5 tools you should get familiar with before you start your own business
Starting a business isn’t easy. Anyone who’s been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug would know that the initial excitement of starting a business dies down as soon as you’re faced with the infinite issues that keep cropping up.
There are numerous obstacles an entrepreneur has to face and various hats an entrepreneur is required to wear.
If you are starting up and working on a shoestring budget, you have to perform every role, right from the CEO to the receptionist, everything’s your responsibility. It could be a real pain trying to manage everything while also focusing on your business.
Having said that, there are tools that can be of great help and ease your burden while you focus on the real thing – your Return on Investments or ROI. Here are five such tools that you must check out before you start your business.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo’s is especially helpful if yours is an internet based business, but even if it’s a regular offline business, online presence would add value to it.
Buzzsumo is an efficient tool that helps you search for specific keywords.
It helps you find the most relevant and useful content that is of similar nature as your content, displays information of their social shares and the social media sites used more frequently than the others for sharing your content and also helps you find your potential competitors. You can also enter the URL of your competitors and get details on their content.
With this tool, you can gauge the sentiments and the preferences of your target market and will also know what your competitors are up to. Based on the information, you can select the right keywords, develop useful content for your business and use the most relevant social media platforms which will benefit your business by disseminating the related information in the most effective manner.
NameMesh
What’s in the name? Everything! The name of your company or the website is the first thing your customers would notice. And, it’s how they will identify you. Having a powerful name not only will give the right image to your business, it’ll also increase the recollection in the minds of your consumers, thereby giving you a competitive advantage.
For example, the term “Photocopier”, for many evokes the image of “Xerox”. Despite being a company, Xerox for many mean a photocopier. That’s the power of name. NameMesh is a high utility ‘Free” tool for searching the perfect name or a near perfect name for your business. Since it’s a free tool it has its share of limitations, but is useful nonetheless. All you’ve got to do is to type a couple of terms or keywords like you would in a search engine, and NameMesh will display hundreds of available domain names for your website. The more keywords you type, better would be the results.
NameGeniuses
If you aren’t satisfied with a free tool like NameMesh and won’t mind spending a few bucks on some quality research for your name finding mission, NameGeniuses is the perfect choice for you. In fact, it’s the best choice! It’s the name searching equivalent of crowdsourcing.
You can begin with spending as little as $20 and use it as the price money.
The hundreds of users on NameGenuises will search and suggest names and you can select the one that you like the most. Only the winner will get paid and it’s the reason why all of them try their best to suggest the perfect name as they are encouraged by the price money.
While using it, you just have to suggest your project’s title and a brief description of your business. The users will then try to find the best options for you.
DesignMantic
Once you have identified the right content strategy and have also found a suitable name for your website or business, the next logical thing to do is to get a nice little logo designed. Now if you are a start-up, budget is your main constraint. Getting even a “nice” and “little” logo designed could cost you a hundred dollars, which at this point wouldn’t render any value to your business.
As a start-up, your primary focus should be on optimising the use of money and no matter how perfect or excellent your logo is, it wouldn’t contribute monetise your business any better than having a generic logo designed for nil or nominal cost.
Instead, opt for DesignMantic. It helps generate generic and yet attractive logos which will look decent on your website. It can be a temporary solution till the time you find a suitable logo. Alternately, since the quality of these logos is decent, you may continue with the one designed by DesignMantic till the time your business grows and you actually can afford getting a professionally designed logo.
Freshbooks
Now that you have completed your groundwork and have launched your business, keeping your books of accounts, payments and receivables and other accounting stuff clear is essential. Freshbooks would help you with it. It’s a paid tool, but is definitely affordable for a small business, with an approximate cost of $40 per month.
It allows you to send invoices to your clients for the payment or send money against the invoices from your vendors or freelancers. You can print them, complete them and use the data to know more details of your income and expenses, which will be helpful to you while filing your tax returns.
It’s much better to use this tool instead of paying to an accountant for the things that can be easily managed by you.
