and then put it up within five minutes of me talking, that’s practically as good as going live in my opinion.

So, anyway, that’s the second video editing app that I use is Clipomatic. And then the final video-editing app that I use, and I think I started using this one before I discovered Magisto, is called Add Music. And I really like Add Music because, again, it’s simple to use. I love things that are just really easy and don’t take… I mean, okay. Don’t judge me. I know how to work hard for things in life too. But when it comes to apps and getting things ready to publish for digital and social media marketing, I, of course, like I think anyone would, like things that are really simple and don’t take a long time to figure out how to use them.

So with Add Music you just upload a video clip, and you can pick from their royalty-free music options. I believe they have a paid version of that app as well. And I don’t think I have the paid version or if I paid for it, it was like a one-time fee. But anyway, I was gonna say I don’t think they have that huge of a range or variety of their royalty-free music and that’s why I was saying I’m not sure if they have a better variety if you pay for a different or an upgraded version of the app or something like that, but… But anyway, that’s not… That’s never really been a problem for me. I actually like the selections that they offer, and so I will use the Add Music app if I have a clip of my dance classes and maybe I don’t necessarily feel like the music that was playing is the best representation of my program, my business. Maybe it’s spring time and I want to make a little video that kind of makes you feel springy and happy and connects you to the season of growth and blossoming and that sort of stuff. And yes, these are the things that I think about when I’m editing videos for my dance business.

But anyway, even though, again, the selection of music is not that big from what I remember–I haven’t used it in a couple of months–but I think that it works fine for my business because they’re just quick clips and I don’t use this app,every single day. I’d say at most, I use it like once a month for videos, maybe more than that, but just fairly infrequently. And so what I’m saying is if I am using the same songs ’cause I think I do use the same songs on that app, the same four or five songs, they’re getting rotated enough so that I think my audience for my dance business is not getting bored with the sound of the audio clips and using… Okay, so I’m gonna run through them one more time. There are only three this time, so super short. But again, Magisto, Clipomatic and Add Music. Those are my top three favorite video editing apps for my dance education business.

Okay guys, so I think that’s it for today. Thank you so much for listening to Episode 6 of The Happy Dance Podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, please go over to Apple Podcasts and give me a five-star reading and a review. I would love it so much and be so very grateful and appreciative.

I, of course, want to leave you with a few words on how you can continue to cultivate that life of happiness and keep doing a happy dance in your own life. And this is something that I am going to be applying for myself as well, as always. But I’m just gonna say the next time that you’re feeling down in the dumps, or overwhelmed with things that are going on in life, remember that you can always practice gratitude, even if it’s for the smallest things. For example, yesterday I lost my keys for over an hour. So today, I’m grateful that I have known where my keys are every moment of this day, but there have been days where maybe I didn’t feel like getting out of the house or something and then someone smiles and asks me how I’m doing, and so that’s something that you could practice gratitude for, or that would be something that I’ve practiced gratitude for in the past. So that is my little tip on how you can keep doing a happy dance in your own life.

Alright, I will catch you all next time.

Bye!

07/06/2019 Saumirah McWoodson Dance Ed Startup, The Happy Dance

The Happy Dance Podcast: Episode #5

Read the podcast transcript below or click HERE to download the PDF!

Hi there, my name is Saumirah McWoodson, and I am the host of The Happy Dance Podcast. You are now listening to Episode 5, so thank you very much for tuning in for this episode. Now today, we will be talking about my favorite photo-editing apps.

So this is the second part of a three-part series where I’m telling you about some of my favorite small business tools to use when marketing your small dance education organization or business.

Last week, I told you about my favorite social media platforms, and then today, in part two, I’ll be telling you about my favorite photo-editing apps. Then next week, in next week’s podcast, I will be telling you about my favorite video-editing apps.

Okay, but first I want to tell you why I’m doing a happy dance this week.

So, this past Sunday, June 30th, I successfully directed my very first spring showcase, so my very first spring performance in a theater for my dance business. So that is why I’m doing a happy dance. I definitely have several big takeaways for myself, and I think that I will share them over time or maybe sometime in the future, I’ll do an epic blog post or an epic podcast or maybe I’ll break it up and do a little mini-series about my experience with my first theater performance, my first recital in theater, and my first time directing, it.

