Part of running an efficient and organized business is making full use of the technology and resources available to you. It’s great to set up systems and processes and have them work for you, but in order to fully automate your business you also need to know which technologies are going to work best to support you in that.
Over the years I have worked with many different automation tools (either in my own business or for my clients) that have helped to support an online solo business owner, and today I’d like to share my top five favorite ones with you. All of these tools I use in my own business today – and they’re a huge timesaver as well as creating a more streamlined and automated business for me.
1. 1ShoppingCart – this is my shopping cart, autoresponder, broadcast, and database management systems all rolled into ONE system. I especially like this service because everything is done in one place which really does make for a more streamlined business. It is possible to use one service for your shopping cart activities (i.e. product sales) and another service for your autoresponder/broadcast (i.e. sending out your newsletter) but the danger with this is that you are running two different databases and at some point it will become cumbersome and may even start to become unmanageable. An example I see a lot is using Aweber for list management, and then using Paypal to accept payments.
2. TimeTrade – this is probably my favorite find and is such a huge timesaver for me; I’m so grateful to one of my clients for putting me onto this service. It’s a system whereby you can get your clients to self-schedule their appointments with you, avoiding the back and forth of emails that happens when you’re trying to arrangement appointments and, of course, the time spent doing this. You simply give your clients/colleagues the special link that’s generated by TimeTrade and they are able to see your availability (which you have pre-determined) and therefore schedule accordingly with you. It works with both Outlook and Google calendars.
3. BYOAudio – as well as using this service to record and host all my teleclass audios, I make full use of their Podcast feature. You can record your podcast episode directly into your podcast, and they will share and syndicate it with the top podcast directories – even iTunes – immediately it’s published! Those directories, in turn, come and get your podcast, index it, and make it available to their visitors. All this takes is about 10/15 minutes of my time to record my podcast episode and publish it to my podcast. Another great strategy for building my list that really takes no time at all to implement!
4. “Sharing” WordPress Posts – if you have a WordPress blog and post regularly, there is an option called “Sharing”. If you add your social medial profiles to this, any time you post a new blog post, it will automatically be posted to your social networks.
5. Instant Teleseminar – I love this service for running all of my workshops (both free & paid). Not only is it a teleconference line, but I am also able to show slides and create an interactive experience. The automation piece comes because, as soon as your training is over, your replay page is produced automatically!
