Did you know that an entrepreneur’s productivity level is affected by the productivity tools they use?
One way or another, the right tools with the right planning will help you get more jobs done in a shorter time span. And when you have more time in your hands, you can achieve more tasks than what’s expected.
Juggling so many tasks can be daunting and lead to a lot of stress. If you’re an entrepreneur and you want to become more efficient, productive and successful, here’s a list of tools you need to use today.
Social media marketing is the next big thing in marketing. Regardless the size of your business, you got to engage in social and this is where Buffer helps you to improve your productivity level. You can schedule social media updates and perform serious analytics with Buffer. This makes building up your brand and company on social media extremely easy.
Hootsuite is a powerful alternatives to Buffer. However, Hootsuite works slightly different from its competitors. Aside from scheduling and analytics, Hootsuite helps to increase productvity but having the social listening feature. You can listen and engage with customers while understand the strategies taken by your competitors.
Working with a team and want to delegate tasks efficiently? Trello allows you to do so — and in style! The thing that makes Trello a powerful productivity tool is that it allows you to drag and drop between projects (or also known as boards). You can create checklists, images and texts to take productivity to the next level. It comes with a free account and you can subscribe for paid ones for more features.
Evernote is probably one of the best (and popular) productivity tools for entrepreneurs. It allows you to upload images, voice memo, texts, reminders and chat with your colleagues for team collaboration. What makes it really useful is the offline feature where you can access the notes anytime of the day from any mobile devices. Just like Trello, there are both free and paid accounts with different features.
This is an iPhone app and it does one thing (and only one thing) superbly well. It helps you to get organized and ensure that tasks are completed in a timely matter. Clear allows you to add new tasks and reminders under a few seconds. Simple actions such as swiping the tasks left and right would open up more options such as delete the task or marking the task as complete.
Another powerful task management app on smartphones. It integrates perfectly on computers too and the one thing that makes it stand out from the rest would be the ‘ morning notifications’. For example, when you set your day start at 9am, Any.Do will send you a reminder on tasks that need to be completed on the same day. You can snooze, change date or even set the tasks as complete. And the best part, it is free to download (paid plans available).
Looking for productivity tools to help your team with task management? Asana is a free project-management tool that allows teams to communicate without email, in one central location. Trust me, you can’t ask for more than this!
Entrepreneurs are always chasing for more time and yes, 24 hours isn’t enough. Fiverr is a market place to find for nearly everything (which starts at $5 per gig). If you are on a shoestring budget, you may want to consider getting a few gigs from Fiverr.
Outsourcing is the key for higher productivity — sure, there would be cost involve but you are literally guaranteed with better time management and getting more work done. Sites such as Elance and Upwork allow busy entrepreneurs to hire freelancers to get specific jobs or tasks done. For those who are working on a tight budget, you can opt for different payment methods such as hourly or per project basis.
You can search for thousands of freelancers with different capabilities and price range. Personally, I love using Elance to find for Virtual Assistants (VA’s). The concept is pretty simple; You act as an employer and you post a project. Freelancers from all around the world will bid for the project and you can select them based on experience, price range etc. Payment could be done by milestones or after completing the project.
10. Social media platforms
Believe it or not, social media platforms are great source of productivity hacks. For example, spending sometime on Twitter or Pinterest would give you a couple of ideas for your upcoming project. Plus, with social media being live 24-7, you know that you are going to get the latest trends — every single time.
Consider Talkwalker as a newer, more advanced version of Google Alerts. It offers more comprehensive results and more options that allow you to check for mentions of your company online. This helps with public relations and the chance to interact with people who are discussing your brand online.
DropBox allows you to share files with others, sync files across devices and ensuring your files are constantly accessible (while safe) in the cloud. As an entrepreneur, this is a great productivity tool as it allows you to share important files with your colleagues without needing to send an email attachment or using hard copies.
You already know about this tool, but the release of Chromebooks and the ability to convert and edit Microsoft Office documents make this productivity tool (and accompanying Docs and Sheets) a great way to collaborate and share documents with your clients, freelancers or employees. Do I really need to elaborate more on this?
Most entrepreneurs read a lot. For me, listening to audio version of the book is always an awesome way to save more time while increasing your productivity level. With both Amazon Kindle and Audible, you can listen to several audio books each month.
