Small Business Owners in the Arms of Technology – 10 Boosting Tips

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Small Business Owners in the Arms of Technology (10 Boosting Tips): When you decide to launch a small business, there are many bases that you need to cover. Even if you’re a solopreneur, it’s still difficult to deal with all business tasks on your own.

Luckily, many technological solutions can get you through every workday.

In this article, we’re going to share ten different tips to use technology as your loyal ally. From time management and work organization to marketing and productivity, these hacks will help you stay organized, productive, and visible on the Web.

The two top criteria for choosing these methods and tools were usability for SMB-owners and affordability.

So, every new entrepreneur will be able to use most of them without any restrictions.

Productivity and time management

1. Continuous-time tracking

When people work for you, it’s hard to eliminate human factors that affect productivity.

In some situations, both business owners and managers need to show understanding in compassion.

However, some employees might betray their boss’s trust and dodge their work tasks. This may lead to conflicts between the interested parties.

That’s why business owners should use employee-tracking tools. Today there are dozens of practical and useful tracking tools that can help you raise the productivity bar.

From tracking the time spent at the computer, to checking what tools your employees have used during the workday, you can find out everything about their efficiency.

Find out more about the best employee-monitoring software in the guide on the PC Mag website.

2. Google Suite tools

Cutting expenses is one of the primary goals of every business owner. If you’ve hit the entrepreneurial road only recently, it’s even more important for you to survive on a shoestring budget.

Making ends meet in business today is much easier with some basic and free tech tools.

G Suite tools are highly rated as free, accessible, and practical solutions. No matter if you want to use them at home from your desktop computer or on the mobile, they’re equally useful in various contexts.

For instance, remote teams can rely on Google Docs and Hangouts for smooth and fast collaboration.

With Calendar and Meet, you can plan your business projects, meetings, and appointments.

To top it all off, the basic package, which can meet the basic needs of every small businessperson, is free of charge.

Online marketing

3. Promotional visuals

Promoting our business today is impossible without plausible and authentic promotional visuals.

Every businessperson needs to bring a strategy that will help him or she promote their business online.

For starters, you need to launch a visually compelling and user-friendly website. However, it’s important not to overdo with its complexity. As highlighted by the custom software development pros from Houston, business websites need to provide the basic information, packed in an appealing way.

Moreover, make sure that the videos you upload to your website are relevant and well-made. This is especially important for your original materials. Posting low-quality or irrelevant videos to your website will result in lower conversions.

Finally, bear in mind that all the photos you upload to your website represent your business. Therefore, post as many original images as possible. You can opt for pictures from stock photography websites for some generic blog posts, though.

If you get the right business mobile phone, you can shoot your videos and take your photos with such a device.

4. Social media posts

Modern online technology allows business owners to work on their online promotion 24/7. While this can be a great asset, overdoing with social media posts can be counterproductive.

Every business owner should find the right publishing schedule for their business and their audience. This is where various tracking elements on social networks come in handy. You can try several different publishing rhythms and see how it works.

According to the analysis published on the SproutSocial website, the best day to publish posts on  Facebook is Wednesday. Since this is the middle of the workweek, people probably need to let some steam off, so they spend more time on this social network. Wednesday is also the best day for Instagram posts.

Next, you need to always be relevant and stick to the point. While infotainment can help your business generate more followers, it can be a slippery slope. Therefore, keep a serious and professional tone at the beginning of your business quest.

5. Infographics and guides

Modern readers like to digest online content in a fast and amusing way. This is where the aforementioned infotainment can come in handy.

First of all, you need to decide how to use such features. For instance, infographics are practical when it comes to online presentations. You can use them to present your latest business success, as well as some business results that you’re proud of.

On the other hand, publishing various guides can help you win over more audience for your website. For example, you can publish those guides on your blog and show your readers how to solve some of their problems. To be able to do that, it’s crucial to identify the main keywords for your business niche. Once you know what’s bothering your business audience, you can start preparing guides, tutorials, and infographics to offer them solutions.

Financial organization

6. Smooth invoicing

Being a business owner in the modern world means taking good care of your finances.

Many people enter the business arena without any thorough knowledge of financial management. It’s the ideas that make many of us launch our own business.

However, it’s extremely important not to get carried away by business success. It takes a lot of planning to put your business on its feet, finances-wise.

Proper invoicing is one of the pillars of timely and accurate financial management.

In the beginning, you can use Word or other simple invoice templates to learn how to issue and charge an invoice.

As your business collaborations become more serious, you can turn to some online invoicing tools. What’s more, AI and automation are becoming more important for invoicing. The more activities you can automate and set in advance, the more you can focus on your core business tasks.

7. Online budgeting

One of the most important professional characteristics of small business owners is adaptability.

This has always been the case but it’s even more important today.

You’re competing with a huge number of similar entrepreneurs on a global scale. That’s why you should use technology to make your everyday work and management as smooth as possible.

Online budgeting and money management are among your top priorities if you want to stay productive all the time.

For starters, turn to online banking. That way, neither you nor your employees will need to stay in lines to make payments or withdraw money.

Most banks today have a wide range of online services for small business owners, from electronic accounts to mobile apps. Also, make sure to connect your main online payment methods, like PayPal, to your business bank account. This will make all the invoicing and taxing processes much easier.

Finally, when you need a business or personal loan, sending an online request is more practical and less time-consuming than going to the bank in person.

8. Online payment methods

Thanks to technology, it’s possible to make transactions at the spur of the moment with every part of the world.

If you haven’t dealt with these payments, you need to know two main things: yes, they all have some transfer fees and yes, you need to report these transactions in your tax return.

Also, business owners who are planning to have transactions with Asia and other continents should know that there are some local payment methods. For instance, Alipay is becoming more and more popular in China and many other countries in the Far East. This is something to think about for every new business owner.

It’s also important to analyze various online payment methods and use only the ones that you really need. Opening too many accounts on different payment websites is a sign of disorganization, plus, some of them charge commission fees even if you’re idle on them.

Remote work and collaboration

9. Project management on the go

It’s impossible to collaborate remotely today without project management tools.

In one of the previous paragraphs, we’ve talked about G Suite. This is only the tip of an iceberg when it comes to collaboration.

One of the most popular collaboration tools among small business owners is Slack. Its basic options are free of charge and it comes with a mobile app, as well. This enables its users to access Slack from any place, without having to pay anything for it.

Basecamp is another practical project management tool, popular with small business owners. It’s a perfect choice for calendar-based tasks and business projects. Also, you can use its basic features for free.

10. Connecting all your devices

The last tip for enhancing your business productivity is connecting all your devices to your business accounts.

From your mobile phone and smartwatch to your laptop and computer, make sure to sign in to all your online places from all these devices.

This will ensure seamless access to all your projects, tasks, and documents all over the web.

Apart from that, install social media apps and stay tuned with all the recent events in your industry.

The more devices and accounts you connect in the cloud, the more prepared you’ll be to use the IoT (Internet of Things) business features in the future.

Conclusion

Small business owners can use dozens of technological solutions to make their lives easier. It’s important to stay focused only on the devices and tools you need.

That’s why we’ve put together these tech tips. They will help you narrow down the number of practical tools that can enhance your productivity and improve your business organization.

Most of these features can be used for free for good or at least tried during a trial period. Therefore, don’t hesitate to try as many of them to advance your small business management.

Author Byline: Liam Collins is a tech pundit and Web enthusiast working at TuiSpace.com. He spends most of his time reading and writing about the current affairs in the world of information technology. When he isn’t working, he likes going for long bike rides and walks in nature.