Over the last ten years of being an entrepreneur, I have been asked many times what tools and resources I use to make my business easier, better and more efficient. I often share current favorites here in my blog. Today I’m sharing some current and “all-time” favorites.
So, how do entrepreneurs and other small businesses cope with all the varied tasks of being successful on the internet? It’s simple really – they know where to go for help and what tools to use. Savvy business owners rely on business tools and many different resources to help them meet their needs. Here are the ones I rely on.
Business Management Tools & Resources
When you manage your business yourself, there are many management tasks you need to take care of and all of them will probably not be in your scope of expertise. There are a number programs that will help you complete these items.
Bookkeeping – Without the need for explanation, this is the one area of business ownership you can’t ignore. There are a multitude of programs available to assist you but I am recommending my top two. Each for its own types/levels of business.
QuickBooks – This is a comprehensive program that has options for any size business. And I have used most of them! As their tagline states, QuickBooks is: “Simple accounting software. Shockingly easy to use.” If you have a virtual management team or just want to give your accountant easy access to your records, you can’t go wrong with QuickBooks Online.
Are you a solopreneur who only needs basic bookkeeping? Take a look at Wave. It’s the best free small business accounting website. Track your accounts receivable and payable and even balance your accounts in the easy to understand interface.
Scheduling
Scheduling a meeting can be extremely time consuming. It can seem like a total waste of your most valuable resource (time). Luckily there are programs available that can save you and other participants the frustration. If you’re ready to make scheduling a breeze, try Acuity.com or Calendly.com. Both will integrate seamlessly with your Google Calendar and many other calendar programs.
Miscellaneous Must Have Resources
PDF’s are a stable for sharing your documents while protecting your ownership and copy write. However, what if you have converted your extraordinary white paper and need to edit or update it. If you have the right software it can be done but that software is pricey. Try the Zamar’s PDF to Word Converter. It’s fast, easy and free. Better yet, it will convert many different file types, not only PDF’s.
With the popularity of texting for business communications, do you ever find yourself wishing you could text from your computer, download images to your computer or have a hard copy of a conversation? MightyText is the answer. It is an easy app that allows you to do all of these tasks.
SEO Tools & Resources
Search engine optimization is important because this is how you can make your website or blog attractive to not only search engines but to your audience. SEO includes many strategies and techniques to help increase the number of visitors or hits you get to your website. If you use the right tactics, the traffic will not only increase, but also it will be targeted and convert higher. The following tools & resources will help you make the most of search engine optimization.
Plugins – Many plugins can help with SEO if you use a self-hosted WordPress website. One of the best SEO plugins is Yoast SEO for WordPress. They offer different SEO plugins for different needs such as video, local, news and more.
Headline Generator – SumoMe.com offers an amazing headline generator. Headlines are very important for good SEO. You want the headline to be interesting, use keywords in the first three words, and be a direct indicator of what they’ll read when they click through.
Browser Extensions – Numerous browser extensions can help you with SEO. Moz Pro offers a lot of robust SEO tools and browser extensions that will improve your SEO exponentially. Another good one is Check My Links for Chrome. Broken links can really mess up your SEO.
On Page Optimization – Go back to Moz.com for an awesome On Page Grader that will help you optimize your pages even better. SEOCentro.com has many different on page SEO tools that you can use; you can even try it out free by typing in your URL.
Off Page Optimization – Your off-page SEO is just as important as on-page SEO. With MOZ you can use the tool to check for backlinks, find link building opportunities, and even find links that you don’t want that are damaging your site.
SEOLyc.com – If you really want great insights that work with and improve upon Google Analytics, this is what you need. It studies and gives you data that you can act on.
Authorityspy.com – It’s important to keep taps on your competition and this platform allows you to do just that. If you want to find influencers, this is the way to do it.
BuzzStream.com – Use this cloud-based platform to find influencers, manage relationships, and conduct amazingly accurate and helpful research to improve your SEO.
One of the best resources for learning about SEO is Search Engine Land. Here you can learn about the newest techniques and tools to make your SEO the best it can be.
Social Media Tools & Resources
No smart business owner does anything these days without using social media. The following tools and resources can help you design your social media efforts around what really works. Using tools that make everything easier, and techniques and tactics that get results makes you a seriously smart marketer.
- Social Media Information Resources – One of the ways that you can learn and keep up to date with what’s new in social media marketing is to read everything you can. Sites like com and SocialMediaExaminer.com can help you learn almost everything you need to know.
- Help With Visuals – One of the most important parts of your social media updates are using appropriate imagery. You can create them by using tools like com, Gimp.org, Adobe Creative Cloud.
- If you’re confused about what size image is optimum for each social media platform, Sprout Social offers the Always Up to Date Guide to Social Media Images. And it’s true, they keep it updated with any changes made by the different platforms. Bookmark it and always present images that display properly no matter where they appear.
Automatization – Hootsuite.com, SocialSprout.com, Buffer.com, Tweetdeck.com are all excellent automation suites that you can use to help make managing all your social media easier and more effective.
