Free Tools Your Small Business Should Be Using Today

There's a lot of buzz in the business world about how important it is to use the appropriate tools and applications for your small business. Everyone is looking for the next best thing, the newest trend to help them expand their business.

And while there are many fantastic tools out there, it's easy to get overwhelmed and lost in the shuffle. We all have a budget, right? Sometimes that can limit what tools we use as well.

Well, here is a list of 12 tools that you can use for free! These will help you in your daily tasks as a small business owner.

1. Clarity Lab

If you need to put together a slide deck or presentation Clarity Lab is for you. Clarity Lab helps you create professional presentations from your Google Drive, Dropbox, or Box account. You can add text and images from other sources as well. Clarity Lab also offers a free plan that includes 2 MB of uploads per month and two slideshows. Clarity Lab is compatible with Chrome, Safari, and Firefox browsers.

2. Google Analytics

If you have a website or blog, Google Analytics is a must-have. It will help you track the traffic to your site and where it comes from. Google Analytics is the leading web analytics service that provides you with detailed reports on all of your site's traffic sources. You can view real-time data to determine which marketing campaigns are working and what are not. Google Analytics will also track the pages you visit, how long you are on the site, where you came from, and how you got there. Google Analytics is compatible with most browsers.

3. Hootsuite

Many small businesses turn to Hootsuite when it comes to social media management. It's easy to use and gives you the power to manage your social networks from one place. You can schedule posts months in advance or send an update for a certain period of time. Hootsuite works with Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

4. Thrive Themes

Did you know that 53% of people use at least one search engine to find information about your business? That's why making sure that your small business has a great website is so important. Check out our blog post on how to choose the perfect WordPress theme for more info on building an effective small business website.

5. Google Trends

Combine your first name, last name and industry into one of these free keyword tools and see if it returns any results. You can also go ahead and check out Google Trends for related keywords as well. Just make sure you only fill out three boxes total (one for each piece of data). If there are multiple search terms, leave them blank. I've found this tool to be particularly useful for checking out the competition.

This is a great tool for getting a sense of how your small business website is performing in terms of traffic and page rank. It's also useful for tracking the traffic to your competitors' websites.

6. Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor is the best email marketing tool I've used so far. It's free for up to 2,500 subscribers and 12,000 emails sent per month. It's easy to use and really user-friendly. Plus, if you have a small business website, it integrates easily with WordPress.

7. BuzzSumo

Using BuzzSumo, you can search for any keywords that are related to your industry and find out how many people are posting about them on social media. You can even find the most shared posts that have been written about your keywords.

8. Buffer

Buffer is a great social media management tool where you can schedule your posts in advance. It's the perfect way to publish on social media when you're not around or you're too busy to post. 

9. Proposify

If you are looking for a great proposal writing software, look no further than Proposify. This tool is easy to use and cuts down on proposal writing time.

I recommend starting with this tool for creating contracts and invoices, but say you want to use it for proposal writing, too? No problem. It integrates with Clarity and includes personalized email templates that you can use to create proposals that look incredible.

10. Google Drive

Google Drive offers 15 GB of free data storage. For a small business, it's really easy to use and provides a lot of space for the price.

This is a good tool for creating emails without the need for coding knowledge. It also makes it easy to create or edit HTML and CSS code.

11. Paypal Adaptive Payments

A great tool for splitting the cost of a product or service between multiple people. Clarity integrates with Paypal's API, making it easy for our users to add this functionality when purchasing Clarity plans.

12. Mention

A free tool for helping generate backlinks and improve SEO. Clarity integrates with Mention, making it easy for our users to add Clarity to their website and keep track of Clarity mentions.

Conclusion

Many small businesses turn to Clarity Lab when it comes to customer relationship management. It's easy to use and gives you the power to manage your Clarity account from one place. You can also check out all of Clarity's other features here.