Small Business Mobile Apps that Make Online Marketing and Small Business Management On-The-Go Simpler
I’ve been running Hot Dog Marketing for eight years and in overdrive the last four years. There are so many wheels turning at once that I’ve come to rely on my iPhone as a remote desk and a touchstone while I’m away. In the last few years, I’ve discovered some life-changing apps every small business owner should know about.
Google My Business | AdWords Express | Analytics
Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the sprawling data Google presents when you log into Google Apps on your desktop. For clients, yes – we need to dive deep into analytics regularly, but for my own personal business, when I want a quick snapshot of how we’re doing online, I check out the mobile phone apps.
One-stop-shop for your local listing. Check out your stats, your reviews, your local listing’s photos and easily add more photos of your location – right from your phone.
Have you noticed a downturn in online views? Check out AdWords Express. This mobile phone app is designed with small business owners in mind who don’t have the time or resources to proactively manage robust AdWords campaigns. Having a sale or seasonal promotion? Need a quick pick-me-up in interest in a particular product or service? Tap into AdWords Express, pick your target location and pick your product or service and write your ad. Pick your budget and you’re up and running just like that.
AdWords Express isn’t a great substitute for businesses looking to drive a lot of traffic and revenue through multiple PPC efforts, but it’s a great tool for the occasional online ad.
Who’s on my site now? How does my traffic this month compare to last months? What are my goal conversions? These are usually the quick pieces of information I’m curious about regularly. Instead of logging into the analytics via my desktop (which I almost never have time to do when I’m actually at my desk), I can tap on my app while I’m watching House of Cards and get a quick glance of my site’s activity.
Twitter | Bitly | Feedly
If you’re in the market to grow your presence on Twitter, then frequent content sharing is key to follower growth. These bitly + Feedly + Twitter will make your online content curation, sharing and tracking so much simpler.
You’re probably familiar with the link shortening service Bitly. Bitly’s mobile app allows you to save links in their app to share instantly or later. In addition, sharing a “bit.ly” link tends to encourage more clicks! If you come across great content or want to share content from your own blog, save it in your Bitly app and then tweet or post on Facebook when you feel like the timing is right. Later, you can see how many clicks the link generated.
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to read and find only content you find relevant in one place rather than searching multiple sources several times a day. Feedly is a great mobile option for quickly reading content from multiple blogs and publications in categories you pick. You can then share the content directly to Twitter from Feedly. Feedly will even add relevant hashtags for you.
Other Great Small Business Apps
This is probably one of my best discoveries in the last year. I hate tracking business miles. When you’re moving so quickly on a daily basis, this can become a serious chore when you’re trying to go back in time to recapture your business miles.
MileIQ will automatically track your drives as it runs in the background of your smartphone. You can save favorite locations so you always know later if the drive was from Home to the Office to School to the Gym. Once you’ve captured your drives, you simply swipe left if it was a personal drive or right if it was a business drive. When the month is complete, just export your drives to a CSV file and input the relevant data into your bookkeeping software or send off to your account for taxes. No messy journals, forgotten commutes or time wasted trying to remember where you went and how far away it was.
We have a couple of scanners at the office, but they’re tied to someone’s computer. What’s a girl to do when the request for a signed doc comes through? No need to fret. When I get a request to email a signed copy of something, I just take my phone out and use CamScanner to get a properly “scanned” PDF version of the document. The readability of the PDF it produces mimics that of a desktop scanner.
These few tools have made on-the-go business ownership simpler for me. What kind of apps are you fond of?
I’m a mom, a small business owner, and I’m a marketing professional with over a decade helping businesses with their branding and online presence. When I’m not spending time with my family or on my business, I love cooking (and eating) and snuggling with my dogs while I binge on TV shows. My favorite authors are Malcolm Gladwell and Steve Martin. My favorite movies are L.A. Story, Little Mermaid, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Trainspotting.
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