One of the questions I get all of the time, is “What new ‘toys’ are out there for small business owners?”
The list I’m giving you is ever changing, however, they are proven and used by some of my most successful clients.
And most of them are FREE!
Productivity Tools
Moment – We spend over 5 hours a day on our phones. That’s way too much! I personally use Moment, which is an app, that tells me how long I am on my phone, what I am using, and will even kick me off my phone if I go over a designated amount of time.
RescueTime - A Chrome extension that shows you how you spend your time and provides tools to help you be more productive.
Grammarly – Autocorrect has lowered our ability to actually spell anything. Grammarly takes that one step further by checking your spelling and grammar whenever you’re typing, no matter what site you are using.
Google anything – All of the Google tools are very easy to use and implement, i.e., Calendar, Gmail, Drive, etc.
Audible – Smart people read books. If you don’t have time to read, use Audible and begin listening to some real books.
And if you are looking for some books try:
- The E-Myth, by Michael Gerber
- Anything by Seth Godin, such as Purple Cow, Lynchpin, The Dip, or Tribes
- The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy.
- And a great book I just read on negotiation, Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. It. Really. Works!
Marketing
MailChimp – Email marketing is not dead. In fact, there are 3 times more email accounts than there are Facebook and Twitter accounts combined. MailChimp is a free email marketing service (up to 2,000 contacts), that lets you send your content directly to your customers and centers of influence. The key is sending information that is relevant and not boring.
CoSchedule Headline Analyzer – The best way to get those emails opened is to have a catchy headline. CoSchedule has an analyzer tool that will grade your headline and even give some suggestions for you.
Canva – If you need some eye-catching graphics, but don’t have the budget or time, Canva is a great tool for doing that. It’s free and user-friendly.
Unsplash and Pixabay – Both have high res and free images that you can use for marketing.
Facebooks ads – It’s a pay-to-play game with Facebook. Organic reach for a business page is less than 5%, so you need to boost those posts and create actual Facebook ads. The good news is that Facebook knows everything about everybody so you can get very targeted.
LinkedIn – If you are selling business-to-business, LinkedIn is a must. Just saying I don’t understand how it works isn’t an excuse anymore. Just think of it like Facebook without the cat videos.
YouTube – Okay, so YouTube is not new, but you are probably not using it either. It’s the 2nd most searched site on planet Earth. Oh, and it’s owned by Google. That’s important for getting found on Google.
Hootsuite or Buffer – Either of these online tools allow you to schedule your social media posts to the most popular platforms.
Accounting
QuickBooks – QuickBooks is still the gold standard for small business accounting. There is of course online version, however, makes sure your CPA is ready for you to make the switch.
Freshbooks – A cloud-based accounting program that is getting more popular and is easy to use.
Great compilation. I would also include DrumUp https://drumup.io/ to this impressive ensemble. Some of its features include multiple account management and scheduling, scheduled content calendar view, a content library to store custom drafted posts and interesting recommendations for future use, group scheduling - can create a group, add a bunch of accounts and schedule to them at once, analytics - see which post got the most engagement, emojis and gifs for posts, and a chrome extension which picks up the page you're viewing and lets you share it to your social accounts. pretty useful for entrepreneurs.
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