8 Helpful Business Tools I Absolutely Can’t Live Without
As an entrepreneur, I wear a LOT of hats and it really helps when technology makes my life easier. So I’ve decided to share my 8 go-to business tools that help me save time and extra headache.
I’m proud to be using the tools listed below, so I’ve some added affiliate links there. Purchasing using them will not cost you anything extra, but will support my business.
Social Media Tools
Since my business is largely on social media, let’s start with these types of tools!
I’ve been using Later since 2017. It’s a visual planner and scheduler for your Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook content. I use it mainly for the first two.
There are a ton of different feed planners out there – especially for Instagram. But no matter how many of them I tried, I always went back to Later. It’s just so intuitive and really addresses my social media needs.
There is a free version and paid ones. I’ve switched to paid in 2018 to be able to schedule and automate more posts in advance.
The ultimate design tool that I have been using since 2014. It’s amazing and saves so much time trying to design any graphic. That’s where I create any graphics you see on this website or on my Instagram. It’s been a life saviour with Pinterest and even PDFs – that’s how I design workbooks for my courses and lead magnets.
I highly recommend it if you’ve never played around with it! Again, I’ve used the free version for a while before switching to a paid version and never looked back.
One of my most recent finds and I’m so in love with it. It’s all about organising and scheduling your content – from project managing your content creation workflows to scheduling out your posts. It also has a tool called ReQueue where you can create a library of social posts and set the rules on how they will be shared and re-shared. A great way to repurpose content and a must have business tool for any company that generates content.
Another feature that I use a lot is setting social campaigns from within a blog post. CoSchedule is integrated with my WordPress and it can automate social posts in relation to when the blog post gets published. This is what it looks like:
That was an old title, I’ve modified it by adding another tool and consulting with Co-Schedule’s Headline Analyser which is their free tool. Since I have an account with them, mine is integrated into my WordPress too.
Productivity business tools
There are a ton of different tools out there, but these are the ones that I love:
It includes Gmail, Google Drive (that I cannot live without, I do everything there!) Google Calendar, Hangouts/Meet etc. While you can get it for free with a @gmail.com account, it looks much more professional to have your own domain.
It also has a ton of ways to collaborate with your team – we used all of those tools back when I worked at Google and I still love them so much.
Project management/to-do tool that can be integrated with your email. Great for when tasks come in through email and you want to make sure you remember to do something or follow up with someone.
Customer Relationship Management
It’s a CRM that lives in your Gmail. It’s been so helpful for keeping track of my sales pipelines and has allowed me to convert so much business through staying on top of things and following up. I also use it to track other workflows – like when I’m interviewing somebody or if I’m being interviewed.
Great for anyone who needs a light CRM solution for managing different types of workflows.
I use this one for my consulting clients and it creates such an awesome and smooth user experience. It integrates the sales and proposal stage, makes it easy to sign a contract, schedule meetings etc. Perfect for any free freelancers.
The only issue I’ve had with it is that my business is UK-based and they need a US bank account to integrate their payment system. But hopefully, I’ll be able to move my business to the US in 2021 and take advantage of that functionality as well.
Accounting:
Absolute savior, pretty easy to learn – and works much better for me than any other ones. I’ve switched to it at the beginning of 2020 and I’m so grateful for it. It has seamless integration with banks or payment systems like PayPal or TransferWise and makes bookkeeping not super awful. In fact, I’ll be closing off the month next week and I’m not dreading it, which is a good sign 😉
So there you have it, the tools that I use to run my business that I’m in love with and would recommend to anyone! What other tools would you recommend?
I’ll also create a separate post with the tools I use for content creation, watch out for that if you are interested in the topic!