As a small business owner, you probably find yourself working upwards of 60 hours a week.
Maintaining a healthy work-life balance might seem impossible. But there are many tools to help lighten your workload and ease the stresses that come with growing a successful business.
Technology is just one of the many resources at your disposal. Our world is becoming increasingly mobile-friendly, and it is important as a small business owner to adapt and use it to your advantage. Using online tools and programs will not only save you time but, because your customers are online, it’s a way to tap into the conversation.
Here are three ways technology can help you better juggle your daily duties as a small business owner:
Organization
Using an online service like Microsoft Outlook or Google Calendar is a great way to use technology to your advantage. Online calendars offer alerts and reminders, allow you to schedule meetings with team members, and make updating your schedule quick and easy. The neon post-its hanging off of your desk, monitor, and often sticking to your shoe can be replaced with online post-its that you can simply delete. While keeping an organized online calendar is one great time-saving technique, using spreadsheets and online folders for filing is another. Keeping your original records is undoubtedly important, but those records can easily be turned into digital files and kept forever on your desktop, hard drive, or in an online storage service like Google Drive or Dropbox. Bookkeeping, expense reporting, and payroll can be kept orderly in Excel, leaving you with more time to focus on other important tasks.
Marketing
There are many online tools and programs available to make your marketing campaigns more efficient. Oftentimes when you’ve prepared a larger scale campaign that is set to stream on different channels, it can become difficult to manage all of these campaigns at once. Because of online programs and applications, you no longer have to remind yourself to post content on your business’ social media page; there are online tools that can do that for you. Content schedulers like Buffer or Hootsuite allow you to schedule posts in advance, leaving you with more time to work on exciting new projects or campaigns. If you enjoy the hands-on experience of creating marketing materials like brochures, pamphlets, or fliers, you can create your own graphics and interactives in a matter of minutes using online programs like Tableau, Visme, or Canva.
Customer Engagement
One of the most important reasons to get comfortable working online is because that’s where your customers are. Having a social media page for your business is step one; step two is actively engaging with customers on that page by posting content consistently. Replying to comments, retweeting posts, or even “liking” things shows your customers that you are available to answer their questions and you value their opinions. As a small business owner, you are in a unique position because you probably already have support from your local community. Now, by also building a welcoming online community, you can continue growing your business.
Being a small business owner can sometimes be stressful. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when your list of daily responsibilities keeps growing but the number of hours in a day doesn’t. You should check out these online tools for yourself and see if they work for you because something as simple as an online calendar can help you save valuable time that could be better spent focusing on other tasks or even relaxing.
Interested in more time-saving tips? Check out OnDeck’s Time Management eBook for expert advice on how to run your business more efficiently.