As a freelance digital marketer, I made the switch to work at home life a little over 2 years ago when I left my office job to start my own business. It was a choice I made to make my life more flexible for my family. I know in these uncertain times, many have been thrown into working at home not by choice but by necessity. For those struggling to make this transition from office to home or even those who may be embarking on starting a new business since they can not currently do their old one, here are 11 free (or cheap) resources I use every day to help keep my business running smoothly and save time.
Virtual Meetings And Online Teaching
These tools make online meetings and learning easy!
Zoom – hold meetings or even teach live classes for school, exercise, or really anything.
Loom – need to show an employee or student how to do something online. You can record yourself and your screen explaining what they need and send them a link to view.
Google Docs, Sheets, & Slides – you can share these files while on a call and work on them together. You have the option to let the other person just view the document or edit along with you. Google docs even has a voice to text tool inside of it!
Keeping Your Work At Home Schedule Organized
There are a lot of calendar schedulers out there that are great. This one is my favorite though.
Calendly – this calendar tool integrates with most calendars (I use it with Google Calendar) and can be a huge time saver. Instead of going back and forth in several emails trying to find a meeting time, send them your scheduler link and the other person can see the free time in your calendar and book their own call. Calendly puts it right in your calendar and you get an email alerting you of the new meeting.
Virtual Communication With Your Employees And Coworkers
Constant phone calls can interrupt your workflow and sometimes are not as easy to communicate as visuals. These two tools help me keep short communications organized and in a place where I can answer them all at once and not be constantly interrupted.
Voxer – this tool is great when you need to send quick voice memos but don’t need to spend time on a long call. You can use it like a walkie talkie and send text or photos too.
Trello – checklists, notes, images. You can build out Trello boards to do almost anything. Keep the workflow with your employees and clients running smoothly by creating customized boards for each project.
Streamline Repeating Communications And Online Payments
These two tools help me communicate and invoice seamlessly and with little effort after they are set up:
Dubsado – set up one time or recurring invoices connected to your payment method of choice. Your clients can easily pay online with their credit card. If you have recurring emails you consistently send out to clients over and over you can build templates and easily send out at each step of a project. There’s ways to keep track of leads and so much more! Use this link to get 20% off!
Paypal and Stripe – both of these have worked well for me to collect online payments and even create quick invoices. I have Paypal connect to my Dubsado now so reoccurring monthly invoices happen automatically. There are a ton of options out there though so doing a quick Google search will give you others that may work well for your business too.
Getting The Word Out
How do you share all the great things still going on with your product or services from home? Email and social media will be key in helping you stay visible and in front of clients.
Flodesk – I’ve used a ton of email services between my own business and my clients. Flodesk is by far my favorite because it’s so easy to use. The templates make it easy to send out beautiful professional emails and their landing pages and workflows for collecting leads are simple to set up. For a free trial and to get 50% off if you sign up – use this link.
Organic Social Media – upping your presence on social media will help a lot of businesses stay top of mind during this time. Offering free value, advice about your industry, and useful tips will grow your authority and have people start to see you as the expert in your field. For a small business doing it on their own I usually suggest to focus on 2 social media platforms first and do a great job with them. Then start building out others when you have the time. Wondering which social media platforms are the best for your business? Check out one of my earlier blogs on this.
Paid Social Media – with so many more people at home and online right now I have already started to see shifts in social media advertising. Many campaigns are becoming cheaper to run and some engagement rates are even rising. Social media advertising done right could do a lot for your business right now.
Moving Forward With Working From Home
I hope these resources make your business life a little easier during this time. If you need more information on how these tools can help you run your business from home or how to leverage social media at this time, Email me with any questions and I’ll do my best to help you out.
If you need more social media tips – here are a few ways I can help for free:
✅ Grab my free Instagram Guide – 7 Expert Secrets To Explode Your Instagram …. It’s FIRE!
✅ Want the entire 2020 Social Media Holiday Calendar with Hashtags? Get it now!
✅ Wondering what your Instagram engagement rate is? Find out instantly with my free spreadsheet.