Every business wants to maximise productivity. But rather than working your employees harder, help them work smarter by leveraging digital tools that can help simplify workload and improve overall productivity. And that doesn’t necessarily mean extra expense!
The digital landscape today is awash with free, inventive applications that can simplify and automate daily business-related tasks at no cost at all. Below are five free digital tools that you may want to incorporate into your toolkit to help improve results.
G Suite
Arguably the most useful cloud computing, productivity and communication tool currently in existence, G Suite’s benefits can be reaped by anybody, whether a student or a fully-fledged business. With everything stored in the cloud, not only can files be easily accessed across multiple devices, it allows for collaboration between team members, anywhere, anytime.
Store and share files on Drive; create important material using Docs (documents), Sheets (spreadsheets) and Slides (presentation slides); email vital instructions via Gmail; schedule meetings on Calendar; and touch base with your team through Hangouts Chat without having to leave home.
Hootsuite
Most brands today have some degree of social media presence. With 45 percent of the world actively using social media, leveraging these digital platforms to connect and share information with existing and potential customers can increase brand awareness. But between Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, that’s probably one too many platforms to manage individually.
Read Also: 5 Ways Small Businesses Can Build Their Brand on Social Media
Hootsuite is an all-in-one social media management platform that allows you to schedule posts ahead of time, monitor performance, and engage with users across social media platforms. It also provides social media listening by tracking mentions and providing information about the effectiveness of brand content.
Mailchimp
Email marketing is a great way to keep your brand fresh in your customers’ minds, communicate with them and drive sales. Mailchimp helps you create, execute and analyse email marketing campaigns in just a few clicks. Select from a library of templates or customise your own design and send 10,000 emails to up to 2,000 subscribers each month.
The free online marketing tool also allows you to automate parts of your campaign such as welcome messages and provides a data analytics report of each email marketing campaign, including open rates and click-through rates.
Read Also: How Branding Gave My Company the Competitive Edge and Why Every SME Should Focus On It
Google Analytics
Your website is possibly the most important marketing tool you have. It is where customers discover your business and the products and services you provide, which also means it is critical to pay attention to how well your website performs. The most widely used web analytics software on the internet, Google Analytics tracks and reports traffic to your website, which lets you check your website’s reputation. It also shows you how well your marketing efforts are translating to actual conversion leads.
An essential web analytics tool, it can tell you how long each visitor spent on your website, how often people clicked away from your site after entering it and where they are located in the world, which can help you tailor your business’s marketing strategy appropriately.
Slack
Communication is the heart of organisation. But between the emails, text messages and occasional social media comment or share when it comes to assigning and discussing work, important messages can get lost in the shuffle. That’s where Slack comes in. The internal communications software app gathers all internal communication in one platform to help you and your team keep track of conversations, even if one begins over email, is replied to via a text and followed up with a tweet.
