Keeping things organized is a key aspect of maintaining a well-structured business. There are many smart ways business owners stay organized. From daily and weekly tasks, important meetings, client relationship management, project management, marketing strategy execution – streamlining every aspect of your business can save overhead and time.
Meetings
For many of us, meetings online and in person are constantly taking up our schedule. Creating alarms on your phone is the most basic method of giving yourself a heads up. Google Calendar has become a robust replacement for the old days of phone alarms and the sticky notes. Meeting invitations from Google services or Microsoft Outlook can be streamlined into one service, connected through your Google or Microsoft account. Zoom and similar services have become even more popular and adopted since 2020. For small businesses, this can help with administration needs and lowering internal employee overhead on things that can be digitally automated. Keeping your meetings in order is necessary for maintaining order and adhering to schedules to keep more of your time for you.
Daily and Weekly Tasks and Project Management
We all know that sometimes the amount of things to do outweigh the amount of time you have in a day. Sometimes we need 36 hours in a day for all the things that need to be done! For business owners this means keeping a strong pulse on what needs to to be done regularly. This can help you streamline your daily routine and find time to be more profitable. From writing down a basic list or To-Do list for yourself to more in-depth project management and tracking, many businesses use programs like Slack, Trello or Basecamp to create and delegate tasks that have to be done.
Client Relationship Management or CRM’s
Maintaining a complete overview of your companies accounting, invoicing, client information and more is a necessity for any business looking to grow. Businesses use services such as HubSpot, Salesforce or Clio to help keep a close eye on what is going on from initial client intake and quoting, to on-boarding and maintaining agreement records, invoicing information and more. You can track sales and growth, with easy reporting for you – or if you are a marketing company, then for your clients.
Marketing Strategy and Execution
Lot’s of small businesses are handling their own marketing efforts in-house. For SEO and google rankings, as well as social media management and reporting – there are lots of solutions to help you keep organized with marketing. SEMRush offers businesses a free account for up to one website to manage your website visibility, competitor research, keyword analysis, social media posting and monitoring and more. Other alternatives include Moz, Agency Analytics, RavenTools and others, with varying degrees of features that may or may not fit your specific needs.
Call Tracking
There are a number of services for having your own business line that can forward to any other line you prefer, such as your own mobile number. These services offer 1-800 type of numbers to small businesses and include email notifications, SMS notifications and other API’s for developers to further track your calls in CRM platforms. Callrail is a popular new choice, and Kall8 is an alternative service that allows you to select your own number and forwarding.
What are some other smart ways business owners stay organized?