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| Image Credit | Cottonbro | Pexels |
Every business and professional need to stay organized. Ensuring that you have access to what you need when you need it is key to staying productive. There are many paid tools and many free tools out there that can help you stay organized and at the top of your game.
Everyone business providing free tools also wants to sell you something. They are often attempting to upsell you from a free tier or a product into a paid tier. This is called the freemium model. They give you just enough of a product to have value, but also just short of what would be truly great. They make you want to spend more on the next best thing.
I have found that a mix of free and paid tools can combine to create a powerful suite of assets that will help accelerate your results. Here are 8 of my favorite productivity tools.
Gmail and the Google Docs Suite
Google offers users free email and access to their free versions of spreadsheets, documents, and presentations called Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms. These are powerful online versions of the popular Microsoft Office suite of products. These tools do not have all of the features of the standard office software, but they have enough of what matters to make them valuable to any organization, especially those that are just starting out. If you need an email address @yourdomain.com they offer a monthly subscription service called Gsuite.
Microsoft 365
Microsoft has seen the value of software on the web and has worked hard to make excellent versions of their Office suite available for free on the web. You get access to Outlook, Excel, Powerpoint, Word, OneDrive, Teams, etc., all online at no cost. This allows you to create and edit documents that are fully compatible with users of the paid or desktop version of Office as well. If you need an email address @yourdomain.com Microsoft will also allow you to upgrade to a pro package that includes that functionality as well.
The United States Small Business Administration
There are a lot of great paid business consultation services out there. You can hire them to advise you on starting your business, running your business, or finding funding. Did you know that you are already paying for a service? The Smal Business Administration is a government program that is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs and other small businesses get easy access t the resources they need to plan, launch, manage, grow and fund their businesses. You can receive free services like business consulting and even apply for loans through the SBA. There are chapters all over the country where you can meet in person and over the last 18 months, they've ramped up their telepresence options as well.
Docracy
There are services like Legal Zoom that can help you get legal advice and services or connect you to attorneys that can help you in whatever situation you may find yourself in. While those are great services, sometimes you know what you need and don't want to pay for an attorney to draft it for you. That's where the service Docracy comes in. Docracy provides access to everything from contracts to basic service agreements. They even offer a free digital signature service for getting those documents signed online. Of course, this won't replace the advice of an actual attorney, so I still recommend you consult when if you can.
Pexels
Do you need to access free stock photography to add to a document, flyer, email, or some other form of communication? Pexels has you covered. The Pexels service bills itself as the best free stock photos and videos shared by talented creators. Their database contains thousands of beautiful photographs that are searchable across nearly any topic you can think of. Just type in what you're looking for and you'll instantly still dozens of beautiful photographs to compliment your work.
Canva
I am not a graphic designer. I can use and edit a PowerPoint presentation to get a good final result, but when it comes to designing beautiful posts, charts, posters, t-shirts, and other types of graphics I can admit that I need help. That's where a service like Canva comes in. Canva is an online tool that offers a huge amount of templates and resources to create great graphics for your website, blog, email campaign, etc. If you want to take it to the next level, Canva offers a brand management tool that lets you develop a consistent design language so your customers always recognize your content.
Hootsuite
Connecting with your audience and customers online is the key to engagement in the 21st century. It can become overwhelming to manage multiple social accounts and ensure that posts, hit all of the important services at the same time. Hootsuite will let you schedule posts, track messages, mentions and interact with followers. This will help you develop an effective social media presence. They offer a free trial to get you started, so there's no risk to see if it works for you.
Trello
The bigger your business becomes the more complex the projects become. You can manage projects with clipboards, or emails back and forth, but you risk important details getting overlooked and deadlines get missed. Instead, you should consider a service like Trello. Trello allows you to manage projects by creating lists, board teams, and even automation. They even offer a powerful free their that will get you started with up to 10 projects. The free tier even offers unlimited users, storage and offers a limited number of automations. If you need more projects and power they offer reasonable pricing on more fully-featured tiers.
These are just a few of the tools available that can help you and your business manage projects, communicate and create more effectively. What are some of your favorite tools. Did they make the list or not? Tell me below!
Hi Admin, you shared here very helpful tools for different purposes. Canva, gmail.com, office are really helpful a lot. With Trello I am not that familiar and worked with. Other than these tools a good environment like chair , desks, cable management basket and office storage solution must be there to work in an organised manner. Thanks for sharing.
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