Sometimes when you are a small business and you have only 2-3 team members you don’t want to spend a fortune on programs when you don’t know if they will be successful and adaptable. Did you know that 9 times out of 10 you can use a task list program/app such as Tick Tick, Asana or Wunderlist to take care of your project management requirements.
There was an article I read last year where one business actually used Wunderlist for everything from to do’s, communication and a CRM, they actually minimized sending emails to one another and used this program. Some might think that’s a bit too much but using it for Project Management it’s definitely doable.
Task list programs all tend to have similar features these days so it comes down to personal preference and what you think will work well for your business.
Here are my top 4 picks of to do list programs
Tick Tick
Cloud based
They do both a free version & pro version (pro version is only a couple of dollars a month & is worth it)
Available on Android, Android Tablet, Iphone, Ipad, Mac, Web
Calendar View Available (Pro Version)
Get reminders on your phone or PC
Share Lists/Folders
Subtasks available so you can break a project up into smaller parts
Add comments to tasks (shows date/time/person)
Add #tags
Assign tasks to team members
Turn emails into tasks with the Google Chrome Extension
Voice Input (speak to create tasks)
Wunderlist
Cloud based
Both free and pro versions available
Available on Mac, Android, Iphone, Android Tablet, Ipad, PC, Windows Phone, Chromebook
Get reminders on your phone or PC
Share lists/folders
Create subtasks
Add comments, #tags
Asana
Cloud Based
Free program
Available on Android and IOS
Assign tasks to team members
Organize into boards
Tasks and subtasks
Due dates and times
Add comments
Calendar View
Trello
Free
More of a board task list
Share with team members
Comment on tasks
Available on Android and PC
Take a look and you might find something that will work for your business and team helping you to simplify your process and get on top of your workload.
Are you just starting your Business and looking for a way to invoice your clients and track your expenses? You may or may not of heard of Wave Apps.
Wave Apps is a free cloud based accounting program that has many benefits and I find is the perfect solution for managing my invoices and expenses. Wave apps is available on PC however you can also get Wave Invoices so you can invoice on the go from your mobile device and Wave Receipts where you never have to worry about loosing a receipt again as you can just take a photo of your receipts which will then be uploaded to the PC version ready for reconciliation.
Features of Wave Apps
Invoice your clients
Mark payment against invoices
Track expenses & bills
Import your bank feeds for easy reconciliations
Import your PayPal transactions
Accept online Credit Card payments through Stripe integration
Produce Quotes
Easy reports including Profit & Loss, Sales by Customer, Income Statements, Expense Reports
Wave Accounting has both a Business & Personal side to it so you can even track and budget your personal expenses from the one program. It is definately a program that you should be considering especially if you are still using an Excel Spreadsheet.
If you’re interested in taking a look you can find more information on their website.
I love working from home being a Virtual Business Consultant but it has its challenges like any other business. However those that are working remotely I believe feel the isolation more on both a professional and emotional level. That’s why you need to take care of yourself and get out more and networking is the perfect opportunity!!
The reason that I started working from home was to have that flexibility to spend more time with my beautiful daughter by choosing my own hours and also saving on those expensive daycare fees.
Networking and building your brand through Facebook groups and LinkedIn are perfect however nothing really beats having that face to face interaction with someone.
The best advice I could give from my experience is join your local Chamber of Commerce and network, network, network.
You may be thinking networking is all about spreading your business name everywhere in the hopes of gaining some work however that is not entirely the case. I’ve built some lovely friendships through my local Chamber of Commerce the Wanneroo Business Association and I will continue to do so. For me personally I love the fact that there are a regular flow of events giving me the option to pick and choose which ones I can attend whether it’s a Coffee Catch Up or a Sundowner there is an event for everyone.
Using a face to face networking event to meet other business owners & then connecting through LinkedIn are the first steps in creating that alliance and strengthening your business.
Having flowing relevant content to post to your social media can be hard to find and take up valuable time that you could be spending doing something else. That’s why Feedly & Pocket are my favourite content curation tools when managing my clients and my own social media.
Feedly & Pocket Are A Content Curators Godsend.
Once you have both programs set up to your liking you can expect to spend at least 2 hours a week curating content, depending on how many posts you want to send out.
Both of these programs are free to use and although you can pay to upgrade the free versions give you more than enough to work with. As with most programs these days they come with an App so you can access them on your phone or tablet making finding, saving and sharing articles easier.
With Feedly the free version allows you to have
Up to 100 feeds
Organize feeds into easy-to-read collections (up to 3 collections)
Save the best stories into boards (up to 3 boards)
Is available on Mobile and desktop
Share to Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook
This is a screenshot of what Feedly’s dashboard looks like.
Down the Left hand side you can see the different feeds that I want to monitor and you can organize them into folders. To view the most recent content you have the option to view the content ‘today’ and can also save them to read later, however you can’t add any tags. You can also notice that on my toolbar I have the Pocket extension downloaded in Chrome, this in a fantastic little icon especially when you are surfing the web and want to tag/save something just click on this and it will be saved to Pocket.
Pocket also gives you recommended articles based on what you have previously saved. Although both these programs are similar Pocket is as the name suggests more for storing your content as it allows you to add multiple tags and lists, which is especially great if you are managing more than one business.
This is a screenshot of Pocket, there are a couple of different views for your list but this is my preferred view.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts Social Media Marketing has grown over the last few years and in order to join other businesses in this day and age you need to make your presence known online, and it’s about having that steady flow of content to keep your followers engaged. Hopefully by sharing these little gems with you, you can be on your way to managing your Social Media more effectively and getting noticed more online.
If you would like some assistance setting up your social media accounts and also these fantastic programs you can reach me at tammy@tlbadminsupport.com.au.
