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He can help you with:
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• Digital marketing strategy & planning • Search Engine Optimization • Social media management • Pay Per Click advertising • Email marketing • Product marketing & optimization • Copy writing |
Starting your own business is tough, real tough. Not enough time, not enough cash flow. Luckily, thanks to the popularity of the freemium model, starting a web business today is cheaper than ever before. Here are a few freemium tools that can really aid your productivity and help you steer your startup on the path to success.
Communication | HipChat Hipchat by Atlassian is a wonderful IM tool that is free for teams of up to 5 members. As you scale it won’t break the bank as it is a mere 2$ per user per month. With both iOS and Android apps it works on every platform, from your phone to your desktop. Create chat rooms devoted to specific topics, chat privately or in groups, upload & download files and best of all, hook it up to your servers to display important real time updates. Another great use of HipChat is for support. HipChat gives you the ability to create public rooms, publicly accessible in the browser through a link. This gives you the ability to offer free, real time, chat support helping you provide awesome customer service & onboarding which is the cornerstone of every successful startup. If you have a distributed team I would say that this app is essential but even if you are all working from the same location I would seriously recommend you check out HipChat. 
Similar: Skype & Google Hangouts both are great for when you actually need to talk to someone. I like Skype for one to one calls and Hangouts for group discussions.
Project Management | Asana
Founded by Dustin Moskovitz (Facebook co-founder), Asana officially launched at the end of 2011 and has gone from strength to strength since then. They are well funded, have a great team and are releasing updates & improving the app on a daily basis. This used to be free for teams of up to 30, now that has changed to 15 so hopefully it stays that way and remains accessible to impoverished startup founders. Asana lets you create projects, add collaborators and assign tasks. All the usual stuff you would expect from a top quality project management tool. They also have iOS and Android apps to complement their webapp so you can use it wherever and whenever suits. This will help you keep perspective and focus. Start using this today. As an aside, they have kitten themed pages like this which makes them quite likeable! |
John Larkin is a digital marketer from Dublin, Ireland. He is passionate about startups, analytics, tech, optimisation, product and growth.
Similar: Evernote - not quite project management but great for jotting down notes / thoughts & ideas on the run. Evernote doesn't really reveal its true value and come into its own until you have been using it for a while and start searching through your past notes.
*Startup idea* An app that scans all your post-meeting handwritten notes and documented them, making them editable & searchable would be pretty cool. I wonder how much time is wasted documenting and writing minutes after meetings, not to mention the amount of great info lost in your notepads.
*Startup idea* An app that scans all your post-meeting handwritten notes and documented them, making them editable & searchable would be pretty cool. I wonder how much time is wasted documenting and writing minutes after meetings, not to mention the amount of great info lost in your notepads.
Organisation | Boomerang
Boomerang is a great app that is installed as a Chrome or Firefox add-on to your Gmail (or Outlook). You can set a time delay for an email to reappear in your inbox. Never forget to follow up with someone again, this is great for all the hustlers out there. Reminding yourself of some important deadlines in the month can be super useful. It may help you get that accelerator application in on time or remind you to follow up with an important potential customer, eg. in 3 days if they don't answer your email. There is also a Boomerang calendar app which is free to use and it is also very handy. It allows you to set calendar events and reminders straight from your inbox. Having this installed will make you use your calendar more, that is for sure, and can only be a good thing. Word of warning though, Boomerang for Gmail only allow 10 reminders a month on their free plan. Their premium plans do start at just 5$ a month so it won’t break the bank. I included it because I still feel that the free plan adds huge value.
Boomerang is a great app that is installed as a Chrome or Firefox add-on to your Gmail (or Outlook). You can set a time delay for an email to reappear in your inbox. Never forget to follow up with someone again, this is great for all the hustlers out there. Reminding yourself of some important deadlines in the month can be super useful. It may help you get that accelerator application in on time or remind you to follow up with an important potential customer, eg. in 3 days if they don't answer your email. There is also a Boomerang calendar app which is free to use and it is also very handy. It allows you to set calendar events and reminders straight from your inbox. Having this installed will make you use your calendar more, that is for sure, and can only be a good thing. Word of warning though, Boomerang for Gmail only allow 10 reminders a month on their free plan. Their premium plans do start at just 5$ a month so it won’t break the bank. I included it because I still feel that the free plan adds huge value.
