Building a vast online presence is quite difficult, especially true when you are doing it from the ground up. Luckily there are free tools that you can use for your online business. These tools will aid you to get yourself out there to be seen and heard.
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For Content Management
Having a fast and easy to use CMS or Content Management System is critical in managing a business’ site.
Despite its’ increasing complexity WordPress is still the most used CMS on the internet.
With its’ vast and wide community, it’s influence is unmistakable.
Before setting up your website there are factors you will need to consider, such as the type of site you wish to create, the type of hosting plan and many more.
To help you get through this here is a quick step by step guide in aiding you to set up your website:
Getting Started with your Website [Basic Guide] -
For Business Administration
GnuCash is a free and open-source software for managing all your accounting needs, this is done through its user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate by almost anyone, making it one of the most useful software in aiding you to manage your own business. -
For Social Media Sharing
Nowadays most of us use social media in our day to day living so if you wish to reach out to a wider set of audience promoting yourself in this platform would be one way to achieve your goal.
Now I know that there are tons of platforms to choose, from the more popular ones like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to the more professional ones like LinkedIn and Pinterest.
To an individual running a small online business this would be overwhelming luckily there are tools to aid you with managing your accounts, giving you more productivity and more spare time in your hands.
Looking for a cheap or free tool to use for social media management?
Look no further, Buffer is an excellent tool for integrating social media accounts, through this managing your accounts becomes a breeze.
The limit for uploading posts with buffer is 10 a week, but with the paid version this limit increases depending on the chosen subscription.
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For Collaboration
Sometimes personnel of the same business aren’t always located in the same workplace, you might be working in different places and the same goes for the clients you will encounter.
This is where collaboration tools become handy, especially useful in the design and development teams, it makes it a lot easier for the team to communicate and share insights on tasks giving you more productivity and efficiency in your work.
Asana is a perfect example of such a collaboration tool. It includes all the necessary features you would need for a team project.
With it, you can set and monitor tasks, create sections, projects and work-spaces for your business.
It is available for FREE use for up to 15 people, it is quite useful for start-up businesses as it also integrates with other online tools ensuring that when you start a task you can use different tools and reduce redundancy in your projects.
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For Web Graphics
Another integral part of your online presence is the images you use for your posts, promotions and online presentations.
Good graphics would convey the level of professional your business can offer and with this more of your target audience would be enticed to commence business with you.
Nowadays, photo-editing soft-wares like Photoshop and vector generating soft-wares like Illustrator is the staple for the creation of web graphics and I know that the two soft-wares alone would cost a decent amount of money, luckily there are alternative tools that you could use that can, to a degree, produce the same quality of graphics.
For photo-editing, there are tons of options to choose from online, an example of which is BeFunky, an online tool dedicated to producing top-notch editing capabilities for Free.
It is a decent program that can do up to fairly complex editing, a paid version of it is also available with additional features that can produce higher-quality graphics, ad-free workspace, priority support and more.
For vector rendering, an open-source and free program is available. Inkscape is an excellent tool for producing high-quality vector images that can rival even the most well-known programs out there such as Adobe Illustrator and Serif’s Affinity Designer.
Originally created for units running on GNU/Linux OS, the team behind it has then produced version of it that runs on Windows and even Mac OS.
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For Online Traffic Tracking
If you are serious in getting traffic to your company website or would want to monitor where it is coming from, an online web analysing tools are what you would need.
A perfect tool that one could use that is free is Google Analytics.
It does what its name implies, though setting up analytics may seem a tad confusing at first, once the set up is over you could be sure to get the accurate reading of your website’s traffic.
Another great tool to measure the amount of back-links your site is receiving as well as the search queries being associated with it is Google’s Search Console.
Though feature-wise it is not as heavy in options as other SEO tools, search console does allow you which page to be indexed from your site and which country it is to be shown giving you more control of your site’s appearance on search engines powered by Google.
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For Email Marketing
It shouldn’t come to a surprise that the way to the success of your business would include marketing it to your audience.
On top of the traditional marketing, email marketing has evolved to aid entrepreneur to reach their now more tech-savvy users.
With our more advance technology and the introduction of the internet, getting in touch with future clients have become a bit easier, that is why email marketing has become a major factor in the proper promotion of your business.
Just like previous factors to consider there are also tools in helping you create the best newsletter possible.
Mail Chimp, perhaps still the most well known and widely used e-mail marketing platform.
It makes it a lot easier to send out a newsletter and promotional materials online, with its low learning curve.
Considered to be the best tool to be used by beginners who are still trying to figure out what email marketing is.
It also comes free to be used for the first 2,000 subscribers.
Conclusion:
Nowadays a large chunk of marketing is done through digital means, having the proper knowledge of digital marketing is required if you would want your business to achieve great heights.
We have mentioned in this article factors to consider in managing your online business, namely; Content Management, Business Administration, Social Media Management, Collaboration, Web Graphics, Online Traffic Tracking and Email Marketing.
Whether it’s in social media promotion, search engine optimisation or email marketing having the right tool could give you the edge as well as make managing your business a lot easier.
