3 Free Online Tools That Will Help You Run Your Business
Building a business is a LOT of work. Not only do you have quotes to give, projects to work on, employees to manage, and customers to please…but you must be able to run your business efficiently too.
There are hundreds of online tools that are designed to help small business owners automate, delegate, and simplify the process of running their business. But I don’t have the time (or the knowledge) to go through each one. Instead, I’d like to give you three awesome (and FREE) online tools that can help you run your business. (And no, I’m not making money from any of these companies to refer them to you. I just love their services and use them in my own business).
For Social Media: Hootsuite.com
You may think of social media as a place to connect with friends and family. But it is so much more than that. Even though I don’t like spending a ton of time on social media because of all of the politics and drama, I find it to be a necessary and useful way of marketing my business. After all, there are 2.7 BILLION active users on Facebook today. The stats don’t lie – people are using Facebook for more than just sharing pictures of their kids. It is a huge hub for business groups, buying and selling products or services, and much more.
It’s recommended that you post a couple of times per week on your business Facebook page. Other platforms (like Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn) have their own recommendations on how many posts to put out per week to be seen, but we won’t go over all of that now…
You may not have the money to hire a social media marketer right now and that’s okay. Here’s a free tool to schedule your posts so you don’t have to get on Facebook every day. After all, you have work to do.
Hootsuite.com is a site that allows you to create, edit, and schedule posts to any of your social media pages. The free trial allows you to post on up to three sites. So, if you have a Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, you could schedule posts to all three of those under the free version.
This way, you can plan out your posts in advance, schedule them, and walk away while the automatic posting software puts it out at the exact days and times you told it to. And if you want someone else to do this for you, they can (and they won’t need to login to your personal social media accounts to do so!)
The more you can automate, the less of a headache you’ll have. Visit Hootsuite.com to get started!
For Invoicing: Quickbooks.com
Quickbooks is a tool for business owners to track income, expenses, and so much more. I’m not even going to pretend to know how much this software is capable of because I only use it for what I need it for. But man, it makes my life so much easier.
I use it to track my income and expenses, as well as send and receive invoices. If you’re only taking cash or check as payments from your customers, you may want to consider using Quickbooks for invoicing, as it takes the headache out of chasing down payments, delaying projects while you wait for deposits, or worrying about bounced checks. With Quickbooks, you can easily send invoices to your customer’s email and they can pay via credit card, debit card, or an automatic bank transfer. The free version, Quickbooks Online, has all you need to get started.
As your business grows, you may consider investing in their paid version, which opens up a vast number of other features, including accounts receivable, accounts payable, employee payroll, and much more! Get started at Quickbooks.com.
For Advertising – Google My Business (GMB)
I’ve said it before on the blog and I’ll say it a thousand times more – Google My Business is one of the most powerful, FREE online tools for advertising your business.
This free business profile will show up in the map search results whenever someone searches for your service in your area. It lists all of your business details (phone, address, website, hours, services, etc.) and you can also use it to interact with your community, much like social media. You can even put up a free starter website on there if you don’t have one yet.
Google IS the internet. They have a ton of power over search results and they have always been able to stay miles ahead of their competitor search engine companies (like Bing and Yahoo).
Make yourself a Google My Business account today if you don’t already have one. Seriously. Get started here.
I know I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of tools that can help you run your business. I’m discovering new options every day, there are just that many. Aside from widely-used tools like these, there are a lot of options that are niche-specific. For example, there are services for contractors that can take measurements and create custom quotes at the click of a button. But for now, these three online tools can be used by anyone for free and make a big impact on how you run your business. Overall, they are designed to make your life as a hard-working business owner easier.
