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15 Business Tools For Growth and Marketing

May 30, 2020

tools for business growth scale

I’ve had many people ask me about what business tools I use for growth and marketing. This is an updated list of the business tools that I actively use and can recommend.

Note Taking

Notion is, by far, the best note-taking app. I use a combination of Google Keep (quick notes, to-do list) and Notion (everything else). I’ve tried a bunch of note-taking apps and services such as Standard Notes, Google Keep, OneNote, Bear, Scrivener, NotePad++, and TextMate.

I have found that Notion is the best for me. It’s reliable and doesn’t have sync problems. It’s fast (on everything except Android), and versatile – I can create lists, plain text, kanban boards, and even databases.

On top of that, their free tier is amazing, and even allows you to collaborate on notes with your friends.

Calendar/Scheduling

One of the best things that should be automated is calendaring and scheduling. For that, I’m immensely grateful for Harmonizely.

business tools: harmonizely review booking screen

All that I need to do is to provide a link to the person I’m speaking to, and they can book in a meeting with me. It automatically syncs with my calendar, so it only provides the free time slots (I can decide my availability slots).

Once that’s done, I have it automatically schedule a Zoom meeting, so even the Zoom link is done for me.

Video Testimonials

I’m experimenting using VideoPeel for collecting and storing video testimonials.

Instagram Marketing

Flick.tech

Discovery on Instagram is about hashtags. How do you find the right ones – in terms of niche, traffic, and competition?

Using the right hashtag strategy can really get you to grow by thousands of followers. It’s the difference between having an Instagram account that nobody follows, and having one that has more than 10,000 followers. I use tools like Flick.tech to help me discover these hashtags, and use them in my account growth.

WordPress Site Builder

WordPress is by far the most popular and versatile CMS around. It powers almost a third of all websites on the Internet today! However, the in-built site builder has a lot of room for improvement, even with the advances that the latest in-built site builder (Gutenberg) brings.

I wanted a fast and easy way to design my website, and tried various tools out there. Finally I found Elementor, and have been using it ever since.

business tools: wordpress site builder elementor review

WordPress Plugins

You definitely need plugins to complete your WordPress website. They aid you in security to SEO to just making WordPress easier to use. Here are the plugins that I use:

  • RankMath: All-in-one SEO plugin that helps to optimise your site for search engines, such as Google. Contains everything you need, including a 404 monitor, XML site map creator tool, and so on.
  • Accelerated Mobile Pages: Create AMP pages for your WordPress site automatically.
  • Activity Log: Creates a log of all activities done on your website so that you know what another admin (or yourself) did. Excellent for troubleshooting problems, but it only logs actions after it’s been activated, not before. So install and activate this early, before you encounter problems with your WordPress site.
  • Post Type Switcher: I get into the problem of not being sure whether an article I create should be a post or a page. This plugin allows me to switch between the two with just a click.
  • Similar Posts: This allows me to display a list of similar articles after my posts, so that readers can find more articles that would be helpful for them.
  • Smush: Do you use images? Of course you do. That’s why you need this plugin. It optimises your image and even resizes them, so that you save on bandwidth and increase your site speed.
  • W3 Total Cache: Caching is absolutely essential for any website, not just WordPress sites. This plugin allows you to serve a cached version of your website to your visitors, increasing your site speed and decreasing your bandwidth usage.
  • Wordfence Security: The popularity of WordPress is also its problem. It attracts a lot of attackers and hackers. Your site can be found by them EVEN if it isn’t popular yet, so you need to install this plugin as soon as possible.

Email Marketing

Email is the main way I stay in contact with everyone, and to do that I use an email marketing service provider.

Having ran a web hosting business before, I know the troubles and problems that email hosting has. Deliverability is the main key concern. It’s useless if your emails don’t reach your recipients, and there are a ton of variables that can cause delivery to fail.

That’s why I use a reliable email marketing service provider, and I’ve tried a few. The ones that I use and can recommend are:

Image Editing

Image Editing – Photoshop Alternative: I do the very occasional image editing, so I don’t need Photoshop CC. However, it would be nice to have access to some of Photoshop’s functions. Enter PhotoPea. I love it and I think it doesn’t get enough attention so this is a shoutout for it.

Image Editing – Background Remover Tool: Fast, free and simple tool that removes background from your photos.

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