Essential Tools For Online Business

Business tools used to be actual physical products like pens, paper, books, wrenches, screwdrivers, saws, typewriters, etc. As we moved into more computer usage many digital and virtual software platforms were also called tools. I thought you might like to see my essential tools for online business.

Essential Tools For Online Business

The business I work in is all digital and a lot of it is online/in the cloud. I use a number of virtual or digital tools in my business that are essential to getting my job done well.

I am a writer for other businesses.

The essential tools I use are word processing and writing tools as well as digital tools for running admin for my business.

The Mac I work on came with a variety of options already built into the computer platform: Pages and TextEdit are the 2 I use. These 2 tools are great for writing, contracts, and taking notes.

More often I will use Google Docs for writing content for marketing, business, and client work. It’s nice for sharing with others or exporting to a pdf easily to email to clients or prospects.

Wordcounter and Grammarly are a couple of my favorite online writing tools to assist me with polishing up articles and business writing content.

Wordcounter will add up post character count and article  word count. I get paid based around these so it’s important to know those numbers. Grammarly is helpful with catching spelling and grammar mistakes. When I write and just go for it and catch any mistakes mostly after the first writing. 

Inexpensive Business Admin And Bookkeeping Tools

Mac also provides a spreadsheet tool that I use for keeping my books and records called Numbers. I do keep a number of things solely on my computer and external drives that I do not have on the cloud for safety reasons.

Google Sheets is also a great option for keeping records and your business books as well as for marketing content calendars and lists. I find it handy to be able to access these anywhere.

All of my devices are linked up so I can use my cloud-based digital tools from pretty much anywhere. I find this is a big help for productivity.

Organizing my time and schedule is pretty easy with Google Calendar. They have made some changes over time in a few areas that I don’t love, but overall it works for me. Again, mostly because I can link it all up and look at my info just about anywhere that I have service.

Inexpensive Business Marketing Tools

Marketing is a big part of my business. My background is as a social media manager and content creator. The places I write are vast. I guess you could label these places tools for getting my info out there: Quora, Medium, LinkedIn, Twitter.

My website is hosted and developed on Weebly. Many people might recommend other places to have a blog and website. I find Weebly is ok because it is inexpensive and easy. I can do the site work myself and I find that helpful to save time.

Marketing also requires scheduling content. My choices for content scheduling are Buffer and PromoRepublic. The free option of Buffer is pretty good. I also use it for client work. And, currently, they are integrating the calendar option. We’ll see if it’s for the free plan.

PromoRepublic is also ok. I was able to get one of their plans for a great deal without a subscription. Otherwise, I think it can be a bit over the top if you run a micro business. I’m not big on subscription-based business tools.

Underrated and Inexpensive Business Tools

When you want to look for tools that are underrated I would recommend you look for tools that are inexpensive or free. Sometimes digital and virtual platforms, tools, or products that get a lot of hype are the ones that either cost a bunch. They might offer an affiliate program while having promoters talking about their product for kickbacks.

Not that paid products are bad by any means. (or affiliates for that matter) But, if you are looking for underrated digital tools, I would look to tools you can find on a budget to start with.

Ask around, research online, and read about products from people running businesses to get a good idea of what business online tools to try. 

Come by and connect with me over on LinkedIn. We love to talk business and marketing over there!