Some essential tools for your business (startup ?)
I always get requests from friends & acquaintance asking my thoughts on a suitable tool for various needs. To save time, i wrote a post on 5 must try tools for Small Businesses & Startups — part 1. I was overwhelmed by the response i got. The most common feedback i received for this post was that it was simple, easy to follow but a bit lengthy.
Along with feedbacks, I also received more requests — to create a list of must have tools while starting an organization. The basic tools like a communication platform, tools to track progress of project, etc,. Hence this new list of solutions which i believe is a must have (at least an alternative of these) focusing on communication.
Product or Service
Your Product or Service is the god!
Poor marketing or on-boarding/sales can kill the product but there is no business plan without the product/service. Right from concept stage, you have to explain & discuss products with various stakeholders (partners, investors, employees, customers and so on).
Before you have a basic structure (say a beta website/application), you may use presentations which are hard to communicate & visualize the solution.
Wireframe solutions: Use a wireframe app/solution like POP to solve this.
Draw your website/app screens on a piece of paper, click photos, link each image and make it a demo application. Its a simple solution and quite effective, especially in engaging your stakeholders. There are many options… some free, some freemium & some paid.
I have used POP and liked it, if you find something better, please do share it in comments.
Communication
Email is still the main mode of communication, weathering the onslaught of Instant Messages like WhatsApp. I have at least 3 email accounts which is more than 10 years old and use another 8 email id’s if not more. While I’ve used WhatsApp groups to discuss work, we eventually returned to email… thanks to the clutter of personal & professional messages.
However, we end up losing discussion points in email chains too (canned response as gmail calls it) and often takes too much turn around time.
- Slack for email:
While there are a plethora of options these days like Bitrix24, HipChat,Facebook for Work, etc., but I prefer Slack. Its simple & easy to understand/use. An added advantage is the integrations by other useful applications or solutions like Jira or Trello. You can bring customer & vendors to slack too.
Slack has a limitation of 10,000 messages after which older messages get archived. But there are some plugins to save old messages in a local archive should you need it.
Another beautiful aspect of Slack is the open communities like Online Geniuses & Startup Study Group. You can encourage your team to be a part of this and they can seamlessly participate in these communities within the same application (from mobile, tablet & laptops).
- Trello for post-its & White boards
I am a big fan of Trello! I have boards for work, personal KRA’s, my blog and I am planning one for my household-chores too :D.
Trello replaces the quintessential white-board & post-its (pasted everywhere). You can now have boards for your company’s vision, long & short term plans, product development, sales and day to day operations — all at one place. In each board you can have multiple lists and then cards in the list. You can attach images or documents, discuss through comments, assign folks to work & set reminders for each card.
In simpler terms, I have boards for Six-Month Plan, My Work and a Lead & Sales board at SevenPromises.com. In Lead & Sales board, we have lists for customers — India, Abroad, Converted, etc. Each list has cards with customers name, descriptions on key information about customer and we share the follow-up status & customer feedbacks through comments.
We even have checklist on each customer card on action items and assign these cards among team members with due dates.
Social Media
No matter whom you are selling your product or service, you have to be on social media in today’s world — right from Facebook & Twitter to Instagram or even Google+. To create & share content on all these accounts is an effort by itself. And to handle them? — here i use Hootsuite.
While their free plan have limitations, their basic paid plan is brilliant in my opinion. I used hootsuite to handle my official & personal social media accounts simultaneously. It even helped me to hunt for content & schedule posts.
There are alternate options like Buffer for instance, Hootsuite is my personal preference especially since it provides Google+ integration.
Blog
A website is definitely incomplete without a blog.
Content drives your online presence & reach. While people still follow last century tricks like keyword stuffing & backlinking, a good blog boosts your online presence like a jet-pack.
I am sure you will take care of well-researched content but when it comes to sharing it, don’t limit yourself to to your blog. Republish your thoughts, finding & interesting content on various platforms — my choice is, and you might have already guessed it… Medium
I like Medium because of their interface & audience (reach). Its effortless to post an article on Medium and their reach is superb. Don’t forget to share links of your website in these articles. Medium opens up your thoughts & solutions to a large set of eyes which you would otherwise take months, if not years, to reach.
…to be continued
PS: This list is focused on communication (internal & external). There are many more aspects which need to be considered before selecting the apt one for your business. New tools keep coming and most of them offer options to port data from your existing tools, so don’t fuss too much and start immediately. Its essential that you have these or a substitute to start with.
PPS: Want to add more tools which you think should make it to this list? Share it in comments or message me. Its a bright new world outside and there is no dearth of solutions, i just picked a few i liked.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on April 25, 2017.
