There are literally hundreds of tools out there to help you run your online business, but how do you know which ones are going to be right for your business? Which ones are going to boost you up and not hold you back? I signed up for everything and used the free trials across the board to find out what worked for me and what didn’t. Not all tools are created equally unfortunately and some just had to go.

But I’ve got to share my top 5 tools that have been really powerful in helping me run my business with ease. It was actually kind of hard to narrow my top 5 down and I’ll probably be back with a round two at some point to share with you the others but here today these are the tools I’m really enjoying.

Intro Packets

Save time, create consistency & make life running your business easier. When I get an inquiry about one of my packages or how I could help someone with their online business I immediately send them an intro packet. It covers the basics of working with me, what the package includes, and what my expectations are of them.

Here is why I love having an intro packet
showing up consistently from client to client & even project to project
saving time answering the common FAQs about working with me
saving precious brain power by having all the information ready to go right when a client asks
branded for your biz to build on that know, like & trust factor

I personally love that my clients have told me how special they feel receiving a doc that lays it all out for them. And it is just my intro packet!

Social Media Scheduler

I don’t know how I would keep it all straight otherwise. In the past, I used to think that I had to post everything myself to be authentic with my social media strategy. I wanted to get visible and have people connect with me and how could I do that if I scheduled out information way ahead of time? Yeah…all I did was wear myself, be on my phone ALL the time, and “winging it” didn’t help me grow my following. And it didn’t make sense that my posts would be any less authentic if I scheduled them.

Scheduling my posts allowed me to have time to create higher quality content, improve my consistency, get visible online, & took off the pressure from posting right now without a plan.

I love Hootsuite and Later for scheduling my content out. I use Hootsuite to cover Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and I absolutely love Later because it allows me to visually see the posts for Instagram & Pinterest.

Evernote

It changed everything about how I organized my business. Like for real and the ability to search ALL the content in it had me like Woah.. I organize my projects, meeting notes, client projects, my social media content, my blogging content, my promotional information… pretty much everything is in my Evernote now. (Life stuff too – weekly menu, date night ideas, etc)

Here are the awesome things about Evernote
All text files in one spot
Everything Is searchable
Clip Things from the web (no more bookmarks that you never go back and look at)
Share notes with collaborators
Create Checklists
Add Photos directly into the note

Dropbox

Dropbox is one of my favorite tools for my online business.

It lets me work on large files and keeping them up to date across devices without constantly uploading and downloading to a cloud service. It does that automagically! I also love how easy it is to share entire project folders with multiple collaborators or even images between family members.

Dropbox can do the following for your business
Send files to clients with ease
Save photos, videos, and docs
Set it up to deliver freebies & downloads for your business

HelloSign

Having a contract for your client projects is not an option is essential to protect yourself and your business. There is a whole bunch of stuff we could talk about with contracts but I’ll keep it simple.

Running an online business where contracts are needed for client projects can seem like a huge burden if you are trying to mail back and forth for signatures. I love using Hello Sign for my client contracts (it is also free to send 3 contracts a month which is great for those with limited funds while starting out).

HelloSign allows me to upload a contract and set the information about signatures then it takes care of the rest. Requesting and reminding people to sign as well as sending a pdf copy once all signatures are completed to all the signees.

You don’t have to use Hello Sign but you do need to protect yourself legally and finding an easy way to do that for your business will help you stay on top of it and not let it slide. I’m not an attorney but I recognize the importance of having yourself protected especially with your dreams.

What are your favorite tools for your online business? Let me know below!