These 5 tools can help you run your business even more efficiently.
Small business owners are busy. Since they don’t always have the time to research handy tools, here are 5 that I find especially convenient and use all the time:
Tool: Google Calendars
What I like: In addition to keeping my meetings in one place, Google Calendars allows you to create and share multiple calendars (Three Girls has one for each client that we each have access to), set email and pop-up reminders, organize tasks and integrate with your smart phone. Google Calendars is also a free tool you can use with your Gmail email account.
Tool: Hootsuite
What I like: This tool allows you to post and update ALL of your social media in one place. You can post updates on your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, blog and other social sites all at once, or schedule them to go out at predetermined times in the future. Hootsuite also provides basic measuring – such as showing you how many people click on your links or retweet your posts.
Tool: Email Filters
What I like: Email filters are a standard tool with all email providers I know of; they’re a fantastic way to help you manage incoming messages. If you get a lot of emails that can wait for you to get to, such as e-newsletters or Google Alerts, filters are an easy way to get them out of your inbox so you can deal with them later. Instead of dealing with them as they come in, dedicate 20 minutes a week to going through these messages as a method of time management.
Tool: ScribeSEO
What I like: ScribeSEO is a tool that helps you make sure your blog posts are optimized for search engines by checking your keywords, links, word count, etc. Once it’s installed on the backend of your blog, it’s very easy to use and highlights exactly what you can fix to make your post stronger. ScribeSEO even offers suggestions for making your keywords even more apparent.
Tool: Free Conference Call
What I like: This free tool makes it easy to hold conference calls with anyone in the country; it provides a phone number and access code that you can share with anyone you want to talk to. Once it’s assigned, that number is yours and you can use it at any time. Every time the number is used, Free Conference Call sends an email at the close so you can see who called in when, making it easy to know exactly how long each person was on the call just in case you need to track such things.
See additional tools on Three Girls’ Free PR Resources page.
Photo Credit: oskay