Online Business Tools
People who decide to start their business venture need to know the niche which they’re about to enter. In the ideal case, you already have some experience as an employee or a manager in that area of business. When you’re familiar with the tricks of the trade, it’s easier to organize your business projects using online business tools.
Apart from that, using proper business tools can contribute to the growth and expansion of your small business.
Since there are many types of SMB-friendly online business tools, it’s important to identify the most useful ones. That’s the aim of this guide.
1. Managing Social Media Channels
Every SMB needs to have a business account on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Twitter is also a useful option.
Managing your social media channels can include different things. They can vary from informative posts about your business actions to publishing photos related to your business endeavors. Also, you need to regularly publish your blog posts on social media channels.
This can be a time-consuming process if you cover each of these networks separately. But if you opt for one of the social media management tools, you can automate some of the publishing work. Also, using Hootsuite, Buffer or other solutions will help you adapt your business campaigns to your market needs.
2. Tracking your Employee’ Productivity
There are different kinds of business owners. Some of them are trying to be cool and relaxed while others are strict and demand the utmost discipline.
Your managing style will depend on your personality and your business goals. What’s recommended, however, is that you introduce some productivity metrics when supervising your employees.
Using productivity tracking tools is a perfect option because you can take an impersonal stand toward your workers’ productivity. These online business tools monitor your employees’ computer screens and other aspects of their work.
As a result, you’ll have various information about their work habits, efficiency and periods of less intensive work. All these data will come in handy for both parties when you’re discussing raises, commitment to work, and potential promotions.
3. Email Marketing
We’ve seen the rise of the mobile market and the expansion of social media in the last few years.
See Also: What is Email Marketing
These two trends have significantly increased the intensity of communication between workers and ordinary people around the world.
Despite all these recent developments, email remains one of the most powerful online business tools.
Unlike real-time communication, such as chatting or collaboration tools, email service doesn’t put any pressure on the user. Nobody knows whether and when you’ve read an email. Also, you have enough time to draw up an impactful electronic letter that will be useful for all the interested parties.
Apart from external email communication, SMB-owners and their employees can use it for smooth internal business communication. Also, it’s safer for this purpose than chatting options and social media.
Therefore, every SMB-owner should use Sender, Mailchimp or any other email marketing tool.
Apart from that, pay attention to the email registration form on your website. As the experts from the Houston web design team advise, these forms should neither be aggressive nor hard to find.
In other words, avoid pushy pop-up registration forms but make sure that they’re easily noticeable. This will improve your email list and your email marketing as a whole.
4. Communication and Remote Collaboration
We’ve already mentioned the tremendous growth of the number of communication tools. Aside from email service, which stays one of the favorite tools for all sorts of SMB-owners, there are practical options for entrepreneurs for other forms of communication.
For starters, Skype and Zoom are two popular solutions for phone and video calls, together with an array of VoIP tools. These tools are valuable for SMB-owners who have a lot of online clients and employees. You can make these calls for free or pay some advanced packages for more features.
SMB-owners also need proper project management tools, such as Basecamp, Trello, Asana or Slack. These solutions help entrepreneurs assign tasks to their employees and keep track of what’s done. Together with productivity tools above, they’re the pillars of effective work organization.
5. Accounting Tools
If you want to properly focus on your business activities, you shouldn’t waste too much time doing non-core tasks.
Accounting operations belong to these types of activities. They’re one of the crucial aspects of every business because they give grounds to business owners for their work. If your books are not regularly kept, your entire business will become a mess.
See Also: Online Cloud accounting software
What’s more, if you don’t follow the accounting rules and regulations, you could skip paying taxes. This is one of the greatest concerns for every business owner. The tax authorities can close down your business if you don’t pay all your taxes.
That’s why using an accounting tool, such as FreshBooks, Zoho Books, and others can make your entire business management experience more convenient.
From monitoring your revenues in real-time to tracking your expenses and cash flow, accounting tools can perform a lot of operations. They can also calculate your taxes based on your business type and the revenues.
Conclusion
The development of technology gives room for various people to start a new career. Many employees would never get enough courage to go their business way if they didn’t have all these solutions at their disposal.
It’s much easier to cope with your business tasks when you can use tools that accelerate all aspects of your work process.
From online marketing via social media and email marketing to productivity supervision and online communication, these tools alleviate business management.
The cherry on the top is accounting tools, which help you keep accurate financial records and plan your business future in line with these figures.
Author Byline:
Liam Collins is a tech pundit and Web enthusiast working at TuiSpace.com. He spends most of his time reading and writing about the current affairs in the world of information technology. When he isn’t working, he likes going for long bike rides and walks in nature.