Travel blog of Conni Biesalski is an amazing source for many aspiring digital nomads. We asked her to share some tips for desktop and mobile apps which she uses in her daily workflow, as well as some advice for how she manages her apps and her instagram followers, alongside tips for keeping the backpacks packed clean and efficiently. Apparently, by using an linktree you can better engage those followers you gain by improving your Instagram profile layout. I've heard they are useful from friends.
Could you please introduce yourself?
I’m a professional travel blogger and digital nomadic entrepreneur from Germany. I run Planet Backpack, one of Germany’s biggest travel blogs, which mainly focuses on backpacking, long-term travel and life as a digital nomad.
Most of my income on that website comes through affiliate marketing and cooperations with tourism companies.
With my business partner Sebastian from Off the Path, I also run Blog Camp, a self-study premium online course that teaches people how to become a successful blogger, and Transit Media, a media agency for blogger relations.
Apart from all that, I’m an aspiring yogini and spirit junkie, have been a vegetarian all my life, swear on meditation, love reading non-fiction and learning new stuff.
From where do you work now?
My homebase is Berlin at the moment, but I’m on the road a lot. When I’m here, I go and work at Loft Creative Space, a homey, intimate and cool little co-working space.
It’s like working among friends, loads of digital nomads and people with similar lifestyle concepts.
What kind of hardware do you use during your ‘digital nomads’ travel?
I use a MacBook Air 11” and carry an iPhone 5, my Kindle and a small external hard drive. That’s basically it. And I carry my office in my awesome Heimplanet Daypack.
In addition, I use an additional battery case for the iPhone, sometimes I shoot video with my GoPro Hero 3. Not much fuzz about my office equipment, I like to keep it minimalist.
How do you manage your communication and tasks?
ZenDesk for all our business communication and Trello as our To-Do tool. Other than that, I have all my email addresses imported into Gmail.
We use GoToWebinar for our blogging online course live office hours and webinars.
And when I really need to focus, SelfControl is the only thing that works for me. I also just started experimenting with Rescue Time.
What other software do you use for your work?
I use Scrivener for all my writing - blogposts, copy, newsletters etc. It’s amazing. And sometimes also iA Writer, WriteRoom or OmmWriter - just to mix it up a bit.
Canva for all kinds of graphics.
Hootsuite to schedule tweets.
Lightroom and Photoshop for my photo editing.
Final Cut to edit videos.
What are your favorite mobile apps?
Instagram - huge fan, follow me @planetbackpack
Achtsamkeit - a German app for meditation
Snapseed - best photo editing app
Trail Wallet - to track expenses (especially on the road)
Do you have some special hack you want to share?
I use compression bags to keep all my clothes dry, tidy and to save space. In addition, I pack everything else into varied sizes of Ziploc bags. That way, my backpack is always organized and I can find things in a matter of seconds.
