5 Free Business Tools

5 Free Small Business Tools

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5 Free Business Tools

Technology has been my greatest ally for running my business.  I often say that if it were not for technology, I am not sure that I would have a business.  Over the past few years, we have seen a rise in tech start-ups; that are creating a slew of online applications, mobile apps, and services that are a great benefit to small businesses.  Many of them offer free trials or stripped down services for free.  I have compiled a list of five free tools and services that are beneficial.

Dropbox

“Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily. Dropbox was founded in 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, two MIT students tired of emailing files to themselves to work from more than one computer.” – from the Dropbox website

Dropbox is one of my favorite and most valuable tools that I use for my own business.  I have been using Dropbox for about three years or so.  I started off with their free 2 GB of storage plan that they were offering at that time.   I used it to store photos and music to save space on my computer.  With time, I found myself incorporating it more and more into my business.  I have a paid plan now, because I use it to store all of my client files and as a graphic designer, my files can get to be pretty large.

Dropbox makes it easy for me to share and receive large files with clients.  I can send them a link to download a large file from my Dropbox and I can setup and share folders with them to place large files like images in.  This takes the place of sending 10 emails with one attachment.  Another benefit is that because it is cloud storage, I can access my files from anywhere, on any computer and on any mobile device.  This is great for meetings and cuts down on the number of things I need to bring to a meeting or presentation.  Last year, my computer died and if my files had been stored on my computer, I would have been in trouble.  Instead, I borrowed a loaner computer while mine was being fixed, downloaded Dropbox and Voila!  I had instant access to all of my files again.

Dropbox still offers a free plan that comes with GB of space.  There are also several different opportunities to earn more free space.  You can earn an additional 125 MB for doing each of the following:  giving them 120 characters worth of feedback, tweeting that feedback, connecting your Twitter account, and connecting your Facebook account.  You can also earn up to 32 GB of space for each person that signs up for an account from your referral link (1 GB per person).  Additionally, the person that signs up from your referral link will gain an additional 500 MB of space so it benefits both people.

LastPass

“LastPass is a password manager that makes web browsing easier and more secure.” –from the LastPass website

Do you ever get frustrated with trying to remember your password combination for all of the sites that you visit?  Well, that is where LastPass swoops in to save the day.  With LastPass, you all of your passwords are saved in one place locally on your computer and they are encrypted.  To log into sites online, all that you need is a mouse click.  I am pretty new to this service myself, but everyone that has referred this service to me, loves it.

SlideShare

“SlideShare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations.  With 60 million monthly visitors and 130 million pageviews, it is amongst the most visited 200 websites in the world.  Besides presentations, SlideShare also supports documents, PDFs, videos and webinars.” – from the SlideShare website

SlideShare is a great way to put your content in front of a larger audience.  You can create informative presentations to share virally or you can use it as a tool to virtually send presentations to prospects. SlideShare offers additional paid plans that allow you to upload content that is larger in size, and comes with additional features, but it is free to sign-up and use.

Join.Me

“join.me combines instant screen sharing and powerful meeting tools in an app that anyone can use to present, train, demo or concept. join.me is designed to be intuitive and accessible, providing features that you’ll use every day for everything from show-and-tell to formal presentations.” – from the join.me website

I have been involved in several virtual meetings online that utilized this service and I believe it is a great presentation and collaboration tool for meeting with groups in different geographic locations.  Like most services listed on this page, join.me has paid plans that offer more functionality, but some of the meetings I was involved in were using the free basic plan.  I was able to join in on a conference call for the audio portion and watch the presentation and examples through the join.me link that was provided for the meeting.  There is also a chat functionality that can be used as well if you need to mute your phone.

HootSuite

“The leading social media dashboard to manage and measure your social networks.” – from the HootSuite website

Managing social media profiles can be tedious and using a social media dashboard can help take away some of the headache in managing your social media profiles in-house. HootSuite has a great free plan to help you get organized, schedule postings and manage all of your social media networks in one place!

Take a few or all of these services for a spin see if you are able to add value to your business with them.  After all, what have you got to lose?  They are free!

 

This article does contain an affiliate link for the Dropbox service.  If you click the Dropbox link and sign up, we will both receive extra storage space.

