Marketing and Productivity Apps for Busy SMBs
Marketing and Productivity Apps for Busy SMBs:
Are you always on the go with no time to sit down and complete the ever increasing list of administrative and marketing tasks for your small business? Do not fear, as they say, there is an app for that! Compiled here is a list of must have apps to make you more productive on the go or in the office.
Let’s start with the WordPress App, the handy way to access your WordPress.com site or a self-hosted WordPress website. You can make new posts or pages and update existing ones on the go to keep your information fresh for your customers. This functionality is great if you frequently update your blog, have regular class, workshop or event announcements or frequently post sales and specials. You can even update most themes using the app.
Evernote or its competitors, Microsoft One Note and Google Keep are great for keeping important information with you on the go or collecting information for later use when you are not at your desk. With Evernote you can access notes from your phone, desktop or online so that your information is readily available in the cloud. You can forward important emails to your Evernote account for safe keeping, no more trying to scroll or search though hundreds of similar emails to find just the right one. This app is great if you constantly need to make lists such as inventory or supplies or need to gather content for your website.
Wave Apps is a Google Chrome app for accounting and invoicing. What makes it unique and worthy of our list is it will port all of the transactions from your credit cards and bank accounts and categorize them which will save you a lot of money and time on bookkeeping come tax time. It has many other features which make it a great payment processing and tracking app for certain types of businesses.
Dropbox is a "freemium" service that lets you upload your photos, documents, and videos into the “cloud” from anywhere and share them easily. You can stop emailing yourself files, then losing them in your inbox. This is similar to Google Drive but gives a more professional appearance since it is not attached to a Gmail address and can be shared using your branded company email. It is also a great way to back up your important documents.
Pocket is similar to Evernote but tends to be closer to Pinterest in appearance and organization with a more visual display that is better for images videos and other media. You can save directly from your browser or from apps like Twitter, Flipboard, Pulse and Zite. This has an advantage over Evernote where you have to forward email to a designated address, save image files or post text links. On the flip side these features make it harder to organize similar items since they end up in different “notes”.
Buffer or Hootsuite, whichever meets your needs best, are social media posting applications that allow you to schedule posts and monitor social media. This is very useful if you would like to pre plan promotional or informational posts ahead of time instead of having to log in daily to post. With and increasing amount of time SMBs now have to spend to monitor their social reputation and compete for social engagement across more and more platforms these apps are an absolute must for a B to C business of any size.
If a lot of your traffic comes from Facebook marketing efforts then Facebook Pages Manager is essential. This mobile app allows you to post and monitor multiple Facebook pages from your phone or tablet. Since the app is directly from Facebook it has the full functionality and features social monitoring apps don’t and even allows you to create a new page. That being said the two are not interchangeable as this is limited to Facebook and does not allow you to schedule and plan social media campaigns.
Square is not an app per se. It has an app but the mobile payment processing company is in itself similar to an app as it uses your mobile or tablet device to create an on the go checkout and payment terminal by attaching a little cube. It should be noted that Paypal recently came out with a similar device so if you already use Paypal as your payment processor it may be easier to stay with the status quo or you may want to check out Square which keeps innovating with new options for accepting payments.
Use these apps wisely and hopefully they will leave more hours in the day to run your business or enjoy some well-deserved time off!
Article by Sophia+