Are you looking for the latest networking event in town? Head over to EventBrite and discover tickets for small to medium size events at reasonable prices. EventBrite also allows you to create and host your own event in the case of need (which is awesome).
Looking for bigger events to join and EventBrite isn’t capable to provide such resources? Meetup is the tool for you. It is a super effective way to find influencers, local events and networking groups in just a few clicks of the button.
17. Editorial calendar
Do you find yourself rushing to get posts published on your company blog? Using an editorial calendar like this one would help you to publish posts in a timely manner. It also allows you to be more productive and ensure your readers are constantly getting updates without fail.
Looking for an all-in-one marketing platform for your startup business? Introducing the Rainmaker Platform; A complete marketing platform that allows you to build your own marketing and sales platform build under one roof. From superior web hosting to marketing tool, Rainmaker Platform takes your marketing and productivity level from A to A+ in just a few clicks. You can also try it for 14-days free using this link.
I bet you heard about email marketing before. Trust me, email marketing is a great productivity tool if done correctly. I use AWeber as my email marketing provider and with it, I create multiple follow up emails and broadcast emails to be delivered at the right time — every week. AWeber is set to send out welcome emails for new subscribers and specific emails for those who have completed several tasks; clicking on links, opening emails etc.
I know you want to try AWeber for free. All you need is to fill up the this form and you are all set!
IFTTT is the short form for IF This, Then That. Basically it allows you to create automated tasks to speed up your productivity level. One of my favorite (and most used) productivity hacks using IFTTT is when I tag ‘tasks’ to a post to Pocket app, it will automatically trigger and action which will add the the title and details of the post to my Evernote notebook entitled, Follow Up Tasks. Instead of manually saving the information on Evernote, IFTTT does it for me and it save up a lot of my time. At the moment, there are over 50 different actions and triggers to customize your automation.
Reading is common among entrepreneurs and with the number of new posts found on the Internet daily, we are definitely not able to keep track of them. This is where Feedly comes into play.
Feedly allows you to add your favorite RSS feeds under one roof; thus allowing you to get the latest news without the need of heading over the the website. It has both desktop and mobile applications which makes it extremely user-friendly and favorable among entrepreneurs.
Boomerang is a great tool when you want to schedule email and providing you reminders when you don’t get a respond back. With Boomerang, you can compose an email and schedule it for later or even create follow up notifications for important sales email. If you are constantly looking for productivity tool for email marketing, this is one tool you need to use.
Writing a sales copy can be very time consuming and most of the time, we don’t check our writings. If you are looking for the best plagiarism checker, automated proofreader and grammar checker, look no further. Grammarly is used by thousands, both professionals and beginners in increasing their standards of writing.
If you have a website, you will know how important it is to have Google indexing your website. Besides all the good stuffs Google can provide, Google Webmaster Tools would provide additional information on your website such as:
- Broken links
- Outrages
- Click through rates (CTR)
- Ranking and popularity of specific keywords
Bing Webmaster Tools is alike the one in Google. Adding your website to the system would allow Bing bots to scout your site. Sure, majority of us use Google search but do not underestimate the power of Bing as well.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is not dead. Well, at least not yet. You probably heard about using the paid keyword research tool like LongTailPro. But here’s the good part.
Google Keyword Planner is a free tool that allows you to search for popular (and potential) keywords to rank for. Since it is free to use and is owned by Google, rest assured that the results are (pretty much) accurate.
I have yet to come across an entrepreneur who doesn’t use Google Analytics. Google Analytics allows you to track your website in different segments. For example:
- Number of visitors
- Source of traffic
- Geographical statistics
If you manages a website, register an account with Google Analytics and you will get a code to install on your website. Don’t worry, it only takes a few minutes to install it and it is pretty simple too!
Do you want to know what are the popular topics on social media? If yes, Buzzsumo is a must-have productivity tool for any serious entrepreneurs. Search for a specific keyword on Buzzsumo and it will provide a list of report (and ranking) on blog posts based on the number of social shares.