Why You Should Blog | Freelance Graphic Design Blog

Your Business Needs A Blog :: Part 2

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Why You Should Blog

Last week I talked about why your business needs a blog; and because I was fearful that if I made the post too long, you would get bored, I broke it into two parts.  This post will focus more on the increase in traffic aspect of why you need a blog.

How does a blog increase website traffic?

I mentioned last week, that if the content was informative and helpful to the reader, it could result in a purchase.  What I did not mention was that the content is the reason why the visitor landed on your blog post.  They searched for something on a search engine site like Google, and your blog post was one of the relevant search results that they clicked on.  With a little search engine optimization (SEO) help, your blog post may have been in the number one position on the search results page of their query.

Another reason why your blog post was where the visitor could see it in their search results, instead of being buried on page fifty-seven, is because you have been consistently blogging.  In the eyes of search engines, your website is considered relevant not just because that particular post was relevant to the visitor’s query, but because your site is “updated.”  Search engines take into account whether a website is being maintained or updated with fresh content.  Consistently blogging from your site adds new content, and new content is updated content in the eyes of search engines.  If you are not blogging, adding new products or updating the content on your website in any way, then search engines see your site as being stale.  Stale sites get buried on page fifty-seven.

Many businesses have a website designed, and because the information does not need to be changed very often, they only update them once or twice a year.   Normally this is only done to change the copyright year in the footer of the site or remove a staff member’s name that is no longer with the company.  Consider this scenario:  Company A sells pecans, has competitive prices and offers excellent customer service, but only updates their website once or twice a year.  Company B sells pecans that are priced above average and has a couple of complaints with the Better Business Bureau (BBB), but blogs weekly.  Customer C searches the internet to find pecans for sale and Company B shows up in Customer C’s search results on page one.  Company A is on page fifty-seven.  Although Company A is the better choice for buying pecans, Customer C will likely never find that out.

If you created a web site so that you could have a web presence, take it one step further and add a blog.  By doing so, you will increase your web presence and your earning potential.

Why You Should Blog | Freelance Graphic Design Blog

Your Business Needs a Blog :: Part 1

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Why You Should Blog

When working with new web design clients, one of the questions that I ask when sorting out the content that will go on their website, is whether or not they will have a blog.  Often times, their answer is in the form of a question, “Do I need one?  My answer is always “yes.”  I truly believe that every business should have a blog because it is a relatively low cost way to market your business.

Having a blog drives more traffic to your site.  Before I started blogging for my business, I was averaging less than 10 visitors a month.  Not per day or per week, but 10 visitors per month.  Granted, at that time I was still working as a graphic designer in corporate America and freelancing only on the side.  I built a website like most businesses do, to establish a web presence and showcase my portfolio.  In my free time, I built an unrelated site to blog about some of my interests in natural hair, art and healthy living.  Within a few months, I was averaging over 1,000 visitors per month on that site.  10 visitors per month for a business that helps put food in my mouth compared to 1,000 visitors per month for something I do for fun, about random stuff that I like?  Yes, I thought the same thing you are thinking right now.

When I decided to freelance full-time, I also decided to dedicate time to blog for this site as well as my other site.  Actually, this site has become a significantly higher priority over my “fun site.”  Within a few months time, I saw my site traffic triple to over 30 visitors per month.  In a year’s time, I was averaging over 100 visitors per month and I only posted a new blog post once a week.  Not only did my website traffic increase, but it was what I consider “quality” traffic.  I blog about topics relating to: graphic design, marketing for small businesses and projects that I have done.  The services that my business offers relates to the topics that I write about.  As a matter of fact, most of my blog posts are born out of the questions that I get from clients; and friends and family that like to pick my brain.  That means that the majority of the visitors to my blog fall within the demographics of my client base.  In my opinion, that makes it “quality” traffic.  The added bonus is that this “quality” traffic only costs me the time it takes for me to sit down and type.

This leads me to my next point.  Having a blog can increase revenue.  It is all about the content.  If you have quality content related to your products and/or services, it can influence a visitor to want to learn more about your business, which can lead to a purchase.  How many times have you turned to the internet for information on a particular product or service and ended up on a blog?  If what you read was informative and helpful, did you do some further browsing on that site?  Did you make a purchase or contact them for further information about their services?  If you answered yes, then you fell within the category of being “quality” traffic for that particular site.  I have had several clients that were the result of landing on one of my blog postings and many more inquiries into the services that I offer as a result of reading my blog.  Again, the cost to market in this way for me, is just time.