Similar: Followup.cc is also pretty good.
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Information | Rapportive
Rapportive is another awesome Chrome Gmail add on. If you do not have this install it today. Simply put, this addon replaces Gmail ads with useful social information about who you are emailing or who your email came from. See Twitter info, Facebook info and Linkedin info at a glance, straight from your inbox. It helps unleash the inner
Social Sharing | Buffer Buffer is just amazing. Not only does it enable you to plan out your future social sharing, it also gives you great analytics back such as number of clicks, retweets etc so you can see how much progress your social activities are making. They also have a ton of great free extentions that make it even easier to add content to your buffer as you surf the web. Their free plan limits your buffer to 10 tweets but great nonetheless. Also, be sure and check out their blog. It rocks. Similar: Hootsuite is also decent, personally having used both extensively I would definitely recommend Buffer. Landing Page | LaunchRock
Launchrock is a pretty cool way to get a landing page for your new startup up and running in minutes. You can host it on your own domain or on theirs. Quick, easy and very effective. It also includes the proven post signup 'Tweet this' button for maximum exposure. They have a ton of startup offers and also can hook you up with professional services as needed. Similar: Unbounce is pretty good but not as focused on actual launch as LaunchRock is. |
Rapportive for Gmail
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Screenshots | Skitch
This is hands down the handiest free app you will install today. Great for grabbing screenshots, annotating images for customer service or for creating user guides. It is just really useful and super easy to use. Skitch is made by Evernote so gets updated often too!
Similar: Print screen, open in Paint, paste it, cut out the bit you like, make new paint file, paste it, edit it, save it.
Customer Service | Olark
Olark lets you install a plugin to pretty much any page on your website. This gives you the ability to offer live chat & support to visitors. Assuming you actually remember to log in to Olark! :P This certainly seems to be flavour of the month and I am not yet 100% sold on it, however I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and include it. If you have had a good (or bad) experience using Olark please do let me know in the comments. I feel like it should be great, only thing holding me back is that it strikes me as a little intrusive.
Customer Service | Uservoice
I like Uservoice. I think it is important to give your users a place to voice their opinions on needed features, highlight any issues and give their feedback. That said, if you use something like this, you need to use it properly and give it the attention it deserves. It airs all your laundry so if you are too busy to give great customer service be careful. Actually just change your ways, great customer service is vital!
Similar: GetSatisfaction
This is hands down the handiest free app you will install today. Great for grabbing screenshots, annotating images for customer service or for creating user guides. It is just really useful and super easy to use. Skitch is made by Evernote so gets updated often too!
Similar: Print screen, open in Paint, paste it, cut out the bit you like, make new paint file, paste it, edit it, save it.
Customer Service | Olark
Olark lets you install a plugin to pretty much any page on your website. This gives you the ability to offer live chat & support to visitors. Assuming you actually remember to log in to Olark! :P This certainly seems to be flavour of the month and I am not yet 100% sold on it, however I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and include it. If you have had a good (or bad) experience using Olark please do let me know in the comments. I feel like it should be great, only thing holding me back is that it strikes me as a little intrusive.
Customer Service | Uservoice
I like Uservoice. I think it is important to give your users a place to voice their opinions on needed features, highlight any issues and give their feedback. That said, if you use something like this, you need to use it properly and give it the attention it deserves. It airs all your laundry so if you are too busy to give great customer service be careful. Actually just change your ways, great customer service is vital!
Similar: GetSatisfaction
That is just 9 apps that I think are useful for founders to know about. In reality though there are a huge amount more and so I am building a list of useful startup tools here. Please do let me know of any you feel should be included (and why) in the comments below.
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