So it’s was added to one more day in startup industry history and few startups got funded with huge amounts by different giant investors from around the world. The co-founders of these startups became millionaire and billionaire in a day, are few stories which will come to your ears after a kick start startups get funded. These stories are like grapevine, but the reality is that there is huge effort involved in achieving this success. Each activity needs detailing from the very start whether it is Marketing, Finance, Operation, or Manpower Handling. No company is built alone and neither with a huge number of people from starting, it’s usually a few like-minded people/ entrepreneurs who come together become co-founders who fail to learn and then start again. In all these processes they take help from a few available software to make their work easy. Whether it is about keeping track of daily cash flow for books of account or CTA (cost to acquire) customers. Actually, there is a bucket full of free tools that can be used for different departments but I will mention only a few that are on the basis of my personal experience and feedback from my network. Let’s give a glance to these tools which are divided department-wise over here.
1). Marketing
a) Social Media
* Hootsuite– Hootsuite is an amazing social media and engagement management tool, it allows you to manage and monitor all your social media platforms in a single place. It’s especially useful for its social scheduling features, which allow you to plan and publish your social media activities way ahead. Hootsuite even has a feature that analyses the best times of the day and auto-schedule your posts according to it. The free plan is normally enough for most users.
* Buffer– like Hootsuite even Buffer is an amazing social media and engagement management tool, it allows you to schedule posts, manage and monitor.
b) Analytics: – Google Analytics is a very useful tool to get all the data you need to make intelligent marketing and business decisions. It gathers all your website, mobile app, email marketing, AdWords campaign information.
There are a few more than the one listed above tools for social media marketing click to find out.
c)Creatives:
* Canva is marketed as amazingly simple graphic design software and it really is that simple. Canva is an online application that can be used to create all sorts of graphic material such as banners, beautifully designed infographics, and much more. Canva is free until your needs are basic.
* GIMP– Whether you are actively considering a move away from Photoshop, or simply hoping there is a non-proprietary tool for reading your Photoshop images if you ever decide to stop subscribing to Adobe’s cloud, you’ve probably wondered about GIMP. It is a free, open-source, image editor. The reality has changed dramatically over the last couple of years. GIMP now has a very competent user interface, as well as an extensive and powerful set of features. Its openly extensible nature means that in some areas, like running well-known image processing algorithms on your photos, it actually outshines Adobe Photoshop.
* Snappa– Just like canva a user can surf from 40,000+ photos & graphics. But downloads limited to 5 per month with Limited templates and only two social accounts are allowed.
d) Email
* Mailchimp is an online, email management tool that allows you to create professional email campaigns without any design or coding experience whatsoever. MailChimp is free for new businesses and limited usage.
* Pepo Campaign– You can Send newsletters, transactional, email workflows, design beautiful emails, and analyze advanced reports. You need to connect your AWS account easily to get a dedicated hassle-free account.
Special mention SendInBlue, Sender, EmailOctopus
e) (Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
* SEOQuake is a very useful browser extension. I have been using the tool for a couple of months now. It gives an insight into Backlinks, Pages Indexed in Google, Whois Data, Robots.txt, Keyword Density reports, SeoDigger data, and more.
* Check My Links– is a useful tool that scans all links that crawl through your webpage and finds broken ones. This simple, but useful browser extension, is primarily developed for web designers, developers, and content editors but today is extensively used by marketers.
Find out other tools for search engine optimization in depth.
f) Content Idea Suggestion- If you have no idea about how to get killer content ideas these tools mentioned below you help you out are Google Trend, Buzzsumo, & Ubersuggest.
g) Keyword- Keywords are important and there are few tools that help you in finding those free of cost and those are Google keyword planner, Bing keyword planner & io.
h) Appy Pie: – It is a cloud-based, visual, drag and drops mobile app builder that enables users who have no programming skills or experience to build HTML5 hybrid apps that run on Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry devices; publish their apps in Appy Pie Marketplace, Apple App Store, Google Play, and iTunes; and monetize their apps with ads.
2) Human Resource
a) freeHR– Well, you don’t get much more straightforward than that name. The system is totally free, with no limits on the number of users, how long, or how much you use it. The cloud-based nature of freeHR allows it to play well across multiple devices and mobile apps, and the ability to get alerts and send responses from a phone or tablet are strong suits of this product. Employee self-service is also a focus with the ability for employees to request vacation and sick time themselves, clock in/clock out, track their own employment contracts and documents, and keep all their personal records updated. However, it does not seem to include any modules or functionality for payroll or recruiting, so keep that in mind.
b) Zoho People– This HR tool is free for limited employee logins and employee profiles. Zoho is a large, established company, and its HR offering reflects that with its polished look and feel and functionality that includes time tracking, leave management, and employee information, and self-service.
3) Finance
a) Wave– Wave is the tool that will help you to get in one place everything you need to successfully run your business from tracking sales and expenses through billing customers and getting paid to pay your employees. With Wave you get free and easy accounting, invoicing, and basically everything else that you need to manage your small business’ finances.
b) GnuCash– It is an open-source, completely free accounting program that you can download directly to your computer. However, this program is more user-friendly and flexible. Its usefulness is in its reporting: it comes packed with report templates, making it easy to generate everything from a basic profit and loss, to much more complex reports. It also generates graphs that help you track your finances more easily. It has all the tools a small business owner needs to track finances and plan for the future. Best of all, it is device agnostic and beginner-friendly. It is designed to be easy to use, and if you do want to access it on the go, you can download the Android app.
c) Freshbooks– If you’re looking for an invoicing tool, then you should definitely give Freshbooks a try. For starters, the software is incredibly easy and fast to use. But, there are some unique features that Freshbooks offers, such as having the ability to see if a client has viewed your invoice. Freshbooks also allows your business to accept credit cards, set up a schedule for recurring invoices, generate estimates, track monthly expenses, and capture billable hours. And, if you need a little more assistance.
4) Operation
a) Google Drive– It is a secure cloud storage and file backup system. It allows you to share files across all your company easily and without hassle. Google Drive creates a file on your computer you can easily use to share files with your teams. It’s free for up to 15GB of storage.
b) Dropbox– Just like Google Drive, Dropbox offers you the option of sharing files with your team. Dropbox Basic, with 2GB storage, is free.
5) Project Management
a) Slack– Slack is team communication made easy. Besides offering direct messaging capabilities, Slack allows you to create channels to centralize your company’s information according to the departments, share archives, and much more.
b) Evernote– I’m mentioning Evernote the first time and would probably mention it again in the future. It is a great tool for self-management you can create lists, add comments, pictures, audio notes, and much more. One of its greatest assets, though, is that it offers you the possibility of syncing across all your devices. Evernote’s free plan allows you to sync across two devices, which is more than enough for most people.
Conclusion
So these are few tools that can help you in increasing startup productivity. If you think there are more that would have been added to the list. Do comment below. Share it if you find it informative.