Whether you’re a full time entrepreneur or a freelancer with a flourishing side gig, your business will have to cover several bases. Apart from selling your core product or services you are expected to pay attention to things like accounting, social media (don’t forget graphics), email marketing etc
This can sometimes be daunting and this is where you can make use of some tools that can help you manage many things and enable you focus on serving your customers. Today we have put together 5 free tools that your business should be using
Accounting Like A Pro – Wave
With more than two million users, Wave is one of the most successful online accounting services – and it’s completely free for accounting, invoicing and receipts, although if you want personal technical support you’ll need to pay for it. It’s a very well designed and carefully thought out application, and it’s a good option for sole traders, freelancers and small firms.
With the free version of Wave, you’ll receive accounting and reports functionality, you’ll be able to create and scan invoices, and you’ll be able to scan receipts directly into the system. No, this isn’t a one-stop shop for all of your bookkeeping needs. But if you keep things simple, you’ll be able to get pretty far using this basic service. For things such as payments and automatic integration with direct deposit payroll, you’ll have to pay $19 month.
Email Marketing In A Breeze- MailChimp
MailChimp is one of the best and most popular email marketing platforms on the market. Service tiers are priced depending on how many emails you send per month. If your company sends fewer than 12,000 email messages per month to fewer than 2,000 subscribers, you’ll absolutely love MailChimp’s Forever Free plan.
This steal of a deal lets you use built-in signup forms to gather subscribers from across the web. You can use MailChimp’s drag-and-drop designer and email templates to craft the perfect message. You won’t get robust reporting on the Forever Free plan, but you’ll be able to check open rates and compare them to the average company in your industry. Not bad for zero dollars.
Graphic Design Made Easy- Canva
Communicating with your audience in a virtual world can often feel daunting and too time-consuming. Getting the look right, coming up with relevant content, and then translating this into all sorts of different social media platforms and their unique formats take time away from your business’s core functions and this can be a disincentive to posting consistently.
Canva is absolutely perfect for creating social media posts. Not only does it have a huge range of starter templates for every social channel. With thousands of templates, images, and quality content to choose from, Canva covers all of your design needs.
Canva’s free plan comes with a decent amount of design types, images, and graphics, but is very limited compared to the paid versions.
Presentations on Steroids – Xtensio
Creating attractive business documents can be challenging. Ensuring that multiple people can collaborate effectively in their creation is even harder. When you want to create business content and official documents, plan strategies, launch products, or communicate about ongoing projects, think Xtensio.
Xtensio, is a cloud-based platform that is highly recommended for start-ups due to the ease of use, even a user with little or no experience can effortlessly design pitches, sales sheets, reports, case studies, agendas, and more. It helps unlock what’s encrypted in your brain and help you turn it into a beautiful communication piece.
It provides hundreds of professionally designed templates for instant use and also allows you to create your own breath-taking templates. You and your team can collaborate to unify to get everything in one place or work privately if you need. You can follow your team’s progress weekly through stats.
Become A Social Media Champion – Buffer
Social media is the most happening place for all. More than half of the world’s population is active on multiple platforms to be updated with trends and stay connected with people far and wide. For business owners, juggling the stress of keeping your business running and keeping on top of social media profiles may prove difficult. That’s where having the right tool can really make a huge difference.
Buffer is one of the most popular social media post schedulers that has earned the trust of social media managers, small business owners, and even massive brands like Microsoft. It Buffer enables you schedule social media posts across a variety of popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest. Free users can connect up to three social accounts, including Facebook Pages and groups.
Parting Words
Making business efficiency a priority is a quick and easy way to maximize productivity and create a sustainable business. There are ample resources and tools that you can access online to create new processes or improve existing ones.
The key is to understand what your business needs at the moment. Furthermore, it is also important to focus on what your clients’ requirements are. Once you understand those two factors, you can decide what tools to subscribe to.
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