Productivity
Top Productivity Tools That Can Increase Your Business Profitability
Running a business is not just about having a great idea or concept and running with it. You have to make the most of your resources and be as productive as possible. This is especially important when you have people working for you. You have to set the pace for them so that they, too, can be as efficient and productive as they can be. Here are 9 productivity tools you can use to improve your business profitability.
Time management tools
They say time is gold, so one way to make a success of your business is to save time. These productivity tools will help you organize your day and life to help you get more work done.
Effective project management is the key to maximizing your resources, and Trello can help you make that happen.
This tool is especially useful if you have to collaborate with people online. Your Trello board lets you see the “big picture” (literally) of your business in real time, and enables you to drill down to the smallest task assigned to any of your team members.
The colored labels make it easier to stay on top of specific projects. You can track progress of the work, create to-do lists, and establish milestones. You can also use the board to brainstorm on projects and content by putting up idea boards and inviting people to collaborate on them.
There are many things going on in your business, so you should use separate boards to keep track of them. Trello is a visual way to manage your business, and you can jump right in with a free account just for you. Add $8.33 a month (paid annually) for each user in your team.
If your business is growing and/or successful, you are sure to deal with a million emails.
It can take quite a bit of your time just trying to organize them before you can even get down to dealing with each important email. This tool works for most email platforms (except POP) and sorts your email according to importance.
You have to customize it of course, but it is so easy you can have it done in no time, and it gets smarter the longer you use it. You can put important but not urgent emails into snooze mode, track emails to which you need a reply, and send reminders when there is no response for these emails after a prescribed time. The service is $7 a month or $59 a year.
Distractions are time thieves, but they often go unpunished because, frankly, we enjoy them.
While chatting with a friend on the phone or browsing Facebook make a welcome break from work, you might be overdoing it. The next time you wonder where the day has gone, download this app to your computer and all your mobile devices to find out.
It runs in the background so you won’t even notice it’s there, but it tracks your activities and how much time you spend on them. You can generate a report at anytime to see just where your moneymaking time has gone, and motivate you to change your time-wasting habits.
The free version is perfect for most users, but you can get the premium version for $9 a month. It’s a bit pricey, but if you spend two hours on Facebook, and then you get an alert. You can also set the premium version to block certain sites at specific times of the day.
Social media tools
Social media marketing is definitely a must-have for any business. However, posting random content on your social network is not going to help your business as much as it could. These productivity tools can help you identify, create, post, and track your social media content.
You never know when inspiration will strike, or what can start an idea in your head on content for your next blog or social network post. It might be during a wedding, in transit, or while you are otherwise busy, so you may not be able to act on it immediately.
Pocket lets you save videos, images, songs, articles, or anything else from more than 1,500 apps, including your email and browser, that sparks your interest to go back to later. It is much easier than writing your ideas down and it is a more comprehensive way to help you recapture the moment. When you have time, you can go back to it. It is a free app, so try it.
2. Hootsuite, Post Planner, Buffer
Social media management apps come and go, and some work well for a little while before they simply disappear, leaving you in limbo.
You want a social media management app that can stay the course. These trio manages your social network like a finely tuned concerto. Used together, you can make a clean sweep of the major social networks that make the rounds of influencers on a daily basis. You can schedule your posts to all the major networks, listen in on what’s trending on each one, and post content without having to go into the network.
Hootsuite is best used with Twitter and LinkedIn (you can create a rockin’ LinkedIn profile using Resumeplanet’s service), Post Planner has a Facebook-like interface (which is great), and Buffer works very well for sharing Google reader content. All offer free accounts, so try them all before you sign up for their paid services.
You put a lot of effort into creating your content, so it would be a shame to post just it once.
This is primarily a media-scheduling tool, but it does so much more. You can use this app to categorize your posts, schedule categories for posting on different platforms, repeat posts periodically on fast-moving networks like Twitter, and retain your content and its updates all in one place.
This library is very useful for organizing your content, and it is easily customization. Instead of creating new content all the time, you may want to revisit some of your old posts instead, and you can easily do that with Edgar.
You don’t even have to choose the post; Edgar will do that for you using whatever in a particular category. How’s that for productivity? It’s a bit pricey though at $49 a month, but it might be something you want to consider as it can save you a lot of time in creating and posting social media content.
Unique visitors to your website are great, but what you really want are regular visitors.
You can engage people that registered on your site more by regularly sending them updates of what you’re up to. Mailchimp is a service that makes creating and sending out email easy.
You can design newsletters, make announcements, create coupons, or simply say hi and send them off to your email list with a click of a button. You can also schedule your emails and send only to selected recipients.
The free plan is free forever up to 2,000 email addresses and 12,000 emails a month. If you have more than that, you can afford the paid services.
Productivity is the key to business profitability. In today’s environment, that means keeping tabs on your time and social networks. These tools can help get you there with very little effort once you set them up the way you like it.
