Don’t be Busy. Be Productive
If you are an entrepreneur, you have often wondered “How the heck do I finish more tasks in a day?!” Every entrepreneur feels at one point that they had 4 hands and 5 brains. As human entrepreneurs the computer and the smartphone can become our best friends! They can manage so many aspects of your businesses without you having to invest time in it. Get your business online and start automation today!
Get more tasks done in half the time. If you cannot afford to keep employees you can always use tools to set up a system of your own. Here are some free tools you can use to get your business online in 1 day!
1. Google forms
Google forms are one of the best ways to organise your data. Google forms takes care if your front end where all the information gets entered into your system. It also organises all your data in a neat spreadsheet in the backend for analysis. Above all its Free! Start making your Google forms now. All you need is a Google account.
Also read Get Your Business online for FREE with Google Forms!
2. Blogs
Blogs are one of the best ways to build your authority in your field of expertise. You can start blogging about any topic under the sun! And there will be an audience to read it. Blogging itself is a form of online business. Once you establish yourself as a blogger, you can eventually start making money from it.
Tools
Build a free blog on WordPress or Blogger or Tumbler
Also read Why should you start blogging Today?
3. Social media scheduling
Social media is one of the major source of marketing and getting noticed for an online business. You can market your products for free, build an audience and pay for advertising to reach a bigger audience. Due to the ease and potential of reaching the world audience, social media presence for any brand is extremely important. Regularity of posting content is extremely important on social media for marketing your business. However if you are running a business, creating content and posting it consistently on social media gets time consuming. Hence free tools like Buffer and Hootsuite can help you schedule your posts in advance. These apps will post your content on your behalf so your presence on your social media portals is consistent.
Buffer and Hootsuite are great free apps for scheduling your posts
Also read Tools to make YOU successful at social media.
4. Email marketing and automation
Email marketing is a great way of staying connected with your audience and fans. Collecting email addresses of people interested in your products is a great way of creating your own audience. One thing to remember is that all your social media portals are owned by the companies, not by you.hence there is always a remote risk of losing the fans of a particular portal shuts down or gets hacked. Its always better to have the email contacts of your fans so you can pitch your latest products and offers to them directly through their inbox. Email marketing gives a personalised experience and builds a good client brand rapport.
Tools
You can use a free email service provider called MailChimp.
Also read Why should you be doing Email Marketing?
5. Repurpose content
Creating original content for your brand is the need of the hour. Being a content creator puts you on top of the pyramid of the social media ecosystem. However be smart with your content. You can create 1 piece of original content and repurpose it to different platforms by packaging it differently for each portal.
E.g. You can create a video and post it on YouTube. A clip of this video can be posted on facebook and instagram. A screenshot of it can be tweeted. You can link or embed the video in a blog post. Thus you have created 1 piece of content but have successfully repurposed it and applied or to different platforms.
6. Calender
Having a social media calender is a great way to organise your your social media content for up to a year in advance.
- You can create a simple spreadsheet.
- Decide how many days you want to post in a week.
- Make columns for days,dates and types of contents.
- Actually paste the content in the spreadsheet. It could be text, links, pictures etc.
- Now you just have to copy paste this content to your social media portals on the specific days and publish it. Done. It take 1 days of planning for quick execution throughout the year.
- Alternatively, you can schedule your content on Buffer or Hootsuite and let it publish on your behalf.
You can use your Google calender for it as well. Your calender basically is a place where all your content is ready to be dispersed and shared easily and quickly. It could be as simple as a word document or as complicated as a paid software.
Tools
Buffer and Hootsuite are great free apps for scheduling your posts
7. Collect online payments instantly
If you are having an Online business the first and foremost department you have to get sorted is the payments. A business is not a business until it’s making money. Make sure you have all the commonly used modes of payments incorporated in your business. Make it easy for people to pay you. Online payments are quick, easy and least time consuming of all. Once your cash flow is sorted you can easily start selling your products.
8. Video Call
With the ease of online business comes the lack of trust. Its tough to gain the trust of a client for that 1st sale. Try and predict the clients mindsets so you are prepared to solve their problems before they tell you about it. Skype calls are a great way of having a face to face conversation with your clients. This gives a face and human touch to your brand. Talking will always seal the trust and make the sale process a little faster.
Tools
Skype and Google Duo are great apps for free video calling
9. Google keep
Google keep is a note keeping app by Google. Just like all other Google products, keep can also be accessed across all devices. You can keep checklists, texts, audio, images, videos and reminders all on Google keep. You can even collaborate with other people through this app. Note down all those elaborate lists, quick thoughts and blog material in Keep.
Tool
Google Keep for Notekeeping
10 cloud storage
With better quality of every Small digital app, memory is something everyone struggles with. Always keep all the important files backed up in a cloud storage. Google drive, drop box are some of the best cloud storage services. Both have a free version and a paid version for more storage space. If you have that much of stuff to be saved the small annual fee is pretty negligible as compare to running a risk.of losing it when your phone crashes.
Tools
You can use Dropbox or Google drive for free storage.
Drop box has 3 GB of free cloud space.
Google drive has 15 GB of free cloud space.
11. Appointments
Always use an appointment service to schedule and remind your clients of appointments. An app called appointments is Free. It sends 40 sms per month free of cost. You just have to enter a contact once you set an appointment. This reduces the planning time.
Tool– Appointments app
Also read 5 reasons to become a Lady Boss Entrepreneur
