The best thing you can do for your business is to find tools/software to help you going and help you attain the success you want to achieve in your business. Like most business owners, you feel the need to wear many hats while still trying to serve your customers. You have to be owner, customer service, designer, marketer, social media guru, and the face of a company – how exhausting does that sound?!
But, you make it happen. Now, you can make it happen easier until you’re ready to hire out to help you (which, you should make your end goal). I’ve compiled some of the tools I use every day for my clients to keep their branding on point, their social media posts flowing, and their business running smoothly!
canva
Canva is a great tool for anyone wanting to add professional polish to their social media profiles or even print pieces. With a limited free option, a paid membership ensures the use of a massive variety of plug-and-play templates that are designed professionally.
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PROS: Easy to use, low-price, able to be used for digital and print needs, able to utilize company branding guidelines.
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CONS: Login-based in browser, can have a small learning curve for non-designers, NOT for logo design, many companies use templates with NO edits so graphics can look similar.
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TIPS: Invest in the paid version for stock photos and unlimited elements. Students get discounts.
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ALTERNATIVES: Adobe Creative Cloud (Spark), PicMonkey
hootsuite
If you’re serious about your social media game, you need to manage your profiles consistently. It helps you keep track and manage your many social network channels. It can enable you to monitor what people are saying about your brand and help you respond instantly. You can view streams from multiple networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and post updates or reply directly.
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PROS: Scheduling with text and media, monitor multiple streams, allows cross-posting, connects campaigns easily.
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CONS: Free version is severely lacking without keyword reporting or hashtag reports, difficulty onboarding and very tech-centric.
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TIPS: Paid is the way to go, as the free version only allows 3 channels, can be quite overwhelming and UI has not been updated in quite some time.
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ALTERNATIVES: Planoly, Buffer
dubsado
Dubsado is great for any company that works with multiple clients and that needs to keep track of invoices, contracts, and any and all information relating to client projects.
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PROS: Invoicing is a breeze with receiving payments, forms are customizable and e-mail management is a dream. This is a tool for automation and simplification.
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CONS: Workflows can be a bit confusing, client portal can use additional features and seems barebones. Can be VERY difficult to understand initially.
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TIPS: Take time, reach out to support, and really watch Youtube videos on how to utilize this software.
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ALTERNATIVES: Honeybook, Bonsai, Bloom, Hubspot
google analytics
This is a no-brainer, but it doesn’t matter what type of site you have: you need Google Analytics. This allows you to track how many visitors your site has per month, see where they come from, see how long they stay and more valuable insight to help you know if your website is doing the work it should representing your business.
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PROS: Almost every bit of information you’d need to look objectively at your visitors, detailed reports, easy set-up to connect to your site. Best of all: it’s free! This is the industry standard right now.
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CONS: Can be massively confusing without training, often does not reflect accurately to social media analytics (especially with ad managers).
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TIPS: Take the Google Analytics certification for a step-by-step walkthrough and to objectively understand your end-goal.
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ALTERNATIVES: Whatagraph
buzzsumo
Run a search to quickly discover content ideas, uncover platform insights, identify passionate influencers and more. Your goal with Buzzsumo is to break from the norm of posting and see what has worked well in similar industries. This type of information makes planning a breeze!
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PROS: Stay on top of trending topics and understanding the content being shared in your industry and similar industries. If you’re in the market to network, it allows you to view influencers who may great to connect and collaborate with. Additionally, it’s good to peek at your competition…
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CONS: Cost, cost, cost. Can be quite a lot of e-mail notifications initially. Linkedin is not included in this monitoring.
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TIPS: Utilize their free trial and do not become obsessed monitoring every move your competition makes here. You do YOU, boo!
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ALTERNATIVES: SocialAnimal, Feedly, Google Trends, Sprout Social
Owning a small business is an incredibly rewarding experience, but it requires constant vigilance to the bottom line. I hope these resources just might give you a little extra breathing room in your budget and your daily routine!
If you need some extra help in graphic or web design – let’s talk!
