It can get pretty overwhelming when deciding which is the best digital software for your business, am I right? I am here to provide you with some help and guidance in the decision making process. So, here are the 7 essential digital tools for entrepreneurs that I highly recommend for anyone looking to grow their online business.
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These 7 digital tools are intended to help you across various aspects of your online business needs. As entrepreneurs, we are in charge of taking care of everything it takes to run a business. Implement these tools into your everyday life and process to streamline some of those tasks, so you can focus on the more important things.
1) Project Management System
There are amazing project management systems and apps out there that will help you keep your tasks, goals, timelines, communication, and more all in one, easy to use location. These are great tools to help you stay on top of pending items, keep track of team or vendor responsibilities and deliverables, map out the life of a project, and keep all deliverables, assets, notes, in one convenient location.
My two favorites are Asana and Trello. Asana is a little more reserved for extensive projects compared to Trello, and has a bit of a longer learning curve. Trello is better for smaller projects, personal projects or to-do lists. Whichever you chose, you will love.
2) Communication Tools
Tired of dealing with cluttered emails, changing subject lines and lost files? I recommend you work with team communication platforms, like Slack. It is especially useful for team communication, breaking up channels depending on project, and making sure all communication and attachments are neatly stored and searchable.
3) Web Development
Don’t think you need to hire a web developer to get your website off the ground. There are incredible and intuitive web development platforms that let you design and create your own website with (relative) ease. My favorite platform is WordPress.com, which has tons of plugins that allow you to customize your site for whatever need. There is a slight learning curve, but once you get the hang of it you will see how powerful it is.
4) Customer Relationship/Email Management
Now this one is VERY important. In order to automate your business and truly scale, you need a CRM platform. It will serve to handle your customer database, set automatic email funnels, and much more.
My recommendations are MailChimp, Convertkit, and InfusionSoft. MailChimp and Convertkit are much easier to use and better for bloggers. Infusionsoft has a pretty steep learning curve and set-up process intended for more established businesses, but much more robust.
5) Social Media Management
Save time on your social media by spending an afternoon setting up your posts and scheduling them for the rest of the week. These softwares allow you to schedule your social media posts across all platforms and does the posting for you.
My recommendation is Hootsuite for its universal use, integrations and intuitiveness.
6) Design Resources
You don’t have to be a designer to make your business branding and communication look good. Canva is an incredible resource that takes all the hard work out of designing by providing professionally designed templates for almost ever single piece of marketing visual you will ever need, from social media posts to flyers and handouts.
7) Cloud Storage
It is incredibly useful to be able to access all your files from anywhere at anytime. As an entrepreneur, you never know when you will need a piece of information, so investing in a cloud storage system like Dropbox will give you that freedom. Also, it lets you easily share large files with clients and team members via links, saving tons of email storage.
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Now, there may be other options for each of these tools that better suits you and your business, so be sure to read up on the other options. However, these are the tried and true digital tools for entrepreneurs that I use every day to keep my online business moving efficiently and let’s me focus on growing it!
I hope this helps, and best of luck! Any specific questions please don’t hesitate to reach out by clicking below.