Most small business owners constantly struggle with the strain between growth and capital reinvestment. Bootstrapping, cost cutting, short cuts, bartering, and even taking no pay as the owner are often solutions to help keep a business running.
However, there are many easy technology solutions that are often cheap, or even free, that can help streamline the operations of your business and help with your growth. Here are a few ideas that can help your small business:
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Google Calendar
Try putting your entire business on Google Calendar. This is a simple and absolutely free option to keep all your business scheduling in one place where everyone has access to it.
Google Calendar allows you to create different “calendars,” or types of events, each with an assigned color. Create a calendar for strategy meetings, sales meetings, even embed your Google Calendar on your website. You can make certain events private, or share a calendar type with as public.
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Google Docs
With Google Docs, you can easily upload and share all your important documents. Upload spreadsheets, Word docs, images, presentations, etc. Google Docs also allows you to collaborate on documents without sending copies as attachments. Your users call access the same documents, make changes, revise, edit, and save all without taking up your own server space.
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HubSpot is a simple way to help your small business be visible and collect leads on the internet. It helps you create blog and other web content, as well as manage that content so it is fresh and optimized. It provides SEO tools to improve your website so it is more easily found by online visitors.
HubSpot gives you social media answers and integration to help promote your small business on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more. In addition, HubSpot gives you the tools to capture and convert more leads through your website.
HubSpot is a fee-based service, but you may find that the cost is worth the extra money you earn.
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Put Your PowerPoint On Your Website
Want to share your PowerPoint presentation with your web visitors? You can easily convert your PowerPoint into a Flash code for web use using iSpringFree.com. This free service quickly converts a presentation into reduced file web code keeping all animation, transitions, audio, and video that are on the file.
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One Place For All Your Social Media Updates
Do you have a Facebook page? A Twitter account? LinkedIn? MySpace? FourSquare? Google Buzz? The social list can go on and on. How do you update so many social media accounts without spending all day to do it? Use online software like HootSuite where you can view and update all your accounts at the same time. Write posts all at once to be published at a later date and time.
TweetDeck is another helpful online social media manager that can even be operated from your desktop, Android, iPhone, or iPad device. This allows you to connect to social media accounts all from one location.
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Get Help with Business Plans
Need a business plan? Creating your small business plan can be a daunting task. However, you can get sound and affordable business plan help at TheIdeaStartUp.com. Here you will find an easy way to compose the best business plan for your small company through collaboration in a secure online environment. This site helps you to cover in each section of your plan, and it even comes with a powerful tool for accurate financial projections.
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MagicJack
You’ve seen the commercials, and it’s all true. For just one low price, you receive a device that connects to any phone jack and plugs into a USB port on any computer. It uses broadband internet to place a call from any phone. Just plug your phone into the jack wherever you are in any part of the county. All calls are free after you have paid for the device and year of service. MagicJack can be an easy way to bring your business phone line wherever you are: home, work, on the road, conventions, meetings, etc.
These seven technology solutions can help you improve your productivity and reduce costs, and the best part is most of them are free!
