10 Free Online Tools To Organise & Simplify Your Business
Hootsuite
HootSuite is a social media management tool that makes keeping track of your social media accounts a lot easier. This tool allows you to post to multiple accounts at the same time, keep track of engagement statistics and organise your accounts in a way that makes it easy to monitor them at a glance. There is a free account or you can upgrade if you would like access to more features.
Twitter Lists
Twitter can be daunting when it isn’t organised. Twitter lists is a curated group of users that you can easily create within your account and then monitor within HootSuite. I have created lists of people I like to make sure I keep up with and I also follow lists that other people have created. You could use Twitter Lists to create lists of your clients, business owners that you like to converse with, people who tweet business advice, etc.
Evernote
Evernote helps me to remember everything and keep it all in order. I draft my blog posts in Evernote and I clip useful websites into it for future reference and all of it is accessible from my computer, the Evernote web client and my phone. Evernote has allowed me to stop writing things down on paper and now I can keep everything in one (searchable) place. There are endless ways to use Evernote and the Evernote blog does a great job of documenting how different people make use of the tool.
Google Calendar & Google Drive
Google has a lot of great services that are often overlooked. Google Calendar does what it says on the tin and it allows you to share appointments with people and set up alerts on your phone. Google Drive is like Microsoft Office except that it’s free and you can share and work on documents together with colleagues. Both of these tools are free with a Google account.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts allows you to provide keywords and then Google will email you relevant news stories and new web content about these topics. This is a great way to research what is going on in your market and can help you come up with blog post topics.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a must have for your website. It allows you to see where your traffic is coming from and what your visitors are doing-for free! I honestly don’t think marketing is worthwhile unless you can track it, and this is a great free tool to help with that.
Skype
Skype is a great service that allows you to make video calls, audio calls and have text chats. You can call phone lines at very low rates and all calls to Skype users are free. You can even use it on iPhone and Android when you are away from your computer. There are applications that allow you to record video and audio calls as well so you can actually use this tool to create content by doing interviews.
SurveyMonkey
Want to use a survey to get an opinion on something for your business? SurveyMonkey offers a free plan that is limited but provides an excellent way to conduct a short survey and analyse the results.
Mailchimp
MailChimp is one of the best email marketing service providers available and they even have a free plan which is great for when you’re just getting started. It’s a very user friendly tool even for those who are non-technical and makes email marketing a lot easier
Buffer
Buffer is one of the best social media tools I’ve ever used. It allows you to schedule your social media posts and track how they perform. The best part is that you can set pre-defined times and fill up your Buffer account with posts that you want to share. Buffer will then automatically send those posts out at those times, which means you can schedule your posts ahead of time when it’s convenient for you. There is a free plan and a paid plan for Buffer and I’m sure you’ll fall in love with it. It even integrates with other applications for maximum efficiency.
