When you run an online business, you learn to love technology, or hate it. Depending on your experiences.
I’m not a tech guru or geek, but when I discover great tech tools that make my business and life easier, it makes my day. Just like you, I rely on technology on a daily basis.
Today I’m going to take you behind the scenes of my business and share with you some of my favorite tools and gadgets. Let’s have a closer look at some of the top online tools for small business out there.
1. Canva
This tool gets my creative juices going. I don’t know a lot about design, but Canva makes it easy to create graphics for all my needs – from social media, through website images to advertising graphics.
Canva is free, but you will need to pay for images if you choose to use them.
2. Aweber
Hands down, it is still the absolute best autoresponder service out there. Great interface, no coding skills needed (great ready-to use templates are included in your account at no extra charge), easy to set up and use. Great price and delivery rates.
Aweber also released its mobile app Atom to help you collect leads on the go.
3. StudioPress
Still my favorite WordPress themes. There is a big variety of options, remember to look for mobile optimized themes.
StudioPress themes are simple, yet elegant, easy to use, yet loved by search engines. Simply pick your favorite and build your new website with ease.
4. ScreenFlow
If you’re a Mac user, ScreenFlow is an app that will enable you to record your presentations while narrating them. Or choose to share your screen. Add your ‘talking head’ (your face) to it with a click of a button. Or record a skype conversation…
Super easy to set up and use. If I can use it, so can you!
5. Vimeo
I remember when video hosting used to be complicated. Not any more! Vimeo safely stores all of my training videos and allows me to publish them on specific website only. Great for you if you want to hide your videos from general public and make them available for purchase only.
I also use it to share instructions with my team. For some reason, Vimeo feels safer and looks more sleak than YouTube.
TIP: Use YouTube for your public videos to get more followers and Vimeo for your private videos.
6. LeadPages
6. LeadPagesI always hire professionals when it comes to building a website, but waiting for somebody to put up an optin page or sales page is NOT my strength. This is why I love LeadPages. Pre-set templates make it easy for me to plug in my text and graphics and have the pages ready within an hour.
Update: In full integrity I must let you know that since writing this article I discovered different software for creating optin and sales pages I like even more than LeadPages. It’s called ClickFunnels and it allows you to create complete funnels and membership areas. I moved all my optin and sales pages over to this new software. What I like about ClickFunnels is that you’re not stuck with a pre-made template. You can move things around, change colors and text however you like, plus you get some key bonus features like ability to design funnels with your offers. Click here to learn more about ClickFunnels and try it for free for 2 weeks.
7. Pretty Link
One of my all-time favorite WordPress plugins allows you to create short links for any link. This is especially handy when it comes to long ugly affiliate links, but also links to your products or services pages.
For example, you can take a long link like this one… https://silviapencak.com/top-performance-tips/ and turn it into this… https://silviapencak.com/performance.
Your new link will redirect visitors to the right page, but in addition it will track your numbers. You will see how many people clicked on the link and how many of those were unique visitors (first time click). Best of all, this plugin is totally FREE!
8. Fiverr
I found some really cool people on Fiverr. Where else can you get such a great services on a budget. Its a really great resource no matter what level your business is at. No more excuses to not get the work done!
I’ve used Fiverr for services like graphics (ecovers, headers, logos), transcriptions, video, keyword research, keynote template design, keynote presentation editing, and more.
What project can you move forward with an investment as little as $5?
9. Tech Team
Even though I use Fiverr for stuff like research, presentations, graphics, or other, there’s some advanced stuff where you need the help of tech team. This is an Ace in my pocket. My team is ready to step in whenever my site is down, I need coding work done or files uploaded. Simple to complicated, hand it to them and focus on what you’re good at.
10. MeetEdgar
After hearing about this tools for a while, I decided to check it out and I completely fell in love with its features. Edgar allows you to connect multiple social media accounts, create a schedule for your posts, but most importantly, it stores all your content and rotates it to post accordingly. The most time-consuming part of working with MeetEdgar was uploading the content and designing the schedule for each platform. Once set, you can almost forget about it (unless you’re like me and constantly have new ideas to improve things or promotions to set up). Really cool app that makes me look like a superstar and frees up my time so that I can finally focus on more important activities on social media.
What are your favorite online tools? Let me know on social media.
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