So you still wanna be an influencer

As an absolute beginner, this was one of the weirdest areas to navigate.

It’s pretty clear to me these days, and a quick search or AI query can take you a long way. For me, as a busy, sleep-deprived, overwhelmed, and newly-minted 9-5 parent, let’s just say that I didn’t think very hard or very much back then.

The silver lining in that is that I went through a few rounds of rummaging around for software that would work for what I needed, and they will serve you well. Even better is that the free versions of these packages are more than sufficient to get anyone going in writing and video production.

So here are a few that I recommend for a neophyte influencer for every medium.

Disclaimer: these are the ones that I use, not the ones that are necessarily the most popular. Some of them are free with a paid premium tier. Others require a single purchase. There's millions of articles the world over that go into those.

Writing and editing

For feedback and general editing, I like to use Hemingway and more recently, Reedsy.

Hemingway requires a single purchase of $20 for the desktop app version, but you can use the website version fairly well. I’ve been using it for over a year now, and coupling it with AI for general feedback has worked for me.

Reedsy is great for putting together larger works such as eBooks and manuscripts that you want to expand into full books. There are resources such as templates and editors or reviewers to hire as well.

Nothing complex when it comes to writing. When I was writing scripts for YouTube, I actually used Notepad++. It’s more of a code editor than a text editor, but I had to start from my engineering and programming roots before venturing out.

Stock images and generators

Depending on your stance on what AI should and shouldn’t be used for, your usage of these materials is completely up to you. For my part, I use AI image generation for very specific instances. As an artist, I can understand how using it for monetary gain doesn’t go over well since it’s trained on the work of all artists who upload their work to the internet.

I use Leonardo.AI for that purpose. Canva is a great tool for creating all of your banners and promotional materials that complement your social media content. It’s also great for infographics, book covers, and all manner of print media.

Both of these sites have free and paid tiers. Leonardo allows specific resolutions and formats that are limited by tokens. Canva locks some of the better templates and fonts as well as various other features for a monthly or yearly subscription.

When it comes to stock images, I like to use Unsplash. There are plenty of other stock image sites out there, and I use this one because it’s already integrated into the writing platforms that I use.

Video recording, editing, and production

I saved the steepest learning curve for last. There are a lot of aspects to video production that you can dip your toes into, but the process is like jumping out of a plane to learn how to fly or dropping into the ocean to learn to swim.

Video recording is pretty straightforward. You can use your phone for real life recording. When it comes to recording your screen or gaming, I like to use Streamlabs. It’s also a great way to multistream to YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook among others. Loom and Otter.AI are excellent choices for recording talking head recordings as well as online meetings for transcription and summary.

You can’t beat Da Vinci Resolve (DVR) when it comes to editing and production. Its free product is more than enough, and there’s plenty of help and resources to get you started. I’ve also used CapCut for my shorts for quicker turnaround, though DVR is still my preferred method for the fancier video production content.

Ambition meets reality

It took me nearly seven years to get a handle on all the materials I’ve mentioned here. I wouldn’t recommend trying to use all of them at once. In fact, if this were about content creation skills rather than my hardware and software lineups, I’d be writing an entirely different article on what I think are the most important things to learn in that department…

99% of content creators don’t learn the skills in the way that I would recommend, and I didn’t either.

The only thing I can say is that you can choose your own adventure with this list.

As I mentioned above, these are all the software packages and websites that I use for my own content creation journey. Those of you who are far more advanced and farther along in your journey and making money from it know that there’s another set of websites to sell the stuff that I write.

That’s the next (and last issue) that I’ll share since that’s all to do with where I’ve shared my work as well as my future plans for offering it for purchase.

Let me know what you think!