A collection of practical tools and indispensable apps for managing your small business’ online presence.
The Small Business Tool Kit
Social Media Management Tools
Effective Social Media management is easy if you stay on point. In 2020 there are still businesses either neglect or do not exploit social media to its full potential. This is understandable as there is so much to consider; which platforms to use, how to manage your profiles and how to create a consistent stream of quality content. With all this to consider social media management can easily become a time sink. With the tools that Wehi uses everyday your social media channels can reach peak performance.
BUFFER
Buffer is an easy system to schedule Social Media post that leaves you time to focus on other tasks.
Buffer is a platform for scheduling social media posts. You can queue multiple posts across all your business’ social media accounts. Buffer allows you to chunk all your social media scheduling into one block of time. This gives you the freedom to concentrate on other areas of your business without having to regularly interrupt your flow to post content. This chunking is particularly vital for lean operations or one person start-ups where time and resources are scarce. The app gives you notifications when scheduled posts have been completed so you have peace of mind your social media strategy is being implemented. Buffer is free in its simple version but you will need to go premium if you intend on managing client’s social media platforms through this app.
GOOGLE TRENDS
Google trends is useful for entry level market research.
Google Trends is a tool for charting the popularity of Google search terms. The tool breaks down a term's popularity over time and between demographics. In my opinion Google Trends has two main uses.
Google trends is useful for entry level market research.
Firstly, for ecommerce sites or any business that sells physical products. You can chart what and when customers are searching for your products. That means you know the best possible time and place to market your products; increasing sales and ROI in adverts.
Secondly, for finding unmet customer needs. This is a valid technique for everyone from bloggers through to large corporations. Google Trends can be used to find searches for products or services that are not being met in your geographic or market sector.
The beauty of Google Trends is that it allows you to harness Google’s immense data and processing power to help build your business. I use Google Trends to guide small businesses in their marketing strategies and to find content ideas for blogs. This tool is just as useful for SEO as it is a valid way of testing possible keywords.
PUBLIC FIGURES
Follow key marketing experts like Gary Vee to learn tips and tricks for your social media channels.
Follow key marketing experts like Neil patel to learn tips and tricks for your social media channels.
Twitter, Instagram and YouTube are full of experts ready to share their strategy for success. Public figures such as Gary Veynerchuck, Brian Dean and Neil Patel are the apex predators of the social media world. They consistently predict social media trends, find innovative strategies for exploiting them, then most importantly; they execute on their strategy. All of the above figures offer free content at scale. Some such as Gary Veynerchuck distributes long form tutorials in PDF guides, Skill Share tutorials and YouTube lectures. Good advice I received when starting this project was to write case studies of successful brands and other public figures to understand how they dominate social media. You can then use these ideas to help grow your brand and increase sales.
SEO Tools
Search engine optimisation or SEO is a vital part of your business’ online presence but it often gets overlooked in favour of more pressing concerns like sales or branding. The tools below will make your business to find online and keep you on top of your SEO strategy. You can learn more about SEO and performing your first SEO audit in our blog here. Alternatively you can contact Wehi for a free consultation here.
SCREAMING FROG
Screaming Frog may initially look overwhelming but it is a reliable tool for SEO audits.
Screaming Frog is a free piece of software that analyses the SEO profile of your website. Simply put Screaming Frog crawls through your website and takes note of missing elements that are holding your website back. Screaming Frog flags any dead links or pages that lack meta-descriptions; errors that search engines use to make your website harder to find for customers. The programme does contain a large amount of data that may overwhelm first time users. Just concentrate on the columns relating to links, titles and meta- descriptions until you better understand your business’ SEO goals. This tool is useful for regular SEO audits of your website. I use Screaming Frog about once a week to check for dead links.
UBERSUGGEST
Ubersuggest is a free tool by content creator, SEO and social media expert Neil Patel. The tool is used for tracking your website’s SEO performance and finding content ideas. Ubersuggest is great for finding keyword ideas, checking your site’s traffic and counting how many other sites have referenced you. The paid version of Ubersuggest allows you to track multiple projects. This means that you can monitor your own website, your customer’s or even a competitor’s SEO performance. The site offers you a breakdown of any issues it discovers affecting your website and offers helpful suggestions to fix them. I use this tool for initial assessment of customer’s SEO performance and for content ideas. Occasionally I use Ubersuggest during Wehi weekly SEO audit.
Ubersuggest is the ideal entry point for understanding SEO.
KEYWORDS EVERYWHERE
Keywords Everywhere can change the way you find and understand Keywords.
Keywords Everywhere is a useful web browser extension for finding new keywords. Everytime you search for something on websites such as Youtube and Google the extension places a list of related keywords. These can be used as secondary keywords in your SEO strategy. The extension also offers lists of related searches. This feature is great for discovering unmet customer needs and for possible content ideas. Keywords Everywhere is not a tool that you can use as a sole research tool. The greatest value I have received from this extension is a consistent window into how Wehi’s customers search for products and services. I store secondary keywords I discover during research using Evernote; an application I discuss below.
NIGHTWATCH.IO
Nightwatch.io is the best entry level tool for SEO.
Nightwatch is a piece of software Wehi used to replace Ahrefs. It is a paid tool that aggregates data from SEO resources such as Ahrefs, Moz, Majestic, Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Nightwatch has a nice theme which is intuitive but does not provide as much feedback as other SEO resources. It does not provide enough backlink analysis. This would hinder a blogger looking to build authority or an online business trying to grow its organic reach. Nightwatch is a great tool for a new business getting to grips with SEO or a small to mid sized business with a limited budget.
