Most small business owners have a to do list that is way too long. Let’s face it, running a business has become more difficult than ever. The good news is that technology is now making some things about running a business a lot easier. There are a number of free and low-cost digital tools that can help you meet your business goals. Here are 7 tech tools that could help you save time and money.
http://marketing.grader.com/ by Hubspot, is a free tool to evaluate your marketing through your website. You’ll know what marketing activities are working (or aren’t working). You’ll get answers to questions: Are you doing enough to bring visitors to your website? How is your content creation working? How are your optimization and website promotion skills? How do you do when it comes to converting traffic into leads? Do your landing pages, conversion forms, email marketing and social media efforts compare?)? This free tool is completely worthwhile.
Lexity.com: is a real time analytics application that provides online retailers with a live window into individual visitors’ shopping activity in their online store. This free app gives merchants the tools to better understand their customers’ shopping patterns – what they buy, browse and ignore.
Enloop: is great free business plan software. Enloop can work for seasoned entrepreneurs working on reinvention or a student working on their small business hustle in a dorm room. You can quickly build an investor ready document that will make your business shine. Enloop offers a paid version, but most entrepreneurs can get what they need from the free version.
AIM: Lets you share photos, links and documents in messages more easily and collaborate better with more sophisticated group chat. Plus, the app for smartphones and tablets syncs conversations so you never miss a message while you’re running from meeting-to-meeting or travelling back home from a trip.
Evernote: Manages your digital to-do list and keeps random notes all in one place across all of your devices to help you stay on top of regular tasks and reminders.
About.me: Make it easy for people to find you by building a free page on about.me. The site makes it easy to connect your online identity from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. in one place so potential customers or clients can learn more about you. Take control of your online identity and breathe new life into networking and personal branding to make sure you make the right first impression.
Freshbooks: is online accounting and invoicing software that is easy to use. You can send an invoice a few seconds after creating your account no matter what level of experience you have. You can send invoices via email and snail mail if you wish. The account starts out free then there’s nominal monthly fee for use, which increases depending on the features you need. Accounting is tough for most business owners and you need to know all the options available.
Do you have a new digital tool for small business to suggest?
For more tips on how start or grow your small business subscribe to Melinda Emerson’s blog http://www.succeedasyourownboss.com.
Melinda F. Emerson, known to many as SmallBizLady is one of America’s leading small business experts. As a seasoned entrepreneur, professional speaker, and small business coach, she develops audio, video and written content to fulfill her mission to end small business failure. As CEO of Quintessence Multimedia, Melinda educates entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies on subjects including small business start-up, business development and social media marketing. Forbes Magazine named her #1 woman for entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter. She hosts #SmallBizChat Wednesdays on Twitter 8-9pm ET for emerging entrepreneurs. She also publishes a resource blog http://www.succeedasyourownboss.com Melinda is also bestseller author of Become Your Own Boss in 12 months; A Month-by-Month Guide to a Business That Works.
I’m a huge Evernote fan. It’s eliminated the need for me to carry around the 2 or 3 notebooks that I used for notekeeping.
Thanks for tuning me on to HubSpot. Evernote has been a favorite of mine for a while. If I was adding one more digital tool it would be 1Password — https://agilebits.com/onepassword — generate unique, super wicked passwords for every login, without having to memorize them all.
Great resource! I will explore these today.
If you would like a tool to manage your small business activities and Projects, you can use this web aplication:
http://www.Gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage and prioritize your Goals (for business but also in other areas of your life), Projects and Tasks. It has a Checklists section, for the routines and repetitive activities that any business has to do.
Syncs with Evernote, and also comes with mobile-web version, and Android and iPhone apps.
Thanks for your post, Melinda. I’ve never heard of any of these tools. I checked out AIM and found it a very interesting tool.
Awesome blog you have here. Go go go…
I’d recommend HootSuite or CoTweet for small businesses looking to develop in to the world of social media
The time has changed right now. Can you afford to lend the money.
As you may already be aware, personal lines of credit offered by
banks and private institutions are usually available to creditworthy customers.
I’d recommend KarmaCRM. It’s a great tool to store all important client relations information. Also Zamza for quick file conversions.
I’m sorry, that’s Zamzar. I forgot the “r”.
Good stuff Melinda. Wanted to add I’m a huge fan of hubspot, dropbox, google drive, and smartsheet.com as my hub to keep all my work organized. They’re all online, so I’m never without my information. I call them my super powers!