The Apps I use to run my Businesses
I use all kinds of applications to get stuff done in business and in life.
There are literally thousands of great productivity tools and apps out there that help you be more productive, more organized, collaborate better and achieve your objective.
Here is my list of the tools I use regularly and what I use each of them for.
Google Apps – This includes Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive & Google Docs.
I used this daily to communicate, keep appointments and reminders and store files and documents. I use Google Docs for writing blog posts, proposals, project requirement docs, meeting minutes and draft content like blogs. Google Apps allows us to collaborate on documents in real time and easily share them with team members and clients.
HubSpot – Our marketing business is a HubSpot Partner and we use this all-in-one sales and marketing platform for the Marketing Stream website, social media management, email marketing, CRM & more. It’s a very powerful tool we could not live without.
WordPress – WordPress is a very versatile application for your website, blog and more.
This blog runs on WordPress.com, our other business website, WYSIWYGVentures.com runs WordPress and many of our clients use this platform. It’s a great tool for building websites fast but it also scales from simple blogs to eCommerce websites and even company intranets. WordPress and its 1000’s of plugins and addons make this a very versatile and useful tool.
SEMRush – I use SEMrush for all kinds of SEO tasks. from analyzing my website and my clients to finding out useful intelligence on keywords and competitors. The insights you can gain from SEMRush are worth the price.
Trello – I use Trello to stay organized. A Trello board is simply a list of lists, filled with cards, used by our team and our clients to get stuff done. Trello helps us deliver marketing campaigns and projects following an simple straight forward agile process.
Hootsuite – We use Hootsuite for social media engagement for some clients not using the HubSpot Platform. Reading tweets, searching for content and trends and for scheduling posts to the many social media networks I have setup for our company and clients. This automates social media marketing processes nicely.
IFTTT – If This, Then, That helps me automate all kinds of tasks like posting to multiple social media networks with one post to Instagram. There are hundreds of automation options with this tool. Check it out.
Dropbox – Like Google Drive, Dropbox is simply file storage in the cloud. I use Dropbox for business and personal files, photos and videos. I use the mobile app too and it’s great for accessing files from anywhere. I simply don’t store anything on any computer or physical hard drive anymore. It’s just too risky and life is easier when everything’s in the cloud.
Upwork – Upwork is a marketplace for finding people with skills to accomplish all kinds of tasks for me. Logo creation, website setup, design, management and many, many other large and small tasks. There are 1000’s of great people on Elance to help you reach you goals, whatever they are.
Google Analytics – I use this free tool on every website I run or manage to measure what phrases that are currently driving traffic to a website and what are the sources of traffic. You can’t learn if you don’t measure.
Google Adwords Keywords Tool – This free tool is great for doing niche research by searching for keyword metrics potential the demand level for those niche words. It’s an awesome research tool.
Bluehost – Bluehost is in my opinion the best hosting platform out there. It’s inexpensive and full of features that every business can use. It’s so great, I wrote a blog post on our business site called 126 reason to use Bluehost as your web host. Also, if you want to learn how to get WordPress setup on Bluehost, click here.
Grasshopper – Grasshopper lets you run your business using your cell phone. It’s a telephone system in the cloud. Our toll free number comes from this tool and so does our IVR system. When clients call, they can chose which department to connect with and Grasshopper provides call forwarding to cell phones. There are a ton of great features to customize as well.
Google Hangouts & Skype – because we work with people all over the world, we tend to have a lot of video calls for meetings. Google Hangouts & Skype are very similar and we use both depending on client preferences. They are both great and do generally the same thing.
Lucid Chart – Lucid chart is like MS Visio but fully web based. It’s great for creating diagrams to explain concepts & processes. It works similar to google apps in that you can share and collaborate with others to get the desired end results quickly and easily.
Toggl – Toggl’s time tracker is built for speed and ease of use. Time keeping with Toggl is so simple that you’ll actually use it. It integrates with Tools like Trello and puts the traditional way of using time sheets to shame. Toggle makes it super easy to keep track of time spent on client work.
This is just a small list of the core applications I use. I’m always on the lookout for new tools so if you want to suggest one that you love, please leave a comment below.