SPEED CHECKER
It is important to use speed checkers such as Web.dev to make sure your website is as fast as possible.
Speed is important as visitors will get frustrated with a slow website and leave to visit a competitor’s website. This has two effects; a drop in traffic and Google lowering your website’s rankings. Most of the tools discussed above give you an indication of your website’s speed. However, if you want the most accurate results you need to turn to a specific tool. Wehi uses PageSpeed Insights by Google and Web.dev (Formerly Lighthouse) to regularly check our website’s performance.
Graphic design Tools
Wehi has our own freelance graphic designer. Edoardoi is often involved in larger projects for clients so is not available to curate smaller items such as graphics for our regular social media posts. Luckily with Edoardo’s help we have found a variety of resources for creating high quality graphics and images.
INKSCAPE
Inkscape is an open-sourced graphics editor. The software has a great community so guides on how to get the most out of this reliable tool are easy to find. Skill Share and Youtube contain some great entry level courses for Inkscape. Inkscape is a versatile tool. It allows you to use to create everything your online business needs; cartoons, illustrations for ebook covers and simple graphics. Inkscape is a great alternative to Adobe Photoshop for those who cannot afford the software or do not have the experience to exploit this tool to its full potential. It does take a few hours (not as long as Photoshop) to understand but the investment is worth it.
SNAPPA & CANVA
Canva is a versatile tool for creating quality graphics for ebooks and blogs.
Snappa and Canva are online tools for creating engaging graphics easily. They both offer a wide library of graphics that you can use as inspiration or to adjust for your own content. These tools are free to use but Canva does have premium content that requires a subscription. My favourite is Snappa as it provides template shapes specific to individual social media platforms. This means you don’t have to fiddle with image size when broadcasting content across multiple platforms. Snappa allows you to quickly build a library of content for your social media profiles. I generally use Snappa for social media posts and Canva for larger engaging graphics such as posters or infographics.
SQOOSH
Squoosh is useful for shrinking images to reduce bounce rate and changing image formats to best fit your platform.
Squoosh is a tool that compresses or resizes an image to better fit the platform the image will be used. Why use Squoosh? Because not all images are created equal. Not every image you design needs to be a 4k widescreen masterpiece. Squoosh is very easy to use; it is literally just drag and drop. The slider in the centre of the screen shows the before and after of the image adjustment so you can be sure it meets your requirements. I have attached a brief guide by Target Internet here for those looking to find out more about this tool. I discovered this as a way of shrinking images to reduce bounce rate. You can read more about optimising images for SEO in our blog here.
Organisation
Organising your and your team’s time is a key business skill. Resources and efforts need to be allocated wisely with any sized business. The tools below help Wehi to keep track of our team’s individual and collective goals.
TRELLO
Trello is a free task board system for monitoring and organising projects. Initially I HATED Trello. This tool caused me anxiety and caused friction between members of the Wehi team. At first I thought it was didactic, pointless and little more than a box ticking exercise that could be replaced by an old fashioned notepad. That was until Wehi got busy. Once we had multiple projects I began to see the value in Trello. The website is very easy to use; you create your own lists, pick tags or colours then assign deadlines to members. Trello’s strength is that it allows team members to coordinate their time over multiple projects allowing accountability and reducing duplication of efforts.
Squoosh is useful for shrinking images to reduce bounce rate and changing image formats to best fit your platform.
EVERNOTE
Evernote’s ability to collect content from across all your devices make it an indispensable tool for organising research.
Evernote is an application for aggregating links you find online and IRL. Evernote’s strength is that it operates across multiple platforms. It is available as an app for your smartphone, a Chrome extension, a desktop app and even saves images from print. This means that wherever you find something interesting or important to your business you can save it one convenient place. Scrolling through Twitter in the evening and finding a useful SEO resource? Then save it to Evernote ready to be digested and actioned when you get back to the officer. My favourite feature is the Notebooks. You can arrange your clips into separate collections that can be shared with other users. I have broken mine down into work various work projects; marketing, SEO etc.
SMART EDIT WRITER
Smart-edit is a practical piece of software for organising long form content.
SmartEdit Writer (formerly Atomic Scribbler) is a tool I discovered during my Master’s Thesis. It is an application for writing long form content that breaks large projects into manageable chunks. Originally intended for novels and screenplays it is just as useful for a blog series or promotional ebooks. SmartEdit Writer is not as sophisticated as other premium writing software such as Scrivener. Even the creator agrees it lacks many features that other premium software possesses. To me this is a strength not a weakness. SmartEdit Writer’s limitations prevents you from fiddling with highlight colours and focus you on creating content for your business.
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Conclusion
I have included the tools that have had the greatest impact on my and Wehi’s working day. Each app took a small window of time to get used to but have returned this investment becoming valuable tools. Not all of the above tools will be an exact match for your business or start-up but they are a useful place to start. Exploring these tools will help you to understand how you work day-to-day and the areas you need a tool to sharpen up your practices. I regularly explore new tools and compare them to our current arsenal. This quest keeps Wehi flexible and allows us to allocate our time to what we love doing; building professional websites for interesting projects.
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Comment below now to suggest other handy tools or ask questions about the tools above.