Starting a new business can seem like a daunting task. Luckily for you we live in the 21st century and we have access to tens of thousands of extremely helpful tools for businesses both old and new. Here is a list of my top 5 favourite tools I think all businesses should be using:
1. Hootsuite
It’s no secret that social media is an extremely powerful tool when it comes to business. Utilising the right platform in the right way can produce incredible results for your business. Whether it’s lead generation or brand awareness, ensuring your social profile is always up to date and full of useful content is almost guaranteed to generate at least some new business.
Understanding social media is just a part of it, then it comes to managing it. Sticking the odd update on isn’t good enough. To truly perform you need to be engaging with your audience and looking to expand your network, whatever social media platform you’re using. That’s where Hootsuite comes in.
Hootsuite is a great social media management tool that’s free for most casual users. It allows you to manage multiple social media platforms simultaneously, as well as allowing you to schedule posts weeks in advance (an awesome feature that I could not live without). The scheduling feature is my favourite part as it allows you to blitz your posts in advance which is essential for a busy business owner.
The Free plan allows you to schedule up to 30 posts at one time, and manage up to 3 social networks. The next step up starts at £25 per month and includes up to 10 social profiles.
If you haven’t already, get on it!
2. Todoist
Task management can be a nightmare if you’re not typically a super organised person. Todoist is a great, simple piece of software that allows you to easily manage all of your tasks from a single dashboard. Best of all, it’s also Free, although the premium version is worth the money (£36 for the year).
The best features of todoist is the ability to categorise your posts based on projects, along with the ability to set comments, deadlines and more. It’s well worth checking out.
There is an option for teams, but I haven’t had the chance to check it out yet. It could be Todoist’s features aren’t comprehensive enough for larger companies and teams, but it’s definitely a great tool for any budding business owner.
Obviously the interface is much nicer without all of the tasks blocked out like i’ve done on the image below, but you get the idea!
3. Mailchimp
Ahh Mailouts, the bane of any marketeers life. We’ve all been through the nightmare of building a mailout list, and the absolute pain in the as of creating a comprehensive mailout campaign to go with it. Mail Chimp is great because again, it’s Free, and it’s incredibly simple to use.
Unfortunately Mailchimp has it’s limits, and there are definitely better mailout software out there. But the beauty of Mailchimp lies in it’s simplicity. You can use Mailchimp even if you have no prior experience with mailouts and email marketing software.
There are plenty of free plugins for the biggest and best CMS software out there, including WordPress. So it makes it incredibly easy to start building your mailout list from the get go.
4. Monday.com
If you’re looking for a more comprehensive task/project management system, then look no further than Monday.com. It’s a great tool with a fantastic user interface, somebody really spent a lot of time making this thing look pretty.
Creating a ‘board’ is relatively simple, splitting down tasks between team members is a great feature, along with the ability to share the project with external parties in order for clients to track progress is great. It’s pretty cheap too, starting at £25 per month, take a look at their pricing structure here. Monday really makes it easy to manage a project from start to finish, with full visibility for everybody involved. I love the ability to upload files to the projects too.
Keep an eye on this space, i will be updating this article from time to time.
