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5 Top Tools To Grow Your Online Business

5 Top Tools To Grow Your Online Business

5 Top Tools To Grow Your Online Business

Disclaimer: If you purchase anything I recommend in this or any of my communications, I'll likely receive affiliate compensation from these products that I use and love. Please do not feel obligated to purchase anything through my links.

Michele Duwe from Miss Task Top Tools To Grow Your Business

Is this you? You’re dabbling in starting your small business from home, and the whole process feels confusing and overwhelming. There are so many decisions to make, and what if you make the wrong decision? The list goes on and goes on. Do you blog, start a podcast, or create a YouTube Channel? Do you need an email list, and how does that even work? How do people post all that social media content? You have zero clue about what you're doing or the online tools to help you grow your small business from home. Hallelujah, you finally decide what tech to use only to get suede to a shiny new app after watching a YouTube video. Spending hours of your time comparing all the different tools for months and trying new thing after new thing, only to find yourself full circle and return to what you originally started. Instead of growing your business, you’re stuck, never really moving forward in your business. You’re lacking the confidence to make a decision and go with it. Does this sound like you? I get it, fear of making the wrong decision regarding the best business tools for growing your online business. Here’s the big secret, I just decided and picked one. Here is a list of online tech tools I use daily to run a small business.

Tech Tools

Do you need to know which tools will help you grow your business? We've compiled a list of the most popular tools that we use in our business.

Top Tool Number One: WordPress

Top Tool Number Two: Clickup

When I started my small business in 2016, I decided to be in it for the long haul. Therefore, I focused my marketing energy on long-game strategies.

WordPress is the popular choice for bloggers, making it the best tool for growing an online small business focused on long-game marketing.

Since I made this one decision, my marketing strategy guided my decision on what tech tools to implement in my business.

WordPress for my website was the first online tool I invested in to grow a small business from home.

Clickup for Project & Task Management

I quickly discovered that I had to find a way to manage all the projects and tasks to grow a small business from home.

I did not start with Clickup as my project management software. Actually, it wasn’t my second either. It was the third. I spend so much time and energy trying to get the perfect project management software.

I can honestly say that the fear of missing out was a massive factor in hopping from one app to the other. As a service provider, I was constantly getting swayed to try the shiny project management software my peers were raving about on social media. I finally had to draw a line in the sand, make a decision, and commit to the decision.

It boils down to this; I had to commit to my decision if I wanted my business to succeed.

Why does this matter to me? It is because the success of my business allows me to be at home and put my family first and foremost.

I had to stop wasting valuable time and energy comparing project management software. Do I miss flying unicorns? Yes, unicorn makes me happy. The bottom line, as a business owner, I need to trust my decision-making.

Check the box and move on.

Here is the link for my Clickup Referral Code: https://clickup.com?fp_ref=0r07t

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Quickbooks

Quickbooks is what I use for my accounting. 

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Tailwind

Tailwind is the software I use for Pinterest and Instagram scheduling. 

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Google Workspace

Google Workspace is for all my team documents.

Top Tool Number Three: FloDesk

What else do you need for tech tools in long-game marketing and to grow a small business from home? An email list. An email service provider like FloDesk allows you to create and send beautiful emails to your list. Since FloDesk did not pop on to the email service provider scene until 2018, I began with MailChimp.

MailChimp is a great free email service provider to start email marketing. If I had to do it over again, I would have invested in an email service provider right away. Why is that? It sucks to move all your free opts, workflows, and email lists.

With all the regulations around email marketing, it is essential to have an excellent email provider to follow all the rules.

Ready to upgrade your email newsletters? Take 50% off Flodesk using my referral code!
Here is the link: https://flodesk.com/c/Y1C389

Michele Duwe from Miss Task Top Tools To Grow Your Business
Bonus Tool!

Apps I Use Every Day in my small business:

Honeybook is an app I use for all my client paperwork. Inquiry forms to send the monthly recurring invoices. This software keeps me organized and streamlined.

– Take 50% off the first year of Honeybooks using my referral code! Honeybook http://share.honeybook.com/misstask

Top Tool Number Four: Grammarly

Despite what you think, selecting blogging as my core content marketing strategy was not because I loved writing or was brilliant at writing. Nope, not at all. Hence Grammarly was a tech tool I quickly invested in to grow a small business from home.

Grammarly is a top online tool to run your small business if you do not love writing and struggle with it.

Top Tool Number Five: Canva

Graphics, images, design, yadda, yadda, yadda. In any case, all the design creation can be very time-consuming and frustrating. Canva makes this so simple.

While you can use this online tool for free, I encourage you to budget yearly for the pro subscription to grow a small business from home.

Let me elaborate; I resisted investing in the paid version of Canva because, in my mind, it was too expensive. Guess what happened? Instead of money, I invested time. Let’s see what I could have been doing with my time instead of recreating images manually. Hmm, what else could I have done with my time? You guessed it, getting paid from clients!

