[Business Ignite] 5 Must Have Tools To Run Your Online Business Tool Time! In this episode of the podcast I share my favorite tools..well at least 5 of them! Admittedly, I’m a bit of a tool-junkie and love experimenting with new ones. Shiny object syndrome? Nah..not me! Okay, fine..maybe just a bit. The upside? You get to save time and hear about the best of the best. So, in no particular order, I bring you my must have tools to run your online business. Schedule Once Ever try planning a meeting with someone and you end up in email ping-pong hell? Where not only are you trying to figure out availabilities you also have different timezones to deal with? Enter Schedule Once. As the name implies, you schedule once. When you create your Schedule Once account, you set your availabilities. It connects with your calendar and blocks off any existing meetings. When someone wants to book time on your calendar, simply send them your schedule once link and they can select the time and zone that works best for them. You get a notification and it’s booked in your calendar. Et voila! End the email back and forth madness. Boomerang Boomerang is a plugin for Gmail. Just because you are hustling and working all hours of the day and night…*does not* mean your clients need to know. Enter Boomerang. Reply to emails on your own time but schedule them out to go out with Boomerang at more appropriate times. Have emails that you don’t need to deal with right now (webinar reminders, concert tickets..), Boomerang them to return at a specified date. Social Media Management Social media dashboards and scheduling tools. I personally use a combo of Hootsuite and Buffer. Why not just use Twitter.com, you ask? I use Hootsuite’s dashboard to get an overview of my Twitter lists, if there are conversations, keywords or hashtags I want to follow. I also use it to schedule out evergreen content like past episodes of my podcast or relevant blog posts. I use BufferApp to curate and share content on the fly and like it’s ease of use as a browser plugin. DropBox Dropbox is a free service that lets you access your files from anywhere. I use DropBox to easily share my raw podcast files with my podcast editor. With a shared DropBox folder, I can share files and access the edited files once they are ready. No need to email large files back and forth. Similarly, when working with coaching clients, I use DropBox to share call recordings and pdfs. And the beauty of it? It’s all in the cloud…accessible from anywhere, on any device. Take a look at these 5 must have #tools to run your online business Click To Tweet Google..well..everything. Google Drive is first on my list. I do *everything* in there..from working on documents (like coming up withe new product ideas) to collaborating on retreat planning (with my partner who is 3000 miles away!) Analytics: you need this on your site. And it’s free. Enough said. Google+ and Hangouts: I looove this platform and especially the hangouts and hangouts on air. Super easy to jump on and broadcast panels, shows, coaching calls, webinars…you name it! What are some of your favorite tools? Let me know in the comments!