SocialBlade.com – This website is an awesome way to study your competition on YouTube.com. You can find out how much any channel is earning as well as many other statistics.
StockUnlimited.com – This stock photo website is amazing and right now is offering $9 monthly subscriptions for stock photos.
Stockfresh.com – This stock photo site also offers images that can be used on your blog and in social media updates.
GraphicStock.com – This stock photo site offers an amazing range of graphics you can use for your blog or social media posts. A subscription is $99 for the first year.
Pixaby.com – Don’t you love free?! Pixaby delivers a wide range of images and videos released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0. You may download, modify, distribute, and use them royalty free for anything you like, even in commercial applications.Using the right social media tools can be the difference between spinning your wheels with no results and being a social media rockstar.
Content Marketing Tools & Resources
To be great at social media marketing, you also have to be great at content marketing. Thankfully, there are many tools and resources that will help you get the most out of content marketing.
Automation – You should be careful about using any type of automation for engagement, but you can get things started by automatically sharing blog posts to your social media using a plugin like NextScripts Social Networks Auto-Poster.
Plagiarism Checkers – One thing you have to be careful about online is duplicate content and plagiarism. You can use cloud-based services like Grammarly.com or Small SEO Tools’ Plagiarism Checker. There is a WordPress plug in for Small SEO tools that will check every post you want to publish for issues.
Grammarly.com – This app is awesome. You can get a free version that will plug into your browser and into your MS Word software. You can upgrade to a monthly or yearly version that will check for deeper issues such as plagiarism. You can automatically see any grammar errors you post, even in your emails! (Great if you tend to type too fast!)
Hemingwayapp.com – The app highlights lengthy, complex sentences and common errors. Such as run on sentences, and sentences that are so dense and complicated that your readers will get lost trying to follow its meandering, splitting logic.
Blog Promotion Tools – If you aren’t promoting every blog post you publish, you might as well not write them at all. If you want your posts to continue working for you up to a year after publication, don’t miss out on Missinglettr.com. Simple to set up and even easier to use.
Content marketing is an invaluable component of your overall marketing plan. A great place to learn all you can about content marketing is The Content Marketing Institute. Another one is Copy Blogger. Keep up to date on content marketing with both of these informative websites.
Awesome WP Plugins
There are many WordPress plugins for you to check out. The rule of thumb for selecting a plugin is to choose one with good ratings that is also frequently updated. When you decide you want try out a plugin, make sure you only test one new plugin at a time.
Check out these to get started:
OptimizePress – Create professional landing pages quickly and easily. Includes many templates to fit your purpose and a simple user interface. You can also get the Optimize Theme to build your entire website.
Revive Old Posts – This plugin lets you choose the time between posts, which posts to share, and allows you to use certain hashtags.
Social Share Buttons by Supsystic – You need social share buttons that are prominent and encourage people to share. You can customize the placement and design of the buttons to make them really stand out.
Social Share and Social Locker – If you want to increase social traffic this plugin will help. It offers more than one aspect of social so that you can make it easy for people to share.
Instagram Feed WD – If you want to share your Instagram content on your WordPress blog, this is a great plugin to accomplish that.
Blog2Social – You can use this plugin to customize, schedule and publish blog posts automatically to all your social networks.
Click to Tweet – This plugin works great to let your audience Click to Tweet various quotes from your blog. It’s a great way to share content and bring people back to your blog.
Trying a multitude of plugins and resources will help you make social media marketing fun, easy and effective.
Analytic Tools & Resources
They say nothing is done until the paperwork is done. When it comes to marketing, nothing is done until you’ve studied the metrics. These tools and resources will help you keep the numbers straight so that you can improve your bottom line.
Google Analytics – Google Webmaster tools are amazing and honestly if you want to you can use only that and do great. You need someone who knows how to use the system to make it work for you or they have great tutorials and information to help you learn it.
Openwebanalytics.com – This open source analytics dashboard can be installed on your website. This dashboard allows you to identify where your visitors came from and more. It even has support for WordPress.
Clicky.com – This real-time way to monitor and analyze your traffic will make you fall in love with your blog again. Getting to see everything in real time is exciting. Share a link to your content on social media and you can watch the traffic come in.
Likealyzer.com – This analytic marketing tool, specifically for Facebook, checks four of the most important metrics associated with social media business success – presence, dialogue, action, and information. Aside from providing statistics, this tool gives you recommendations of how to increase your score and get better results.
Buzzumo.com – This analytics software enables you to find out which type of content is doing better on your blog.
Virtual Assistant
This list wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t include your best resource and tool: a Virtual Assistant. Outsource to a professional, experienced VA and you will find she is proficient with most tools and resources and can quickly recommend which one is right for you and your business. A VA just may be your secret weapon to crush business success.
Using the right tools can make all the difference in your ability to succeed in business. If you know who your audience is, what your goals are, and you get the word out to as many people as possible with targeted content and well-composed calls to action, you will be successful.
Source from at http://www.business2community.com/marketing/best-tools-resources-online-business-owners-01859918#mWwJdTFvCc1fL4lo.99