When you are a small business owner, time is the last thing you have to spare. To set yourself up for success, focus on staying organized and maximizing your productivity. Lots of apps promise to turn you into a commerce powered superhero, but navigating your app store can be a bit like trekking through the jungle. Here are our 5 favorite apps that every business owner can take advantage of.

(Click on the app names to get more info, signup, or download the apps listed here)

1. SLACK

We are putting our best foot forward with this app, as it’s the best one of this list. Slack is ‘team communication for the 21^st century’. Integrate all the tools you use online to get all your notifications, have access to all your files, emails, and share access with your employees & teammates across all your devices in one place. Did we mention you can search all your content (even within documents) and your chat logs? This app will elevate your management to a new level of organization, and empower your team to collaborate more fluidly. Their free subscription will suffice for smaller teams, but they do offer paid memberships to support large teams.

2. GOOGLE APPS/DRIVE

Google apps offers one of the best alternatives to the Microsoft Office product suite. A free membership gives you 15GB of storage which you can upgrade for a small fee. If you haven’t already checked this suite of apps out, all you need to get started is a free google account.

3. TIMETUNE (Android) / SCHEDULE PLANNER (iOS)

With a bit of planning, these apps will help leverage the most productivity out of every hour of your work day. They go beyond a traditional calendar app by helping you plan your week, then making sure you are on track to hit all of your appointments and complete all of your tasks. You don’t have to be missing meetings to want to manage your time more efficiently.

4. TRELLO

Trello’s website describes this app as ‘the free, flexible, and visual way to organize anything with anyone’. Trello has the unique ability to adapt to any team or project’s workflow by visually representing todo items in lists. If you’re a fan of organization by post-it you should check out a free account.

5. EVERNOTE

Evernote is a virtual workspace that allows you to write, collect, collaborate and share with others. Access your account from any device to pull up your notes and content, make edits and share your ideas. Evernote is one of the most widely recommended productivity app that you can get access to today for free.

What apps are you using to boost productivity and stay organized?

Leave your answers, questions & comments in the box below.

Social media accounts for 27% of all time spent online and is rapidly becoming one of the most popular ways for consumers to discover new brands and for marketers to reach new customers. Potential customers are browsing their friend’s profiles every day and, whether they realize it or not, their perception of products and services is shaped by the social network’s collective attitude & awareness of the represented brands. Whether you are trying to build brand awareness or build rapport with potential customers, social media marketing is one of the most effective tools at your disposal. These 5 tips & tactics will help you to begin creating a successful social media strategy that will increase your market share and validate your products & services.

Feel free to download and print the social media infographic at the bottom of this post for an ongoing reminder of how to setup your social media campagins!

1. ESTABLISH CLEAR & MEASURABLE CAMPAIGN GOALS

Following the mantras ‘Work smarter, not harder’ and ‘Select the best tool for the job’, this is possibly the most important step in creating any successful marketing campaign. It’s important to understand that while social media is a fantastic way to engage your customers on many different levels, it’s not always the right tool for the job. If your business goals are in line with driving more traffic to your website, increasing brand awareness, or increasing brand loyalty, then you are on the right track to creating a successful campaign. If your goals are to generate highly targeted leads that ‘convert’ into paying customers, you will probably find greater success using other lead generation tactics.

Depending on what goals you have defined, you will need to understand how you will measure the effectiveness of your social media campaign. For campaigns focused on generating qualified leads, it may be as simple as measuring your ROI (return on investment), but measuring metrics like brand awareness are not as cut and dry. This article by Social Media Examiner goes into detail about a few of the methods you can use to build an effective social media campaign measurement strategy that is in line with various brand awareness goals.

2. WRITE DOWN YOUR GAMEPLAN

As you go through each of these steps create a reference document that outlines all the tactics you are going to utilize, which social media platform they belong to, and who is responsible for each component of your campaign. This will help to consolidate any overlapping efforts & keep you focused on the execution of your campaign.

3. TARGET KEY PLATFORMS

Understanding your target demographic & audience is crucial at this stage. Do some research into which social media platform best engages your target audience, and focus on those platforms first. It’s also important to understand the capabilities of your selected social media platforms and whether or not they will support how you plan to measure your campaign’s effectiveness.

4. VISUALLY EXPRESS YOUR MESSAGE

“A picture is worth a thousand words” is the best way to summarize this tactic. Using visual aids is a great way to grab your targeted audience’s attention and at the same time convey the message you want to communicate. You can use videos, infographics, or promotional materials that summarize the message you want to get across in a portion of the time. Not to mention, adding some stylish graphics makes your marketing materials look that much more professional.

5. MEASURE & OPTIMIZE FOR SUCCESS

Once you have your social media campaign collecting data, it’s important to regularly check it’s performance and optimize it for better ROI. You want to take a look at industry average response rates (click through rates, likes, shares, etc…) and see where your strengths and opportunities are. Once you have evaluated areas of opportunity, you can alter your campaign to try new headlines, graphics, or overall message to achieve better results.

At first you may want to measure the effectiveness of your new social media campaign on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, but as you tweak & optimize your campaigns it makes more sense to move to monthly reporting. Track your increases & decreases month over month using spreadsheets and other social media campaign tools. By measuring the impact of your social media campaigns, you ensure that you are devoting your time & effort to the areas that produce the most success and ROI for your business.

What tools & strategies are you using to measure your social media campaigns?

Where have you found the most success?

Leave your questions & comments in the box below.