Oh, this is a trap that I fell into and often find many new online entrepreneurs, heck, even six-figure business owners, falling into as well. They put more value on money than their time! Stay with me now; please do not make this same mistake I did! I did not step back to look at the big picture; I only saw dollars go out of my business. What I didn’t get was if I said no to investing in online tools that would make the job easier and quicker, I was saying yes to working longer and harder.

Here’s what I mean: if I had invested the hundred dollars in Canva immediately, it would have opened up my time to bring on another client.

What is necessary?

Friend, many options exist when deciding what apps to use in your business. Wherever you turn, you’re reading about this shiny and sometimes high-priced tech that YOU MUST have to grow your business. What is the right tech to grow a small business from home?

Now, this may not be the popular opinion; there is no right or wrong. You have to figure it out for yourself. Believe whatever you decide to implement is the best tool to grow your business. Once I figured out that the most essential tool of all in my business was simpling, trusting my gut if it was the right app for me or not.
Here is a list of online tech tools I use daily to run a small business.

I am recapping the list of tools I use daily for running an online business. Use this information and trust yourself to make the best decision for your business.

WordPress
Clickup
FloDesk
Grammarly
Canva

Know Your Numbers

A key to business success is understanding your profit. 

Download this Google Worksheet to start tracking your income and expenses!

Know when you are profitable in your business. 

Work With Me

Go-To Apps For Managing My Business

Go-To Apps For Managing My Business

Go-To Apps For Managing My Business

Go-To Apps For Managing My Business

Hey Friends, if you’re a little like me and spend a great deal of time managing your online business from your phone. Great minds, all I have to say. Here are a few of my go-to apps for my business.

  • Spark
  • Tide Lite
  • Voxer
  • Insight Timer
  • Podcasts

Let’s Get The Apps Out

Spark

oh boy, this is my new favorite email management application that I’ve been for the past six months. This app makes it easy to pin the emails that need to be looked at later. Mark something as unread. Send a message at a later time. For my brain, it makes cleaning out the inbox easy and painless. Psst… I wrote about Spark here too.

Voxer

This is a walkie talkie app for your phone that you can talk back and forth to people in the app. You can listen as they are talking or when you have time. Its a bit easier than text and you can actually hear the voice inflection. (:

This wasn’t on the list, but another go-to app more recently, I’ve been using Marco Polo for conversations. Marco Polo is actually a short video conversation that you can have. Not only can you hear them, but you can see them too. Yay!

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A Little Side Note

Have you heard that the ambient from working in a coffee shop is more productive? It could also be the energy of productivity is all around you in a coffee shop.

Insight Timer

this app helped kick start my meditation practice. They offer so many guided meditations or you can use the timer with selected chimes and sounds. It allows you to do you.

Tide Lite

This app is for productivity and time management. It is based on The Pomodoro Technique. It provides background noises, can you say coffee shop in my office, for a specific amount of time that you want. The default is 25 minutes. It has a number of add on that you can turn on such as break time and longer break times.

Podcasts

I love the podcast app just as much as my Kindle. I listen to so many and L-O-V-E them! I listen to them in the car, on a walk, when I exercise. It’s my go too. When I was a sales rep and travel all the time I would listen to hours of podcasts while I drove or flew. Time flies when you’re having fun.

That is a quick list of my go-to apps. What are yours?

How to Create a Simple Social Media Post with Canva

How to Create a Simple Social Media Post with Canva

How to Create a Simple Social Media Post with Canva

Canva | How to create a simple social media post with Canva

Canva is a great tool to create simple social media posts. I've talked about it before in this post. Personally, I feel it is easy peasy compared to PhotoShop. It really is a simple tool to use once you get the hang of it. Although, my first creation did take a hot minute. These days I am able to whip out social media post in under five to ten minutes. I find that it takes me longer to figure out how to style my photo than to actually create the graphics in Cava.

Canva

The free tool for Canva is incredible, it has a ton of features that can turn a photo into a fun graphic to post on social media. All you need to do is put on your creative hat. If you are at all one that gets caught of in fonts and colors I suggest that you go in with an idea of what you would like to do. Otherwise, it can be hours later before you look at the time. Trust me on this one, I know better and still do it.

 

Let’s cover the basic steps for creating a simple social media post

How to Create Simple Social Media Posts with Canva

  • If you haven’t already got to www.canva.com and create an account.
  • Once you have an account created you will have a menu bar on the left-hand side
  • Create a design should already be highlighted for you. Under that is All your designs.
  • Select the type of social media post you would like to create:
    • Facebook
    • Pinterest
    • Etc.
  • Pick your Layout
    • Layouts are either be free or paid, this is labeled in the lower right-hand corner
  • Let the fun begin!
  • Play with the different fonts and colors. Change the transparency to give a different looks