Blogging as a form of marketing your business is fairly inexpensive.  If you have a website, then you already have a domain name and hosting.  You may have to get with your web designer if you are not very technically adept, but it will be fairly easy to add a blog to your existing site.  If your website was built within the last two years or so, chances are that it is already built on a content management system (CMS) like WordPress.  Websites that are built on platforms like WordPress make it easy to add a blog.  Other than time, which I consider a cost, most of your out of pocket expenses to blog will be related to content creation.

Can you spell and write a decent sentence?  Then you can probably write a blog post.  If not, you can pay to have one written using a freelance writer or a service like scripted.com.  If you are not sure where to find a freelance writer, check out sites like odesk and elance.  Not sure what to write?  Think like your customer.  What would they want to read?  What information would be helpful to them?  Remember, it’s not about you, but about them.  Help them and they will reward you with their patronage.

Think Like Your Customer, Make More Revenue

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You hear it asked all of the time, “How do I make more revenue?”  The simple answer is to think like your customer.  This simple rule can make a world of difference when applied to your marketing plans, product development and the services you offer.  Often times, businesses approach their marketing from their own perspective, making money.  Your business’ goal is to sell, sell, sell, but you can actually sell more if you try to think from the perspective of your customer.  Put yourself in their shoes.  Ask yourself why your current customers buy your product or use your service?  Yes, it solves a problem that they have, but what made them buy your product or use your service over something or someone else?  If you can identify what that is, you can use it to your advantage and begin to look at your business through their eyes.  Give them what they want to see, hear and how they want to see and hear it.

No one, not even you, wants to be “sold to,” but businesses constantly bombard potential customers with “buy me,” “try me,” “I’m great!”  It’s all about them, the business, the product, the service.  What about the customer?  Step into their shoes and make it about them and not about you.  Here is a fictional example to illustrate my point, Lucy is a tax professional who’s clients love her because she is a certified tax professional.  This eases their minds and gives them confidence that their tax returns are done right, because they are afraid of being audited.  In her flyers to new potential customers, she uses this to her advantage.  The sales copy on the flyer plays on the fear of being audited while showcasing the fact that she is a certified professional and her years of expertise.  She even lists that in 5 years, she has only had one client selected to be audited, and she was able to help them through that process with a favorable end result.  Potential clients that view the flyer are still being “sold to,” but the language feels more relevant to them.

If you take this approach, thinking like your customer, you will be able to better engage them and sell to them.

KISS:: Keep It Simple Stupid

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The KISS acronym is a common term used within a variety of industries, namely marketing.  While I think it is a great concept and rule of thumb, I am not very fond of the “stupid” part.  I feel that whoever came up with this acronym thought it would be cool if it spelled out the word kiss and added an extra letter.  Nevertheless, it is a great rule of thumb when coming up with marketing concepts and design pieces.

I often tell my clients that less is more, which is keeping in line with KISS, but what does that really mean?  From a design perspective, less has more impact.  If you received a marketing piece that was full of text with maybe a few images sprinkled in here and there, how likely are you to read ALL of it?  If you instead received a marketing piece that looked sparse in comparison with the amount of text how likely would you be to read ALL of the text on that piece?

Any marketing piece that you create has a purpose.  You want to provide information to your potential client, whether that is information about a product or service that you offer or to inform them of a promotional offer.  By using less and keeping it simple, you have more control over what that potential client takes away from your piece.  If you have too much text and just too much going on in your piece, then the potential client will only take a portion of that information with them if any at all.  You also are unable to dictate which information they took with them or at what point they became tired of reading and stopped.

In design-speak, we often talk about “white space” and most designers are quite fond of it.  The reason why we love white space so much is because it gives you the power to control the viewer’s eye.  By keeping it simple and using less graphics, colors, images, fonts, etc. we are able to draw attention to what is really important in a piece and direct traffic or the viewer’s eyes through it.  White space does not have to literally mean white.  White space is just a term to refer to copious amounts of clear space; space that is void of graphic elements or text that would command the viewer’s attention.

Ultimately, if you are creating or having a marketing piece created, you want it to work for you.  By keeping it simple, you put the power in your own hands to get that done.  Make it complicated and the potential client will make all of the decisions for you and probably not in the manner that you would like.