Everyone love free stuff…especially if it’s valuable or good quality. And I would argue that small business owners and entrepreneurs love free, valuable tools most of all. Especially if that free stuff allows them to be more productive, efficient, and saves them money.
If everyone’s being honest here, owning and operating a small business is hard…and expensive too. There’s your regular bills to keep the lights on, employee paychecks, website development fees, the costs go on. But, there are actually a lot of great (and FREE) tools out there that you can use to keep cut some unnecessary costs you may be paying for.
So, without further ado, here are six of the best free online tools for small business that you should know about:
6 Best FREE Online Tools You Need to Use
At Cazbah, the IMC (Internet Marketing Consultant) team is always working together to review and share the most useful tools to help make our days more productive and to better assist our clients. After testing them all out with our real-life tasks, only the best and most useful make the cut. Here’s a list of our top five favorite online tools that I think every small business owner should know about.
1. Google Drive
Google Drive is a cloud based file sharing and storage system. You need a Google account to take advantage of Drive and all the other helpful tools Google provides as well. If you don’t have a Google account, I encourage you to create one right now! Google Drive allows users to access their files on the go from any device – smartphone, tablet, or computer. It also allows you to share and edit files with other users.
Google Drive helps you to collaborate easily with employees, co-workers, and clients. You can share specific documents with other users, create folders to organize your documents, and store up to 15 GB of data. Google Drive is also ideal if you work on the go or out of your store/ office. Because Drive is a cloud based storage system, you can access your files anywhere from any device (just make sure you remember your login info)!
Even though this point is just about Google Drive, I would encourage you to check out all the other free tools that comes with your Google account as well! Working remotely and sharing documents has never been easier!
2. Pixlr
Pixlr is a web-based photo editing tool. No need to be a Photoshop expert, Pixlr is a great tool for beginners to make quick changes to images for online use. Using Pixlr you can crop, resize, rotate, fix red eye, add text, and apply filters to your images. Using the tools provided by Pixlr can help to save the time of your website development and design team. If you have specifics for what you want a particular image to look like, you can make those changes yourself!
This is also a great tool to use when adding images to blog posts as well! Your blog articles need to have eye-catching, high quality photos to help keep your readers’ attention on your page.
3. Join.me
Join.me is a free screen sharing tool. If you have any sort of interaction with either co-workers or clients where you can’t meet in person, but you want to show and discuss information online, this is the tool for you! Meeting in person isn’t always convenient. But with this tool, you can easily get everyone on the same page by sharing your screen.
If you need to review important paperwork with a client, collaborate on a website web page with a co-worker, prep for an important meeting with your team, or whatever it is, Join.me makes it a little bit easier!
4. Buffer
Buffer is a social media post scheduling system that helps you track and manage all of your social networks in one place. Buffer does offer a free account version of their services where you can manage one Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn account. From there, the price goes up to $10/ month where you can manage 12 social profiles. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram, and Pinterest can all be accessed from one platform, which will save you so much time and effort from uploading your posts manually. Another huge plus about Buffer is that it allows you to pull quick analytics metrics such as your most popular posts (detailing the number or likes and comments) and your least popular posts.
5. Easel.ly
We’ve seen more and more online searchers prefer to consume information in another form besides text based content. Video clips, images, slideshow pages, and infographics are on the rise more than ever!
Easel.ly is a free, infographic creator that you can use to create useful visuals for your website audience to better comprehend your content. Easel.ly lets you create your own infographics from the ground up or use templates already created to help get you started. This platform may take a little getting used to, but once you do, you’ll be able to create amazing infographics that look great!
Check out these Cazbah infographics that were created using Easel.ly so you can get a better idea of what you’re working with:
1. How to Create a Successful Startup
2. How to Do Search Result Optimization
3. The Tasty Way to Learn Article Writing
6. Visme
Visme is an easy to use visual content creation and collaboration platform. With Visme, you can create professional-looking infographics in minutes. Visme includes a drag and drop editor and a library of hundreds of templates, photos and animated characters. Besides infographics, Visme can be used to create other forms of visual content like presentations, banners, etc. Paid plans include advanced features like Google Analytics integration, brand kit and privacy controls.
In Conclusion
Using these tools outlined above will help you better manage your daily workload, communicate more effectively with your co-workers and clients, and more easily manage your small business website too! If you’re looking for some great resources to help you cut cost without compromising quality, check out the list above of the best free online tools for small businesses!