As small business owners ourselves, we know first hand how time-consuming and expensive running a business can be. Luckily, there are a large number of tools available to create more efficiency in your company. We’ve compiled a list of our top 8 tools that will actually help your business, because you deserve to take at least one thing off your plate this quarter!
Project Management: Asana
Project Management tools allow you to manage tasks and stay on top of deadlines. Our favorite project management tool is Asana. At Honey & Hive we use Asana to track project and task progress for each of our clients as well as our own company. We also use it as a sales tool! Asana allows you to create Kanban-style boards or lists with cards to track the progress of tasks, including the tasks’s assigned point of contact, deadline, and any files that need to be attached. It’s the perfect tool for any sized company to stay on top of team-based projects.
Price: Free with paid options
Content Creation: Canva
If you’ve been following us for a while, you’ll know Canva is one of our holy grail tools. Canva is an extremely user-friendly graphic design platform. We use Canva for everything from social media content to sales assets and Zoom backgrounds. Small businesses without a dedicated graphic designer or content creator can rely on Canva to create marketing materials for their company in a short amount of time. The platform even offers tutorials for beginners and editable templates for each type of project.
Price: Free with paid options
Accounting: Freshbooks
Freshbooks is an online accounting platform for small and medium sized businesses. Within Freshbooks you can send invoices, manage expenses, and even track billable hours. We use Freshbooks for all of our accounting needs and love the user-friendly interface across the product. One of our favorite features from Freshbooks is their reporting. With the click of a button we can access reports detailing our invoices, expenses, profits and losses, and other important financial information.
Price: Plans range from $15-50 a month
Email Marketing: MailChimp
If your company is sending email campaigns, MailChimp is a must have tool. MailChimp is an accessible email builder. Within MailChimp you can manage your email lists and design emails as well as automate other marketing activities like digital ad and social post creation. We use MailChimp for both our clients' emails as well as our own! Its drag and drop style makes it easy for anyone to create a beautiful email, no matter how much design experience you have.
Price: Free with paid options
Scheduling: Calendly
Not everyone is able to hire a personal assistant (yet!), so Calendly is here to handle your scheduling. Calendar schedulers like Calendly automate the tedious process of emailing back and forth to find a mutual meeting time by condensing your entire calendar into a sendable link. We use Calendly both externally to schedule meetings with clients, as well as internally to efficiently plan team meetings.
Price: Free with paid options
Team Communication: Slack
Whether it be important project updates, brainstorms, or just chit-chat, Slack is our favorite communication tool. As a fully-remote business, we may not be able to tap our teammates on the shoulder at Honey & Hive, but we all know we're just a Slack message away. Slack allows team members to make channels for different topics, like #sales for updates on leads and #random for sharing that hilarious meme you saw on your lunch break. It even integrates with other tools we're using on a daily basis like Google Drive and MailChimp.
Price: $6.67-$12.50 per person per month
Social Media Scheduling: Hootsuite
Whether you're a fellow marketing agency balancing a multitude of social media accounts, or a singular company trying to stay on top of your own social channels, having a social media scheduler is a huge time (and stress) saver! Instead of having to rely on your memory to post on each network, schedulers do it for you, allowing you to plan months of content at once. At Honey & Hive we use Hootsuite for their ability to manage a large number of social accounts, but there are a variety of other similar platforms such as Later or Planoly. While each of these specific schedulers differ, they all allow you to visually plan your social feeds as well as collect analytics.
Price: $49-$749 a month
Outsourcing: UpWork
If you're looking for specialized talent for a one-off project or potentially long-term partnership, UpWork is the largest network of independent professionals. From legal experts to ghostwriters, UpWork has contractors in a large range of specialities. Within their platform, you can manage your job listings, interviews, onboarding, and payments. As self-proclaimed marketing generalists, we use UpWork to find and manage experts when needed.
Price: Free with paid options