Doing everything by yourself is possible and can be at times quite rewarding, but why go the long and hard way when there’s a perfectly available shortcut?
No matter what position you have, always try to make the work easier for yourself and don’t be afraid to ask for help, otherwise you’ll find yourself facing burnout sooner rather than later.
For any small business owner out there who’s struggling to get the work done all by themselves, this article is for you! After all, success is 50% hard work and 50% right tools, so I guess there’s nothing better than an already made tool box full of apps and websites that can help you across all area; from content creation, project management and much more!
So, I present to you the 10 Must-Have Tools to run your Small Business:
Answer The Public
Coming up with new ideas for your posts, whether social media or blog, can be taxing and time consuming. Having to keep producing high quality content is among the top challenges for any business owners, especially if they don’t have the resources to invest in a copywriter.
So, for these days Answer The Public can be a very good alternative since it is a search listing tool that allows you to get keywords by finding out which questions your audience are asking. The data is gathered from search engines like Google then quickly comes up with relevant phrases and questions around that keyword.
With this tool, finding new content ideas will become come so much easier and it will also help you boost your reach by answering some frequently asked questions in your niche.
HOTH’s Headline Title Generator
This tool is a blog headline generator that provides you with thons of new and creative ideas that you can use in your blog as well as implement in your social media posts. This is another great resource for those days when you feel that you have reached a writer’s block and nothing seems to be going the way you want it to. It works by asking your audience specific prompts, for example “an issue that is common among your target audience”, and it will do all the work for you by generating a whole list of ideas based on your content.
BuzzSumo
This tool is the ideal place to go if you want to stay on top of your game and not miss out on what is trending and generating the most engagement online. It allows you to find what topics are currently the most popular so that you can include them in your posts, simply by searching for keywords and looking for the top shared content for that keyword. On top of that, this tool also provides you with the best platform and time to post so that you can get the most out of your content!
Facebook Creators Studio
This tool is Facebook’s built-in dashboard which facilitates the process of publishing posts, thanks to its ability to manage, track performance, and schedule posts. If you are a small business owner then you sure must be struggling to keep up with everything and managing all your platforms, so needless to say a scheduling tool is really a must-have, and if you don’t want to invest in a third-party application or website, Creator Studio is good enough both for Facebook and Instagram since it can also allow you to schedule stories in advance.
Growapp
If you are looking for another scheduling tool and are ready to invest in something more advance, Growapp is the ultimate dashboard that helps you manage all your accounts across multiple platforms and gives you the option to share your content internally and externally, so with your team members or clients for more effectiveness and collaboration. Its analytics feature is also great for comparing your posts with your competitors and keeping up with what’s going on in your niche market.
Canva
Yes, you don’t have to be a designer to create beautiful and simple designs for your socials. Canva is a very easy to use tool that is very beginner-friendly and doesn’t require any advanced skills. It offers a wide range of templates and fonts which you can use to create brochures, presentations, reports, and most of all visually appealing social media posts. Its library is rich of resources that you can use and best of all most of it is free!
Grammarly
Posting content full of grammar and spelling mistakes can look awfully unprofessional and can drive people who potential clients to not take you seriously. And if you are a not that great of self-editor like myself, Grammarly is the perfect tool for you! It’s a browser extension that checks the grammar, spelling, and punctuation of everything you write automatically and even suggests better phrasing for a smoother and better readability.
Trello
Trello is the ultimate project management tool that helps you stay organized and aware of what projects need your top priority and which ones can wait. You can visualize who is working on which project thanks to its board feature. I especially appreciate how it looks like sticky notes that you can display on a white board since it helps me stay motivated and I like how it be used from both the desktop and mobile for easy access and across sharing.
Slack
Slack is by far the best workplace communication tool, and for a good reason. It helps your team stay organize thanks to its multiple channel feature that allows you to divide the tasks among your team members accordingly while letting them stay informed thanks to the fast messaging and notification system. The file and image sharing feature is also greatly popular among teams and it is why mostly preferred over other communication tools.
Toggl
If you are suffering from poor time management and feel that you are taking more time on certain tasks than needed, then you should consider adding Toggl to your daily life. This tool offers a time tracking solution that shows how long certain tasks typically need so that you can improve your working pace and boost your productivity. It also informs you of which things are taking most of your time so that you can deal with them accordingly, thus, avoiding wasting time and getting rid of any potential distractions!
These are the tools that I think are needed for any small business to help elevate its productivity, content quality, and time management. Of course, each and every person has their own working style and what helped me might not do the same for you, but there’s nothing to lose by trying, after all life is full of trial and error.