Top Productivity Tools For Solopreneurs And Small Businesses
Technology today does more than just make our lives easier. It is crucial in all aspects of a business. Technology can assist small businesses and solopreneurs in running their business smoothly and propel them to success.
When you own a small business, it is critical to carefully schedule your plans, manage your time, and determine what is important to you. Today, many digital tools help you to be more productive with your tasks and work. Implementing them in your small business yields positive results in the future and allows you to always stay on top of your work while saving time and energy.
The Top 12 productivity tools mentioned below can help you better plan, manage, and organize everything when it comes to your small business as a solopreneur.
1. Rebrandly
Rebrandly's well-optimized link management system saves time for teams of all sizes. Rebrandly is a link branding expert that makes it simple to design, track, and manage short URLs with a custom domain name. The URL shortener includes a number of time-saving features, including the ability to create several workspaces, the ability to modify the URL's destination even after it has gone live, and the ability to monitor links using its built-in UTM constructor and sophisticated tracking statistics. Slack, Facebook, Buffer, and Zendesk, to name a few, can all be integrated with it.
Using your brand name paired with a unique new domain extension like .cyou is an effective method to generate memorable shortlinks that can be shared on your brand's social media accounts. Instead of using cryptic URLs to share blog posts and videos, a creative short link like Vision.cyou/blog-post makes way for incredible branding possibilities.
2. GSuite
GSuite provides a wide range of tools that can help boost productivity. It has everything you need in one palce. The productivity tools on GSuite can be accessed from any device or platform. It's inexpensive and you get a professional email address, 30GB of online storage, mobile device management and 24/7 support. It also includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Tasks, Google Spreadsheets, Google Docs, Google Hangouts, Google Slides.
With GSuite, you can handle documents, sheets, presentations, manage and schedule meetings, and many more. It can save you a lot of money which otherwise gets wasted on costlier tools.
3. Slack
When it comes to effective team communications and collaborations, Slack is one of the best tools out there. It is a simple and widely used communication tool used by both large and small businesses. If your business has clients or employees in other parts of the world, Slack will help you communicate with them more effectively and reduce the number of emails you send. It provides cross-functional connectivity, timely updates, and real-time team conversations, allowing the team members to be updated and express their opinions and views more easily.
Other features such as advanced message search, simple commands, and a slackbot that functions as a personal assistant are also included in the app.
4. Asana
Asana is a free task management tool that allows you to create new assignments, delegate them to individual team members, track each employee's progress, and keep track of any task easily. Aside from that, Asana allows you to control who can and cannot see certain tasks. It even sends deadline alert emails on your behalf, ensuring you don't have to keep track of deadlines regularly. Their updated task management system makes it easier to navigate through the dashboard.
5. Todoist
Making a to-do list is one of the oldest strategies for being productive and completing all tasks that have been assigned to you. Making one today is as useful as it was in the past. Todoist, an app, works on a related principle. It's a digital tool that allows you to keep track of all your projects and your progress. Aside from that, the app's best feature is that it can be accessed on any smartphone and can be paired with other tools such as DropBox and Zapier.
6. DropBox
It’s not always possible to share large files via email, which can be infuriating if you need to share a file quickly with a prospect or employee. DropBox is one such tool that eliminates the trouble of sharing large and numerous files with other team members. It is integrated with Microsoft for Hotmail and Office 365, making it more user-friendly and comfortable to use.
So, the next time you have to share large and numerous files with a prospect or client, you can cut down on the trouble of sharing them via email and give this super-efficient and quick productivity tool a try. Another perk of DropBox is that it provides you with free storage.
7. FreshBooks
Managing your finance is one of the most crucial things when you start your small business as a solopreneur. One of the best tools that help you send out bills and receive payments via Paypal or credit card is FreshBooks.
It saves customer contact details and payment history, making it easy to keep track of the payments. Aside from that, it calculates the average price for your products and services. If you own a small business, FreshBooks is a must-have tool to keep your finances up to date.
8. MailChimp
When your small company grows, your customer and client list start to expand, which means the number of emails you send increases as well. One of the most trusted tools when it comes to Email Marketing is MailChimp. It allows you to send up to 12,000 emails to 2,000 subscribers per month. And as your need grows you can always switch to their pay-as-you-go subscription.
MailChimp also offers Flexible interface models, multiple user profiles, dependable autoresponders, predictive analytics, extensive mobility options, and connectivity with hundreds of common productivity applications.
9. TextMagic
With people constantly spending most of their time on their phones, SMS marketing is becoming more and more important. Sending SMS to your clients and customers is a great way to build connections, inform them about discounts or promotions and keep them updated about your new launches.
If you are a small business owner, you need a tool that can help you send bulk messages in one go. TextMagic is one such tool that offers features such as sub-accounts for team members, automated contact numbers, an interactive STOP order, and built-in performance analytics.
It's an excellent tool to have if you're getting started with SMS marketing with your small business.
10. Toggl
When you start a small business, you get distracted by tons of things happening simultaneously. Toggl is one such tool that helps you stay away from distractions. It is a free application that helps you with time-tracking, timely reporting and monitoring tasks and sharing timesheets with your team members.
Toggl also includes advanced features such as automated timesheets, actionable business analytics ideas, and simple monitoring that can help you always complete your tasks on time. Apart from this, you can also analyze what takes up most of your time and prioritize your tasks accordingly with Toggl.
11. Evernote
The modern technological era is forcing us to adopt a more advanced method of taking notes and organizing our activities. Evernote is an all-in-one tool that helps you to take notes, organize them, and store them. Launched in 2007, Evernote currently has about 200 million users. Evernote's cloud storage feature enables you to jot down your thoughts from anywhere and more securely.
12. Zapier
Zapier is a web-based automation platform that links your favourite applications, including Gmail, Slack, Mailchimp, and others. You can attach two or more apps to simplify routine activities without coding or relying on developers. It's simple enough that everyone can build their app workflows with a few clicks.
Zapier’s free plan allows you to create individual connections, while the premium version allows customization for a greater automation process.
Conclusion
Investing in productivity tools can seem to be an irrational option at first, but once you start using them, you'll see how much of a difference they can create. These productivity tools can assist you in streamlining your schedule, managing your activities in an organized way, prioritizing things effectively, and focusing on far more important things. Using them can completely transform the way you do your business.
As a small business owner, you need to be very mindful of what you invest in and, you’ll be happy to know that most of these tools are free. So, you won’t have to rob a bank to invest in them.
Another way to make your business grow and thrive apart from investing in productivity tools is to create a strong presence for them. With domain extensions such as .cyou you can build an uber-cool, smart and innovative online presence for your small business.