Free Apps that Run My Business (2021)
I wanted to share with you five apps that I use to run my online business. I run my online business primarily from my desktop computer, sometimes from my laptop on the road as well. I don't really prefer to run my business from my phone but there are some apps that do come in really handy when I am on the go, it gives me a lot more flexibility and freedom so that even though I prefer to do my work sitting down at my desk in a focused environment, I still can leave whenever I want and do a little bit of work from the road.
So that's what I'm going to be sharing with you today, five apps that help me to be more productive to give me a more flexible schedule, and overall connect with my team and get more done.
1. Slack
Slack is a messaging app, kind of like Facebook Messenger, but it is dedicated for work, so it's a nice way to keep all of your work communications completely separate from your personal communications. It is very organized, you have channels inside Slack, that are dedicated to a specific topic, so you can keep your conversation more organized, and it's also searchable. You can search for specific words and you can also share files and different things like that.
Slack is actually the only way that I communicate with my team and with the people who work for me. I do not email them. I want to keep all of the communication in one place so that nothing gets lost. Slack is free or at least has a free version and you can get started completely for free. If you're working with any sort of team members at all, I would highly recommend it.
2. Asana
Asana is the program that I use to run my entire business, seriously! Every task that gets done, every project my team and I work on gets put in Asana, and it gets very carefully organized. Are you seeing a theme here? I like to be organized. I find that it makes me a lot more productive.
Pre-Asana, I was kind of a hot mess when it came to actually getting things done. I worked from a giant to-do list, things fell through the cracks, and things didn't get done. Sometimes I would flake because I literally just forgot something because it made it onto the wrong calendar or didn't make it onto a calendar at all.
So, Asana is the tool that helps to keep everything organized into a central location, so that all the different projects and tasks, we're working on are all interconnected. They all can work strategically together and it also makes sure that nothing slips through the cracks because whenever there's something that needs to be done. It just gets added as a task into Asana, given a due date, and assigned to a specific person.
3. Mojo
An app that I use to create my Instagram stories is called Mojo. Basically, it has these templates in it that are motion graphic templates. You can create animated stories, add your own photos, and your own text. You can make your Instagram Stories look way nicer.
I especially like to use these for doing any sort of promotion. So if I'm promoting an upcoming launch or just promoting a YouTube video or podcast or a blog, I find that this is a great way to make it look a lot more professional and just a lot more aesthetically pleasing.
4. Youtube Studio
I'm assuming you have the YouTube app on your phone but you might not have the YouTube Studio app on your phone. If you are a YouTuber or a creator or use YouTube at all in your business, then I would highly recommend using the YouTube Studio app. This is essentially YouTube studio, the place on YouTube where you go to upload videos, manage your videos, manage your community, but it's an app. You may have noticed that you can't do almost any of those things in the main YouTube app.
Now that YouTube is trying to innovate more and get people to post more and more people to post, they have added a create button into the YouTube app where you can create stories or even create and post videos, but for the slightly more serious content creator who wants to have some control over that content and after they have posted it, the YouTube Studio app is for you.
Of course, this is a free app, it's an app that I use all the time, when I am again, out and about on the go, and I need to do something with one of my YouTube videos. Now, I definitely do not normally post my videos via the YouTube Studio app, but they're quite often is some little tweak that needs to be made, maybe I want to slightly revise the title or add a link into the description that got forgotten or manage the comment in some way, and that is what I use this app for.
5. Google Suite
The last app I wanted to share with you is probably a no brainer, but I want to dive a little bit deeper into this one, it is the Google Suite. So, I'm talking about Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sheets, all of those different apps that Google offers. Now, you possibly are already using one or two of these, but I love how the Google Suite works together how well it is integrated. I use it extensively in my business, I have all these different apps on my phone, they all talk to each other, and it again helps to keep things very organized.
Two of my favorites that I use on my phone are Google Calendar, where I put every single event so that I can stay on the same page with my team and also with my husband. The other one that I really love is Google Drive, I use this on desktop and on my phone as well, and it's where I store all the files for my business. And then, honorable mention, this is not an app but I don't think I'll mention it in any other video it's Google Slides.
Those are the five of the apps that I use to run my business and they really make a dramatic difference and help me out daily!
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