But for now I would like to share that I think my biggest takeaway is that in the future I would like to have more systems in place so that I am able to take the time to just enjoy the experience more. I think that I didn’t have enough systems in place for me to kind of sit back and really just take it all in. So that’s something that I would like to do in the future, and I think that’s my biggest takeaway as of now.

Of course our students were awesome. And when you consider that we had, for this specific performance, we literally had one dress rehearsal, and we had a two-year-olds and three-year-olds, and we only had 10 dancers total, we only had a tech team of two people total, we only had two teachers to assist with performing with our students, and that includes our two and three-year-olds, we only had one official back stage parent. So when you consider all of those things, I think our performance, our recital kicked butt.

But of course, I’m an entrepreneur. I’m type A. I’m a perfectionist.

So from that business owner, visionary standpoint, there were just, again, lots of things that I would do differently in the future so that it would flow more smoothly for all of the people who were involved in running the show. But as the days continue to go by, I’m definitely allowing myself to just really let the feeling of accomplishment and enjoyment and that feeling of satisfaction sort of seep in, but it definitely was not an instant feeling.

I think another take away briefly is that I don’t think I gave enough thought, I suppose, to how different it is to teach dance classes and to have smaller in-studio performances . . . . or I’ve actually had several performances at schools and for little kind of open house type of nights or that sort of thing, but just doing everything in a theater, it’s different.

And I think that having trained at the pre-professional level and seen the level of preparation that should go into a theater production, or just having formerly been a student at a very large dance studio, I think that I have very high standards and I think that I probably did not go into this, into the experience, really realizing that we just didn’t have enough hands on deck. But again, it was really awesome, and I’m so grateful. Many parents have sent me photos, and I have a couple of video clips, so I think that from the audience perspective we put on a really good show, especially when you consider the tiny, tiny skeleton staff that we had. So that’s the feeling that I’m allowing myself to rest in, but of course, upwards and onward for the future.

Okay, so let’s jump in and start talking about my favorite photo editing apps.

And so just so you are aware, I do use my iPhone to do most of my photo and video editing, which is something I thought I would never do.

So I’m not using a bunch of fancy equipment here. I will say though that the one semi-fancy piece of equipment that I used for my business photos occasionally is my Canon Power Shot SX530 HS. So I think it cost like $150 or a couple hundred bucks. It was given to me as a gift a few years ago, and so I do use that when I want really good, quality photos. However, I have an iPhone X, and sometimes I think portrait mode does just fine for what I want.

I think that I really try to, or I’d say one of the best tools for me personally, when it comes to taking photos for my business is just the lighting. Lighting, for me, can make a huge difference on how the photos turn out. And I’ll be honest: There are several times when I look at my photos and I’m like, “Wow, look at what you did!” But it’s usually because I got really awesome lighting. And so I think that can definitely make or break your photos. Or if you don’t necessarily have a great camera on your cell phone or if you don’t have a camera that was over 100 bucks, just really focus on the lighting. That would be a tip of mine. I think, again, the lighting can make your average, everyday photos look super professional.

Okay, so the first photo editing app that I use–surprise, surprise–is Instagram. When I’m being really lazy, I go on Instagram to edit my photos and I just add a filter or I’ll play around with some of the other editing features that it has. So, I do manage several accounts for my personal brand and for my dance businesses, but I do have one Instagram account where I do not follow anyone and I do not have any followers, and I use that account strictly for editing photos. So, I believe I have a couple, probably a few thousand photos posted on that account now, and they’re all just photos that I’ve edited there.

Okay so the next app that I use on my phone is called PicMonkey. And I want to say I only recently started using PicMonkey on my phone. I’ve been using PicMonkey for years and it actually is to have another name, but I cannot think of what it was called formerly. However, I’ve added the app to my phone and I use it . . . I think I’ve honestly used it maybe twice . . . at most, at the absolute most I’ve used the PicMonkey app on my phone three times. But I use it on my laptop or my Chromebook regularly. So I use it to make little marketing ads that I post on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook. I will use it to create Facebook cover photos. I’ve used it to create little graphics that I will have on my website.

And so, to give you the best idea of what PicMonkey is, it’s essentially my Canva. I know when people are talking about affordable or free ways to edit photos or to make banners, or to make a infographics and all of that stuff, people us usually will mention Canva. For me, anything that Canva can do, PicMonkey can do. And I prefer PicMonkey.

I’ve tried out Canva before, but I think I tried it rather recently and at this point, again, I’ve been using PicMonkey for years, and Canva just didn’t do it for me. So I would highly, highly recommend PicMonkey.

