So you want to start an online business from scratch? You're not alone.
Traditional 9-to-5 jobs have lost their appeal with current generations, who want their freedom and flexibility to work to live rather than live to work. The pandemic hasn't killed enthusiasm towards the start-up.
In fact, COVID-19 has fanned the flames of many people who've always thought about starting their own business.
Business technology tools can save you time and money
Starting a new business involves quite a few growing pains. Founders have to wear many hats - a lot of them dealing with administration, marketing and promotion. Unless you want to kiss sleep a permanent goodbye, you should work smart and not hard.
Automation is on your side and honestly, many tools are available either free to use at their most basic functions. There's not much initial investment required from you at the very start apart from your time to set things up.
We've chosen the essentials. Those tools that together cover the entire spectrum of roles you have to inhabit.
6 tools to use for your online business
Hootsuite
The world revolves around social media so we might as well get this out of the way first. Tracking and analyzing social media is the foundation of digital marketing. Without a strong social media presence, there's not much you can do as an online business.
Hootsuite began life as a tool for Twitter, but it's evolved to a point where you're able to observe multiple platforms through a single dashboard. Perhaps the most useful feature is the ability to set times for pre-written posts. In those early stages where you have to do things yourself, knowing you can set it and forget it brings a sense of immediate peace.
Of course, we have to mention the incredible analytics, social engagement and influencers.
Mention
Think of Mention as advanced Google Alert. The tool scans the Internet for mentions of your brand and product as well as any personnel in the public eye (founder for instance). Even the free version offers quite a bit - news sites, blogs, forums, video sites, Twitter and Instagram.
That's more than a good starting point. You cover initial bases (sure, Facebook is missing but then again Facebook marketing is difficult after the overhaul of Facebook Pages) and receive fresh data every single day in real time. If you want to measure your exposure, this is how you do it from the very first tweet and pic post.
Inoreader
RSS is not much talked about in recent years and that's a shame, because RSS readers have made huge leaps in their features. The current generation is capable of much more than just consolidating various information sources in one dashboard. Inoreader is a prime example as to what RSS feed readers can really do.
No more passive article storage. Inoreader gives readers access to its entire database through the content discovery area, which organises popular feeds into thematic subjects. With the internal search, you can find fresh, relevant and quality content. That's invaluable for your content creation needs as a small business. It also helps for market and competitor research.
Through Inoreader you can easily subscribe to RSS feeds directly on the browser tab. Among the most popular features is the filtered feed. Narrow down the posts you receive based on keywords, topics and even authors.
Mailchimp
It might be a social media world, but that doesn't mean you can ignore other means to reach target customers - email. Everybody uses emails and email campaigns are not going anywhere any time soon, so you don't want to miss out on an effective email management tool. Mailchimp is the leading application in its class and known the world over in digital marketing.
Online businesses rely on email newsletters and promotional emails to inform past customers and call them to action. Mailchimp makes it easy to manage email campaigns. It's secure, automated and robust - with the capacity to handle hundreds of thousands subscribers. Businesses in their infancy can use Mailchimp for free while their subscriber count remains under 2000. You're also spoiled for choice in terms of templates and formatting options.
Trello
No matter how small your team is, you're responsible for clear communication and team management as the groundwork for fruitful collaboration. The tool for the job is Trello. This application shares materials and content between team members and coordinates tasks. In this sense Trello makes the insufferable email chains a thing of the past and combines the functionalities of Google Drive and shared calendars.
Any team manager will be quite satisfied to know that all tasks are accounted for, there are clear deadlines visible to everyone and progress is clearly visible to everyone. This clarity streamlines the work process by eliminating unnecessary check-ins, follow-up emails and group chats. You can integrate Trello with a variety of other applications and it has built-in automation options that are highly intuitive and do not require previous coding experience.
Google Analytics
You can't ignore Google Analytics, if you're starting an online business. It's powerful. It allows the collection of many data points. Most importantly, it's free to use. That last point alone should be enough to convince you.
In order for Google Analytics to be of any use, you have to perform the initial setup at the get-go. It's critical to capture as much data as possible from the start in order to track changes and chart your progress from the moment your site goes live. GA is not an overly complicated tool. Takes a few minutes to link the tool to your site and then it's a matter of determining the data points you want to track.
This is very important work as you're able to document the organic traffic coming to your site, the keywords with highest impact and the pieces of content that receive the most attention. This last one is applicable for content creation. If you're running a company blog, you'll see what appeals to your readership most.