Being a small business owner, you wear a lot of hats. Not only do you actually have to do what you’re in business for, you have to be your own book keeper and accountant, your own social media guru and content manager, your own photographer, it’s a lot. Now of course, you could totally outsource these items, but sometimes you have to do them yourself and it’s nice to have a little help with some good productivity tools and apps. Over the years, I have really learned to streamline my systems and processes. It’s really the only way to survive all of the tasks that have to be done. I wanted to share some of my favorite tools and apps that help make my life a little easier.
It’s no secret that social media is where it’s at. You really do have to be engaged and active on social media or else it’s just doing your business a disservice. I’ve learned though that it is easier to focus just on a select few that work for you opposed to trying and mastering them all. For me that is Facebook and Instagram. I love using Hootsuite to help schedule all of my different posts and images in the same spot. I know there are so many different types of social media schedulers, some free, some cost money, essentially they all do the same thing. Just find one that works for you. But it’s so nice to have somewhere where you can see all of your profiles and what you have scheduled.
This is an app that I use to edit my pictures that I take with my iPhone. I’ve tried several other editors and this is defiantly the cream of the crop. It doesn’t apply all kinds of crazy filters to distort the image, it actually helps lighten, adjust contract and make a mediocre iPhone image look so much better! In your business it is so important to make sure your work and photos reflect you and your brand. For me that is very light and airy and this is by far one of the best apps to help me achieve it. You do have to pay for this app, but I think it’s only a $1.99.
When you’re juggling clients, and invoice sand contracts and drafts and approvals, it can get a little crazy, especially if you’re manually sending out and keeping track of all of these items for each client. Recently I discovered Dubsado, a client management system, which helps me keep track of everything in one spot. I can enter in a client, manage and send their invoice, have their contract sent, and do about a million other things all in one spot and for the most part pretty automated. The husband and wife team who own it are rocks stars and are constantly adding new features, and their customer service is top notch. To receive 20% off of your first month or your first year, you can use the referral code, heatherobriendesign.
I try to blog about once a week, and then I try and push those posts out to my social media outlets. I use bit.ly to help me do that. Bit.ly is a URL shortener and link management platform. I take my blog post URLs and bring them into bit.ly to create a custom link for each post. Bit.ly even allows me to customize the name of it. I then use that special link in my social media platforms and bit.ly helps me track how many people click and where they click it from (Facebook, Instagram, etc). This allows me to see where I am getting the most traffic and interaction from. It just really helps to see if what you’re posting is really reaching people. I use this in addition to Google Analytics to get more detailed results for my full website, but bit.ly is a nice resource to quickly see how each post is doing.
I would love to hear any of your favorite tools or apps that help with your productivity!
Photo by Amalie Orrange Photography
Grab Your Stationery Checklist
Picking out the perfect wedding invitations can be so overwhelming, much less knowing the perfect time to start the process or send them out! Grab your free guide to walk you through a checklist of what you need and when you need to send them!