Moving on, another app that I used to edit photos or to create graphics, actually is called WordSwag. So I’ve been using that for several months now, maybe a year. And I use WordSwag primarily at this point just to create, I guess you would call it, memes. So little text, square text photos that I post on Instagram and I’m using the words from my blog when I do that. I have made I think four or five graphics with WordSwag for my Instastories. But basically, they give you access to the . . . I guess it’s like open source or common property. I’m not using the right words, but you know what I mean. Like the common photos that we have access to.

Anyway, they give you access to those photos to use those photos behind text and that sort of thing. So I’ve done that a couple of times. I actually don’t personally like using stock photos. So if you ever see that I am using stock photos in any of my marketing, know that I’m doing it hesitantly, or because I’m in a hurry and I don’t have time to scroll on my phone through the dozens of thousands–yes, dozens of thousands–photos that I have on my phone. So sometimes I’ll just grab a stock photo from a website or from one of these apps, from one of these open source applications or whatnot, or websites. But it’s not my favorite thing to do. But if you’re just starting out, of course, stock photos can be very useful and especially when you’re not having to create a new, register on a new website or something, you can just have the app on your phone and access those photos and slap on some text, and you have a really cute little flyer or little marketing content piece that you can put on all of your social media sites.

Okay, so the app that I use to add my logo to photos, it’s called Watermark Pro. So I have Watermark Pro Lite. And so I have different versions of my logo saved to my Google Drive, and then a few versions also on my phone, and so I’ve just a polite logo to that app, the different versions of that logo to that app, and I will just slap on my logo to photos whenever I want to. So I think that works really well. I have not had my problems with it, and it’s really easy. So that’s always great.

Okay, moving on, let’s see. I have the Repost App for Instagram. I recently got Google Photos because, when other people take photos for me, they like to send me Google Photo folders even though I love Google Drive, I love Google Sheets, I love Google slides, I love my Google Chromebook, I’m not a fan of Google photos and I have this constant fear that I’m gonna do something weird with Google Photos and mess up and share personal photos when I don’t intend to.

However, I did recently install the Google Photos app on my phone and that way when people send me photos in a Google Photo folder, I’m able to download them to my phone.

Okay, another photo editing app that I was using more a while ago is called Phonto, so that’s p-h-o-n-t-o. And I think that’s a really simple tool that you can also use to just add text onto a picture. You can crop your pictures or make them taller, put them in different shapes, and it also comes with a couple of those animated little different cut-outs and shapes like that. So, simple stars and smiley faces and hearts and that sort of thing.

So I was using that previously to edit photos in a very basic way, but I haven’t been using it so much. I have been using WordSwag more lately.

Let’s see, I’m looking through the apps that I have, but I want to make sure that I stick to photo editing apps and that I don’t talk about video editing apps right now. I have the Instagram Layout app on my phone, but I don’t really use that very often. I have the Boomerang app, I don’t use that often. I do have Genius Scan on my phone. I don’t really use that for a business marketing. I use that when I wanna take a picture of something and then have it converted to a PDF very quickly, and then email to someone. So I do love Genius Scan for that. Again, you just take a picture it creates a PDF for you, and you can email it to yourself or to other people, straight from the app.

I have the Pinterest app on my phone. I also don’t use that very often. Let’s see, I have PicPlayPost on my phone. I was using that the most, I want to say, about five years ago, I was using it actually a lot. I was considering starting to use it again recently because it’s, it’s actually a pretty cute app. It creates cut little photos that you can share on Instagram. And so if you have not used or seen PicPlayPost posts, I guess, before, basically it’s like I think they are always in a square. I’m not 100% sure on that, I haven’t used it in a long time. But basically the main photo is in the shape of a square, but this square is divided up into two, three, or four different parts, and those parts can be in squares or rectangles, depending on where you want to center your dividing lines.

And usually, you’ll have one video and then three photos or I guess you could have all videos and then they’ll play kind of consecutively, I believe. And so, it’s acute app. And I remember I really liked when I was using it, but I apparently just found something else and stopped using it. But I might start using it again. I actually don’t see many people using it today and I’m not sure why because I think it’s cute. So maybe I will go back to using it.