Entrepreneurs are always looking for better connections and networking. Ninja Outreach allows you to reach out to influencers within your niche in just a few clicks. What I love about Ninja Outreach is the ability to search and discover information on specific influencers such as:
- Links to social media accounts
- Contact
- Website
- Popularity
In short, Ninja Outreach will cut down the time of searching for influencers from hours to just minutes.
WordPress CMS is the most popular blogging platform for entrepreneurs. WordPress allows you to schedule new post updates without hassle and it does more than just scheduling (for the record). You can literally build an online store or your business portfolio using WordPress.
Need more? WordPress comes with distraction-free writing where you can write as much as you want without being distracted by the sidebars and stuffs.
Make no mistake. WordPress is an extremely versatile productivity tool if you use it correctly.
Social media marketing is challenging and we often wish to have the ‘set and forget’ tool. If that’s the case, you need to take a look at Socialoomph.
It is a paid social media tool that allows you to integrate to unlimited social accounts on major platforms. There are many features you can use such as:
- Queue
- Random post
- Post and repeat (unlimited times)
- Specific time scheduling
And that’s not about it. It also allows spinning of words to maximize the uniqueness of the post by using syntax. Here’s an example:
5 ways to be (more productive|increase productivity level} as en entrepreneur
Side from spinning, it also has the follow feature which is extremely powerful if you are planning to increase your Twitter followers. Socialoomph will provide a list of recommended Twitter profiles you could follow based on your requirement and settings.
Storify can be used for a few reasons; from getting high quality backlinks to curating articles and finding more popular topics. If you are in the creative marketing industry, involving heavily on Storify would boost your visibility as well as potentially ranking better on search engines.
Question: Should you consider Storify as a productivity tool for entrepreneurs?
If your target market is millennials, Tumblr is definitely an awesome platform to engage in. Tumblr is used as a micro-blogging site and could save you some money if you have no plans to own your own domain.
Why is Tumblr a productivity tool for entrepreneurs?
You can easily integrate pictures, blog posts, videos etc into Tumblr and share them with the world (or to your potential customers).
This is a pretty decent productivity tool especially when you want specific information about your website analytics. Quill Engage integrates perfectly well with Google Analytics and instead of reading the raw data directly from Google Analytics (and analyzing them yourself), Quill Engage will compile the data into a simple report.
This allows you to understand the website stats quickly and effectively without pulling your hair. If you want ‘someone’ to inteprete Google Analytics data for you, you really need to check out Quill Engage!
You heard about Slack and probably use Slack to boost your productivity. For those who have not heard about Slack, this is what you need to know.
Slack is powerful and it puts productivity to a whole new level. For me, it is a game changer and here are some advantages using Slack:
- Group conversations
- File sharing
- Contextual search (super crazy search feature)
- Easily integrated to over 80 different apps
Instead of using the typical email for conversation, Slack allows you to go the extra miles by providing a platform for communication between team members. As everything is done over real-time, productivity level can be increased dramatically.
If you are new into the website business, you are lucky. Here’s what you need to know about Strikingly based on their tagline.
Gorgeous, mobile-friendly websites in minutes.
Yes, you read it right. You can build any website from scratch and without any coding skills in just minutes. Instead of spending thousands of dollars (and hours) hiring web designers and getting those website designs up, you can put those resources into good use — yes, in your business.
Most entrepreneurs are constantly flooded with emails, right? I receive over 100 emails a day and I am sure you do too!
Unroll.me is a great tool to help you unsubscribe emails which are not important or no longer relevant for you. In just a few clicks, it can clear your inbox and I personally reduce over 80% of my email subscriptions which I had never opened or read.
Plus, the latest feature is ‘the rollup’ where you will receive emails will appear in your inbox every day at the time you choose. All your subscriptions will be beautifully merged into one email and that’s it!
Keeping track of mentions on Twitter is not an easy task especially when you have thousands of followers. Sure, you could keep try to do so but it will take a huge chunk of your time and your productivity level will go down.
This is where Mention comes into play. A simple tool that keep you updated with the mentions you get from Twitter and you can even respond directly from the app.
Want to save more time and improve productivity level on social media? Try using Mention and you can thank me later.
This is relatively an alternative to IFTTT. In short, Zapier connects the apps you use constantly, automate tasks and getting more out of your 24 hours.
