Top Tools For A Productive Start-up Business
When you’ve got a start-up, there are a lot of tools you can use to improve your business and help it grow. It’s not enough to have the drive, the ambition, and the ideas; you also need some help from certain tools that can contribute to the healthy management of your company. There are all sorts of tools for different purposes, including for funding, communication, social media, management, marketing, email, design, and others. Each and every one of them can help you achieve perfection in each of their respective category.
Communication – Slack
Communication among your team is absolutely essential. Do it right, and you’ve got yourself a golden team that can do anything seamlessly. Mess it up, and it can crumble your entire business. Slack is excellent because it encompasses a wide variety of communication channels. You can enjoy regular messages between teammates, group chats, etc. In addition, there is a mobile app available as well, so communication is always at your fingertips, even on the go. In fact, you can even make things much easier and arrange convos by topic, for easy accessibility.
Social media – Buffer
When you’re just starting out, you probably don’t have the budget for a social media manager, but that doesn’t mean a social media presence isn’t important. One of the most important features present in Buffer is the fact that it allows you to create all of the posts you want on social media for the next month, for example, and then just schedule them to go live whenever you want them to. That way, you can maintain a presence and attract customers, but also be efficient about it. All you need is a couple of free hours to write out the posts, and a knowledge of peak times, to know when to schedule them.
Marketing – Sumo
You always need help with marketing, especially if you haven’t properly set up that department quite yet. There’s a lot to do, and Sumo offers a lot of tools to help. CTA buttons, pop-up windows, backgrounds for videos, social share buttons and others are available within Sumo. You can use these on your site to improve customer engagement, increase traffic, and encourage those email sign-ups! One of the best things about it is that it works integrated with other software and tools, such as Mailchimp, which helps you stay on top of those emails.
Project management – Asana
Project management is where things can get hairy, especially if everyone is working remotely and there is no office and lab space to share. It can be difficult to organise a team like that, so making task assignment as clear as possible is the way to go. Asana is extremely user-friendly, so any of your employees can learn how to operate in it in just a few minutes. It’s organised by columns and you can just drag and drop items according to where they are in the task process – to be assigned, assigned, in progress, completed, etc. You can also set deadlines and prioritise tasks according to their urgency. There is nothing clearer.
Capital – Foundersuite
You know what a start-up always needs? Capital, and a lot of it. Did you know you can use a tool for that? That’s right, you can make the investor search easier, by using a customised tool. You can look for investors that meet your specific criteria, and you also have access to other features, such as templates or the Idea Validation tool. This will make that money hunt way easier, and you don’t have to worry about the amount of time you waste looking for someone who is a perfect fit for your company.
Design – 99designs
You’re probably in need of a designer, and what’s a better way to get them, than to crowdsource them? 99designs helps you out by facilitating a connection between you, as an entrepreneur, and the perfect designer for you. The way it achieves that is that on the platform, designers compete against each other to work on your project, and you don’t have to rely on just words; you get to see what you’re paying for. This way, you can get packaging, web design, logos, and other things taken care of.
As you can see, you don’t have to do everything alone or figure things out by yourself. There are plenty of tools out there that can facilitate the process and the job of entrepreneurship, and some of them are even free! Take advantage of the tools that can help you build your business and make it better in every way, the easy way! Especially when you’re just starting out and don’t really have a lot of employees to rely on for different jobs and tasks, these tools can be real life-savers!
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