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Hello all! Previously I have blogged and shared my favourite free online resources with you.
I have a whole bunch of new ones to talk to you about today. These tools are ideal for us small businesses, keeping the budget low and looking for new ways of improving efficiency are just what us busy business folk need right?
I promise you these tools will save you time, energy and money, I don’t like fussy, over complicated, time zappers, if you’re like me, try these:
Since moving from an office job to being my own IT dept and paying for my own IT budget I have been muddling along with online PDF viewers, until one of my clients told me about this (thank you!) https://get.adobe.com/uk/reader/ is free, you can see all the comments added by designers in InDesign and it swaps all of those PDF files on our laptop over into Adobe icons, just like we are all used to seeing, I like the familiar. Took 5 minutes to download.
I have mentioned this one recently on social media. Doodle is a favourite of mine for setting up meetings. Free and so easy to use. You essentially set up a poll of dates and times, send your invitation via email to a bunch of people, your contacts select the dates which they can do, and you get a nice overview to quickly reference and make your life easier to get a date sorted, rather than sending oodles of emails and reminders, you just send one. Thank you Doodle. Check it out: https://doodle.com/en_GB/
Again, small business owners, if you are trying to dabble in as much as you can, being the finance team, IT guy/gal, facilities dept, purchasing and marketing take a look at Ubersuggest. Simple to use and another freebie, this site has been created by marketing and SEO legend Neil Patel. Go to https://neilpatel.com/ enter your website domain and behold all the information it will give you. An array of options on the left hand side - free site audit, keyword suggestions, it will serve you other blogs relevant to your content, content ideas, which of your pages are performing well and why, which are not. Quick, easy to use, no signing up, downloading, filling in surveys, receiving a barrage of emails on a daily basis, just the way I like it!
If you know anything about me, you will know I have fallen in love with clockify! Another, quick, simple tool that gives you everything you need it to without being overly complicated and needing 3 tutorial videos to get you started. Time tracking is clockify’s game. You set the clock to your task, assign it a project or a client, if its billable work or not. At the end of the day, week or month you can instantly view on screen what you’ve been up to, filter it by client, project, billable and download to Excel like a timesheet. Ideal if you need to assess how long tasks are taking, set a budget, bill a client or look at where your time is going. Find it here: https://clockify.me/
Google suite - dictation tool
Yes it’s in there! Click ‘Tools’ on the main menu, drop down to ‘Voice typing’. It is pretty good, until your child or partner walks in the room for a conversation. That aside, this is a handy little tool, if you are tired of the screen and typing all day but your brain is bursting with good ideas, just download verbally straight into a doc and edit later. Some of the words don’t get picked up as hoped, but accuracy for me is perfectly satisfactory. No link here, just works from your Google account - personal or Google My Business.
Take a look back at my previous blogs for other small business tools and tips. My other favourite freebies include:
Canva - for basic design - flyers, social media posts, social media covers, PDFs, worksheets
LastPass - for remembering and sharing passwords
Dropbox - for storing and sharing files with others working virtually
We Transfer - for sharing large files instantly
Google suite - all of it (I prefer Google Docs to Word)
Hootsuite - free social media scheduling
If you have any software recommendations that would be right up my street please get in touch, I would love to hear more! Email me:
I am currently having a tinker with Calendly and animated video software.
About Virtual Executive Services MK
Virtual Executive Services MK is a Virtual Assistant service based in Milton Keynes, supporting clients across the UK. Specialising in admin, marketing and social media support for small to medium businesses, start ups and entrepreneurs. Find out more.