Business Tools That Will Give You More Time With Your Family
It’s 5:30 p.m. That one extra e-mail you check right before leaving the office turns into one more hour of work, which is one more hour away from your family. It’s hard to strike that balance between work and life: You’re running a business, you’re raising a family, and it never seems like there’s enough time for both. Thankfully, technology can be there to help you run your business more efficiently and give you more time to spend at home with your family (and not to mention some personal time to yourself).
Social Media Management
Today, it’s almost impossible to run a business without some sort of social media presence. If you’re on the social media train, you’re likely juggling a Twitter account (or multiple), a Facebook account, and a Pinterest account. Save yourself time and headaches, and get Hootsuite or TweetDeck for your business. They’ll allow you to manage your social media platforms, schedule tweets, and track brand mentions all from one platform rather than multiple areas.
Networking Monitoring Services
Your website is the lifeblood of your business, and you should be doing everything you can to keep it running. If it’s not, customers are going to competitors who are one-click away and whose website actually works. Or, you’re left doing it yourself, and face it: No one wants a call at 4 a.m. saying their servers crashed. Instead of trying to do it yourself — because no one wants a 4 a.m. phone call saying their servers crashed — this is one of those things best left to the professionals. Check with your host to see if they offer this service.
Advertising and PR
Advertising and publicity are often expensive and time consuming. A great and easy way to drum up business for free is to get your company listed for free on search engine listing sites. USA Today recommends Bing business portal, Foursquare, Google Places, Yahoo Local, and Yelp to get you started. Next, look out to your local community to start spreading the word. Every city has a number of events or awards that you can sponsor for a little bit of money that will help get your name out there. Bring on a public relations intern to help you find theses so you don’t spend your hours searching. (Or, learn how to do your own publicity quickly and easily with Get Famous!)
File Management System
If you’re running back to the office to get that one important contact you need from your office e-mail, stop. You need a contact management system immediately. They’re an organized way for you stay in touch with your contacts that you can even access from mobile devices. Salesforce.com is a good place to start. For your documents, Dropbox is an online storage system that can change your life. Available for Windows, iOS, Linux and Mobile, you’re able to sync up all of your files with each of your device. Why run to the office when you can access all of your last-minute files from home? Best of all, a 2GB Dropbox account is free! Your business is important and so is your family, and there’s no reason why you can’t balance both. Embrace technology to help make your life easier and spend more time at home with your family.
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