If you are the owner of a small business, then you have probably struggled with creating an online presence that gets noticed. In your continual attempts for growth, you may feel that you and your small team are stretched pretty thin, and you don’t have the time or the resources to spend on working on your online presence. However, having a professional appearance online in this digital age is a necessity for any growing business (especially when there are many recruitment tools like browser extensions that can show all your online presence in one file), and luckily there are many tools available to you that can help you build the online presence that will drive more customers to your site. No matter what your budget is, with these simple tools your small business will begin to look like a giant company powerhouse.
However, before we get started, first you have to create a plan for the growth of your brand. Set goals and intentions. Write down your aims and objectives. Strategize ways to achieve these goals. If your goals are broad, break them down into smaller goals that are easily achievable. For example, if you want to increase views on your blogs by 40% then break that goal down into intentional steps, such as:
- I will write a blog post every day.
- I will interact with other blogs under the same umbrella.
- I will review products on my blog for free. Etc.
Each of these small steps will eventually lead back to your ultimate goal of getting more page views. This is also a great way to track small progress, so you don’t lose sight of the big picture.
Now, onto the available tools that will assist in fortifying your online presence with greater professionalism.
Time Management Tools
There are several affordable tools available that can help you manage your time and projects.
Calendly is an excellent scheduling app that you can send to your clients when trying to schedule a phone call. It will send your client time frames that work for your business, and they choose the block of time that coincides with their schedule.
Toggl tracks your work time logged on a project. Toggl can help with scheduling and precise invoicing. You can even check your work report to see when you or your employees were most productive.
Slack is the tool you should be using if you have a team of remote workers. You can keep all of your projects and pitches in one place and create a message board between workers so that you can stay on top of projects together.
CRM Software
CRM stands for customer relationship management. You can find CRM software by several software companies, including SalesForce, Microsoft Dynamics, InfusionSoft, and Insightly. This software is designed to help your small business by building trust and loyalty between the business and customers. This is done by managing your calendar and to-do lists, tracking leads, managing data, managing contacts, and assessing the value of your marketing techniques.
Intuit QuickBooks
QuickBooks is a great accounting software to track income and expenses. There are different packages that you can choose from at Intuit QuickBooks, including three different small business plans and a freelancer plan. The plans differ slightly in what they offer but even the most low-cost basic plan can help you manage tax deductions, organize your receipts, create invoices that you can track and cash from your software, and you will also be able to run necessary expense sheets.
Recruit The Right Talent
There is a way to recruit the best candidates for your small business, in the same manner, a large company recruits their talent. Plum is a tool to help enterprises to match the right employee to available positions. Plum has created application surveys to examine the workplace psychology of prospective employees and divides these people up into the areas that they would be best suited for which will help you trim down potential matches to the people best suited for the job. It will also let the prospective employees know where they stand in the hiring process so you won’t be bothered by several follow up emails.
Global Call Forwarding
Since you’re already here you may know a bit about the virtual phone company, but in case you weren’t sure how the company could help your business create a professional presence, here are a few things that Global Call Forwarding can do to make your business presence more attractive:
- Provide virtual local or toll free numbers, including vanity numbers
- The ability to use extension numbers so your customers will be directed to the office they need right away
- Record calls for later analyzation
- Call transfer services
- An account management page where all of your phone records and data is stored in one convenient place
Any business no matter how small can have the ability to look like a substantial professional corporation. If you want your business to attract more customers and make more sales, then apply these tools to achieve a professional online presence so you can begin to see results.
