Guest Post from Courtney Rosenfeld at Gig Spark
Being a freelancer—or solopreneur—often means a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. Fortunately, technology can help make your work easier and streamline essential processes. Here are the five most helpful hacks that take advantage of technology.
Choose the Right Smartphone & Plan
Whether you need to speak with clients, read and respond to emails or social media posts, post on your website, or take photos of products, the right smartphone makes all the difference.
At the same time, reliable service is vital, too—you don’t want to lose signal right in the middle of a crucial (virtual) business meeting. Compare plans and choose wisely.
Get Help to Hone Your Online Presence
Every freelance professional can set up a cheap or free website in very little time. But using cookie-cutter website templates doesn’t build trust in your client base, and it doesn’t help grow your business, either. Forbes highlights the importance of a clean and intuitive website—especially when it comes to first impressions online.
Instead of muddling through on your own, invest in hiring a professional web developer to build your site. You may also want a mobile app to support your business, which a pro developer can help with, too. You can find qualified freelancers in app and web development on sites like Upwork.
Use Apps to Support Business Functions
Speaking of apps, many business-related apps can be helpful for entrepreneurs, too. From time management to taking notes on important business calls, there’s an app that can help.
Stay Organized with Evernote
If you often feel disorganized when tracking notes, client preferences, project status updates, and more, Evernote can help you get organized. You can take notes, share with contacts, save webpages, and more, and all your data syncs across the app no matter what device you’re on.
Communicate with Skype
Skype is a helpful communication tool because you can send messages and make calls—even international ones—for free. Whether you’re networking with other freelancers or reaching out to clients, it doesn’t have to cost you a thing if they’re on the Skype platform.
Try Intuitive Tools for Budgeting
Unfortunately, not every solopreneurship or small business is successful. Entrepreneur notes that 82 percent of business failures stem from poor money management. When you’re a solopreneur, the odds of cash flow problems are even higher.
Luckily, you can manage your money with a range of financially focused tools. Consider one or more of the following to keep track of your finances:
Wave offers free professional invoices and accounting software. Payroll and other payment solutions are available for a fee if you decide to expand your business later.
FreshBooks also offers invoicing and client messaging that syncs across your desktop and mobile apps, so everything is available wherever you want to view it.
QuickBooks is accounting software offered by Intuit—the same company behind TurboTax—so you can streamline all your accounting, invoicing, and tax details in one place.
Automate What You Can
If you want to avoid hiring staff but find that you’re spreading yourself too thin, automation might be the ideal solution. Whether you need to book meetings, schedule social media posts, or send newsletters to your email list, there are tools to help.
Let Clients Self-Schedule with Calendly
Every business professional—entrepreneur or otherwise—has experienced the back-and-forth frustration of trying to schedule meetings that work for everyone. With Calendly, you can let clients (or collaborators) schedule meetings on your terms.
“Hire” an App to Run Your Social Media
There are plenty of social media scheduling apps to handle your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and other platform posts. Popular scheduling tools include Buffer, Coschedule, Hootsuite, and Tailwind.
Distribute Newsletters in a Snap
Automated emailing programs are another solution for delivering information to clients and collaborators on your terms. You can sign up for services like ConstantContact, HubSpot, Mailchimp, or Marketo to send out ad campaigns per specified timelines.
Using technology to support your business means more potential for growth. And with these helpful hacks, there’s no limit to what you can accomplish. Start working smarter—and without adding extra hours to your workweek—right now.
Photo via Pixabay