Top 5 Online Business Tools for Small Businesses
Whether you are a new startup or an established company, you need to use online tools to simplify, streamline, and automate your tasks. These tools will free up a lot of your time so you can focus on the more pressing aspects of your business.
Here are five of the most popular online tools that will change the way you do business:
1. Team messaging tool. If your team is still using emails or Skype to communicate with each other, now is the perfect time to move to a different method of communication. There are many online messaging tools out there that will make it easy to talk to one another. Using a team messaging tool allows you to keep everyone on the same page, and allows you to keep all of the communications in just one place. This is especially applicable if you are working with a remote team or a group of freelancers.
Slack remains to be the best instant messaging app out there. You can create multiple channels so you can conveniently separate messages and discussions by department or topic. You can set these channels in private if you are discussing sensitive information. You can also upload and share files to team members. What makes Slack different from other messaging apps is its search functionality that enables you to find and retrieve old messages.
2. Design tool. If you don’t have an in-house designer, then you’re probably wearing a lot of hats and doing the marketing side of things on your own. If Adobe Creative Cloud is too technical for you or you don’t have this software just yet, there are other online tools that will help you spruce up your brochures, spiff up your PowerPoint presentations, and tidy up your social media images.
Canva is free to use, unless you choose a paid stock photo to go with your design. Its design editor requires little to no learning curve, and it has a lot of ready-made templates that you can use to design your promotional material or social media business page.
3. Social media management tool. These days, it is important for you to have an active presence on various social media platforms. However, having a Facebook business page or a Twitter account will simply not suffice. In order for your business to benefit from social media, you need to manage each platform that you use and make the most of their features and benefits. This can be time-consuming from your end if you don’t have a dedicated social media manager.
The great news is that there are a lot of social media management tools that make it possible for you to schedule posts and manage different platforms under just one dashboard. Buffer is a popular social media marketing tool that allows you to schedule and stagger your social media posts several times a day. Its easy-to-use interface allows you to queue up posts, and its Analytics page gives you reports on how your business page is performing.
4. Email marketing tool. If used the right way, email marketing can provide a better return of investment for your business compared to other forms of traditional marketing. It is cost-effective to use, and because it is highly-targeted, the chances for a conversion is greater.
To achieve a successful email marketing campaign, you need to build, grow, and segment your email list. You also need to have the capacity to send personalised emails despite the large number of people on your list. These things can be made possible by using an email service provider such as ConvertKit, an email marketing platform which helps you create beautiful and attractive opt-in forms and landing pages. It also features a drag-and-drop editor that makes it easy for you to write and personalise your emails.
5. Project management tool. Project management tools are heaven-sent to business owners, especially if you’re dealing with many people or different teams. It allows you to manage projects at a glance and keep track of what everyone else is doing at the moment all in one place. It also allows every team member to collaborate and discuss with each other, as well as upload and organize files.
Basecamp is one of the leading project management tools today, with its user-friendly interface that allows you to manage multiple projects and create to-do lists that you can assign to team members.
Bonus Tool: password management tool. Given the huge number of online tools you will be using in your projects, it can be a pain to track and memorise all of the passwords you are going to use. Thank goodness for the existence of password managers that remember all of your passwords so you don’t have to. LastPass is a terrific password management tool to help you keep track and secure all of the passwords you will be using for your online accounts.
Author’s resource box
Rose is a digital marketing strategist of Banner Pen, the leading manufacturer and supplier of banner pen products in Australia. The company provides custom scroll pens, which are pens with pull out banners that can be used to promote your business.