Okay, let’s see, I have the app for my Canon camera. I don’t think I mentioned this earlier. One thing I really love about my Canon Power Shot is that it takes nice photos, it takes art photos really easily, but then I can also, using the app that I have on my phone that goes along with my camera, I can very easily transfer the photo straight to my phone, because the camera uses Wi-Fi. And so I think that’s probably my favorite feature of my camera.

I know it’s not the most expensive came that I can ever have, but whenever I get a new tool or start using a new app or something, I always want something that kind of fits my brain or that works with my way of living my life. And I’m actually, even though I’m studying innovation and I’m an advocate of innovative things, I’m fairly stuck in my ways with certain aspects of my life.

For example, I still go to the post office nine times out of 10, to mail a letter. So there are certain things that I just like being old school about. Anyway, I just really like that I’m able to transfer photos directly from my Canon camera right on to my iPhone, and then I can just throw all the photos and videos into whatever editing apps that I want to, right on my cell phone. So I’m glad that camera kind of fits my life.

Okay, I have iMovie on my… Oops, that would be video editing. Let’s not talk about iMovie. I have the PicCollage app, on my phone. I feel like I download that recently actually, a couple of weeks ago, if not last week. I think when I was actually thinking about this podcast, I was going to try to start playing with a couple of different apps to see if I would start using them before the podcast.

And so I will tell you that didn’t happen. I still have the app, the PicCollage app, on my phone and it looks like it’s fairly similar to PicPlayPost. However, if I remember correctly, I did make one graphic for this for an Instastory, and it has the PicCollage app, has really cute stickers and a themed frames, and that sort of thing. And so I did make a mental note to start using it more. I just haven’t yet. And I also downloaded, I think this was last week as well, it’s called Flyer Maker, it looks like. And I met to create some flyers with that probably to promote the recital, but I never actually got around to making the flyer so I don’t have much to say about that.

The final app that I found several weeks ago that I really like, and it costs 5 dollars a month, and so I did stop paying for that because I actually pay 5 to 7 a month for lots of things and so I just try to be aware of my subscriptions. I think I had gone two weeks without using it, and so I cancelled my subscription. But what I’m talking about is the Artwork.fm app. I actually really love it and I’ve been thinking about getting it again.

Basically what you can do with it is, you can just grab a photo and then record some audio, you can record your voice, and then you can upload that piece. So it will be the photo with your voice talking over the photo and you can post that wherever you want. And so I was using that a little bit for Instastories, and the reason I love that is because. I mentioned in last week’s podcast, I’m definitely someone who . . . I believe in the value of video. I love video, I love watching into stories and Facebook live, and that sort of thing, but I don’t like making videos. Half the time that is because I’m sitting around in my pajamas and don’t have make-up on and maybe I haven’t showered and I just don’t feel like making a video and being like, “Hey guys, check out my blog.”

So that’s why I really loved the Artwork.fm app, because you just need a quick photo and then your voice and you can still share with your audience and promote your products and services. But again, I haven’t used it. I think I used it twice maybe, and I stopped using it and so I discontinued my subscription. But I think it’s really cool and I would actually highly recommend it.

Okay, so I think I have gone through all of the photo editing apps that I use. I’ll go through them again and hopefully I won’t accidentally mention any video-editing apps.

So here we go, for photo-editing apps that I use: Instagram, PicMonkey, WordSwag, Watermark Pro, Phonto, Layout for Instagram, Boomerang for Instagram, Genius Scan, PicPlayPost, PicCollage, Flyer Maker, and Artwork.fm.

Okay, so those are all of the photo-editing apps that I want to share about today. So thank you so much for listening to this podcast and… Oh yeah, before we head out, let me leave you with some tips for how you can keep doing a happy dance in your life.

I will say I think I mentioned it earlier in this podcast. I can’t actually remember because I made a mistake or there was a glitch and so I started recording but only 38 seconds got saved, so I had to start this whole podcast over.

But either in this version or in the previous version, I mentioned how what’s really important to me about photos is finding the correct light or the best light. And so, I will say that to you. I’ll say go out and look for the best light, whether it’s to get those selfies, or just to take really awesome, great photos for your business or whether it’s just going out and enjoying the lovely summer sunshine. Go out and find the best light for yourself.

Thank you guys for listening and… Oh, also if you like this podcast, please go ahead over to Apple Podcasts and give me a rating and a review, and I would appreciate it very much.

Okay, so I will catch you next week when we will be talking about or I will be telling you about my favorite video-editing apps, and I am very much a thing for that. I will see you next time, have a great rest of your week. Bye.