Top 5 Productivity Apps I Use Every Day
I can't imagine doing my work without them!
If you’re self-employed, have a side hustle, or you’re in charge of things for your place of employment (or even if you just need to organize your home and your personal life a little better), there are some apps that could be very beneficial to you that maybe you aren’t familiar with. I’d love to share my favorites and maybe make your life a little easier with them. ;)
I have an online home fragrance business and my business is built around customer service and connecting with my team. These are the things that help me stay completely organized with my business and do those things well.
1. Project Broadcast
Project Broadcast is definitely one that I use daily and is one of the most important things I have. This is an app that has SMS marketing tools to help you connect with your customers and share important information quickly and easily.
One of the reasons I love this app is because I can keep my business texts separate from my personal texts because they’re all organized in the app. I can also have all of my customers listed as contacts in this app without having to have them all in my phone.
Something else I love about this system is that it can be used as an app on the phone or you can use it in a web browser on your computer. I’m at the age I prefer to type and work from a computer as much as possible rather than working from my phone. haha!
You can personalize your messages, send bulk messages, create website pages that your customers can view, set up text campaigns to release information over time, create tags to organize your customers, and a whole lot of other things. There are tons of great services with this program - so many I don’t even utilize all of them!
I will say there are a couple of downsides to this program. The first one - sometimes texts come back with error codes and don’t go through like they would with a regular text message. It doesn’t happen a ton but you have to watch for that.
The second thing is the cost is fairly high in my opinion. It was much cheaper when I started so it’s been hard to watch that price climb. I will say that it does help my business enough to justify the expense but it’s still a little painful to pay their monthly fee. lol! They do have a pay as you go option that’s quite a bit cheaper and I definitely recommend starting with that to give it a try and see if it works for you and to find out how many credits you’ll need.
If you want to check it out, I would love it if you’d use my referral link to do so. By using this link you’ll get 50% off your first month of a monthly subscription or 10% off your first year of a yearly subscription at signup so you get a decent savings. And I get a little bonus when you sign up which I would obviously appreciate very much. :)
And one more thing - they do have email that they’ve added recently but there are other programs out there for email that are way better in my opinion so I wouldn’t get it for email - only for texting.
2. Trello
I absolutely love Trello! I use this for SO many things. And best of all - it’s FREE! What is Trello? It’s basically an online bulletin board. You can create different “boards” for different things and within those boards you can create “lists” and “cards” and you can even include tons of information on each card as well. I have boards for my customers, ideas, goals, for stats I need to track, and more. It’s just such a great way to organize things. I even keep a ton of my recipes on a board so they’re always easily accessible!
Another great thing about this app is that it also works as an app on the phone or you can use it in a browser on your computer. Any change you make automatically syncs too so you’re good whether you’re on the go or working on a computer in your office. :)
3. Google Sheets
I would guess most people are familiar with this (or Excel) but it’s one of my most valuable apps so I had to share. As with the others, this can be used as an app or on your computer and it syncs up so you can use it wherever you need to.
Spreadsheets are my jam so I use this for tons of things. I organize all of my customer orders for each month on a sheet so I know where I am in the order process with them, I keep track of mailers I send out, I keep track of my team stats, I keep track of my personal stats for my business, and I even have tons of spreadsheets for my personal life too - my budget, some travel information, and so much more! It’s just an amazing way to document things and keep track of stuff. And of course the formulas you can add in to the cells are perfect to easily total up your expenses for the month when you have a budget form created or need to track expenses. :)
4. Reminders
This might be one that’s kind of surprising. When I mention to people how much I use this app it seems like people are usually surprised and don’t realize this standard app can be so helpful.
You can create multiple lists on this app to create reminders for anything from daily tasks to monthly tasks to even just a grocery list! It’s an amazing little gem. If you have an Apple watch, you can even speak to your watch as you’re cooking and tell it to add x ingredient to your grocery list if you run out of something and it will pop it on that list for you. So cool!
I have lots of tasks that I do regularly in my business so I’ve created a daily list, weekly list, monthly list, semi-annual list, and yearly list. I also have a list of random things that I don’t want to forget - like cancelling a streaming app when my introductory period is over and I’m finished watching a show. ;)
You can have just a generic list that you can just open and check on or you can assign a date to each task and then when you open the app and look in the top corner there’s a “today” section with anything you’ve listed with today’s date. As long as you have the reminder set to repeat to the frequency you want, when you click the button to “check it off the list” it will reappear in the today section the next time it needs to be completed. Game changer!
If you love marking off a to do list this is perfect for you. It gives me such a sense of accomplishment to work through that “today” list every day and check each item off. ;) And the best thing is, not only is it an app on the phone, you can have it set to be in the dock on your computer (on a Mac) and open your to do list each day to work through as your working.
5. Boards
This is another app that has SO many capabilities that I don’t even use them all. But the ones I do use are incredible!! The Boards app will allow you to add a keyboard to your phone so that with the tap of a finger on a selected board, you can copy and paste content into a post, a text, and email, or wherever you want it. You can also use this app on your phone or on your computer so it’s easy to use wherever you are. On a computer you just open the board you want to use, click share, and then you can paste that info anywhere you want.
I have a lot of things that I share monthly for my customers as well as my team so I have all of that saved on boards so that I can easily copy and paste it into posts on the group I need to share the info in. I also do online parties and I have my whole party system saved in the app so I can easily copy the info I need into my online party.
It saves TONS of time because you’re not having to retype the same things over and over again and you also don’t have to search your computer or phone for all the info you need to be able to copy and paste it - it’s all organized and easy to use.
This app used to be free and you could do a lot with it but they started limiting what you could do and then basically changed it enough you have to pay to be able to use very much of it. But for me it’s totally worth it. I use this a ton and it’s pretty affordable.
What about you?
So those are my favorite apps to use for my business. Do you use any of them already? Do you have other favorites that you’d recommend?
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