Zapier is a great tool and with custom automation tasks, you can literally get anything done using Zapier. It doesn’t burn a hole in your pocket either as it has the ‘forever free’ plan and paid plans that starts at $20 per month.
For entrepreneurs who love reading, Flipboard is a must to have. Flipboard allows you to create multiple magazines and ‘flipping’ articles you find interesting into them. The best part about Flipboard is that it makes reading real simple and it is extremely easy to follow (and share) posts that are interesting to you and your followers.
Pocket is another great productivity tool for entrepreneurs. I use Pocket to save important articles and news for future reference. Pocket is integrated with nearly every platform out there and there is no better tool compared to Pocket when it comes to content curation.
Sidekick is a Chrome extension and it is created by Hubspot. Sidekick gives you a truck load of features such as:
- A notification when the email is send, open and read
- Location of the email receiver / sender
- Complete profile for your contacts
- Scheduling emails to be send at specific times
If you are in the sales or marketing industry, Sidekick is definitely a productivity tool you need to use. Period.
43. Smartphone planner
It doesn’t matter if you are an Android guy or Apple fan, your smartphone is probably your best productivity tool … ever. Have a task or specific project to complete?
How about leaving a note in your planner and turn on the notification?
While the step may be really simple, it is guaranteed to increase your productivity level by miles apart because you are constantly reminded on the tasks you need to complete.
Make sense?
Brain storming is pretty a much a must-do task for entrepreneurs and XMind is probably the best productivity tool for mind mapping. Free to download on Mac and Windows, it allows you to create multiple charts and turning them into a storage vault.
If you are constantly planning on the next big thing, XMind will take your brain storming process to a whole new level. Trust me on that.
I came across WorkFlowly thanks to AppSumo. This is a great alternative to XMind and one of its selling point is simply, lightweight.
You can fire up WorkFlowly through mobile or desktop as long as you have an Internet connection and start writing down your ideas. While it doesn’t really work well as a brain storming tool, it is a great tool for taking down notes.
Some says that Google Alerts isn’t a productivity tool but for me, it is. Instead of spending hours searching for information, Google Alerts send search data (based on your keyw0rds) directly to your email. To avoid clustering your email, you can opt for different schedules such as daily or real-time email notifications.
For those who decide Evernote, there is Wunderlist for the rescue. It is pretty much an alternative to Evernote and it provides all the essentials such as taking down notes and data.
What makes Wunderlist highly favorable is due to its bright colour and the features which are extremely user-friendly. Wunderlist is available on all major smartphone platforms as well as on desktops too.
48. Table top timer
Do you have a table top timer? Well if you don’t, you can get one from Amazon (this or this) under $10. While blocking out an hour or a specific time a day to complete a task sounds simple, do not underestimate the power of it.
There are a lot of things that can be done in just 60 minutes of uninterrupted time.
You are into business and you know exactly how important images are. Gone were the days where you use those images found on Google search. Bigger businesses are paying big bucks just to get their hands on stock photos.
But you are different because you are a small business and in terms of budget, you would rather save them for better use. This is where Death to the Stock Photo comes into play.
For a free account, you get once a month email on the latest stock images you can use for blogging, marketing and anything under the sun. Imagine the amount of time (and money) you can save especially when you are searching for that one perfect image for your marketing — delivered into your inbox on a monthly basis.
Using the right images is just one equation of the puzzle. Creating mesmerizing images with beautiful fonts and effects is another. If you are a beginner (or have bad designing skills like me), you are going to love Canva.
Canva is a freemium productivity tool especially when you are planning to create your own images. Canva literally transforms a complete beginner into a professional photograph editor in just a few minutes (and clicks).
What are your favorite productivity tools?
There are hundreds if not thousands of productivity tools an entrepreneur can use and I certainly hope I didn’t miss out any tools you can utilize right now and become more productive.
Have a productivity tool that is not listed here? Leave a comment below or hit me up on social to tell me all about it.
The post Top 50 Powerful Productivity Tools Every Entrepreneur Should Be Using appeared first on Editorial Sumo.
from Top 50 Powerful Productivity Tools Every Entrepreneur Should Be Using http://ift.tt/1XKrk34 contributed by Reginald Chan