These are some of the tools that I believe will add real value to your business at low or no cost. I would like to hear you opinion on other similar tools to make this discussion even more helpful to the readers.
There are numerous obstacles an entrepreneur has to face and various hats an entrepreneur is required to wear.
If you are starting up and working on a shoestring budget, you have to perform every role, right from the CEO to the receptionist, everything’s your responsibility. It could be a real pain trying to manage everything while also focusing on your business.
Having said that, there are tools that can be of great help and ease your burden while you focus on the real thing – your Return on Investments or ROI. Here are five such tools that you must check out before you start your business.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo’s is especially helpful if yours is an internet based business, but even if it’s a regular offline business, online presence would add value to it.
Buzzsumo is an efficient tool that helps you search for specific keywords.
It helps you find the most relevant and useful content that is of similar nature as your content, displays information of their social shares and the social media sites used more frequently than the others for sharing your content and also helps you find your potential competitors. You can also enter the URL of your competitors and get details on their content.
With this tool, you can gauge the sentiments and the preferences of your target market and will also know what your competitors are up to. Based on the information, you can select the right keywords, develop useful content for your business and use the most relevant social media platforms which will benefit your business by disseminating the related information in the most effective manner.
NameMesh
What’s in the name? Everything! The name of your company or the website is the first thing your customers would notice. And, it’s how they will identify you. Having a powerful name not only will give the right image to your business, it’ll also increase the recollection in the minds of your consumers, thereby giving you a competitive advantage.
For example, the term “Photocopier”, for many evokes the image of “Xerox”. Despite being a company, Xerox for many mean a photocopier. That’s the power of name. NameMesh is a high utility ‘Free” tool for searching the perfect name or a near perfect name for your business. Since it’s a free tool it has its share of limitations, but is useful nonetheless. All you’ve got to do is to type a couple of terms or keywords like you would in a search engine, and NameMesh will display hundreds of available domain names for your website. The more keywords you type, better would be the results.
NameGeniuses
If you aren’t satisfied with a free tool like NameMesh and won’t mind spending a few bucks on some quality research for your name finding mission, NameGeniuses is the perfect choice for you. In fact, it’s the best choice! It’s the name searching equivalent of crowdsourcing.
You can begin with spending as little as $20 and use it as the price money.
The hundreds of users on NameGenuises will search and suggest names and you can select the one that you like the most. Only the winner will get paid and it’s the reason why all of them try their best to suggest the perfect name as they are encouraged by the price money.
While using it, you just have to suggest your project’s title and a brief description of your business. The users will then try to find the best options for you.
DesignMantic
Once you have identified the right content strategy and have also found a suitable name for your website or business, the next logical thing to do is to get a nice little logo designed. Now if you are a start-up, budget is your main constraint. Getting even a “nice” and “little” logo designed could cost you a hundred dollars, which at this point wouldn’t render any value to your business.
As a start-up, your primary focus should be on optimising the use of money and no matter how perfect or excellent your logo is, it wouldn’t contribute monetise your business any better than having a generic logo designed for nil or nominal cost.
Instead, opt for DesignMantic. It helps generate generic and yet attractive logos which will look decent on your website. It can be a temporary solution till the time you find a suitable logo. Alternately, since the quality of these logos is decent, you may continue with the one designed by DesignMantic till the time your business grows and you actually can afford getting a professionally designed logo.
Freshbooks
Now that you have completed your groundwork and have launched your business, keeping your books of accounts, payments and receivables and other accounting stuff clear is essential. Freshbooks would help you with it. It’s a paid tool, but is definitely affordable for a small business, with an approximate cost of $40 per month.
It allows you to send invoices to your clients for the payment or send money against the invoices from your vendors or freelancers. You can print them, complete them and use the data to know more details of your income and expenses, which will be helpful to you while filing your tax returns.
It’s much better to use this tool instead of paying to an accountant for the things that can be easily managed by you.
These are some of the tools that I believe will add real value to your business at low or no cost. I would like to hear you opinion on other similar tools to make this discussion even more helpful to the readers.
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