There are tasks that you’re doing constantly in your day. There has to be a better way, or an easier way to do these tasks. Did you know that there are tools out there that will help you automate your small business?
How to Automate your Small Business
First, make a list of tasks that you’d like to automate. Think of tasks that you do repeatedly, and tasks that don’t require a lot of different answers. Do you have a newsletter or an evergreen email campaign that you can set up and automate your small business email campaign? Can you set up automations for leads that come into your business? Can you schedule your social media posts to post on their own, and have an evergreen style of content plan on social media?
These are all possibilities of things that you can automate in your small business.
These automations may require you to do a lot of the work up front, but once you’ve done all the work, the work will then run on its own, leaving you with time in your day to do other things. You will still have to check on your automations to make sure they’re working correctly, and nothing needs to be adjusted, but it’ll do its work for you.
Some Automation Tools:
- Zapier: this automation tool integrates with many different platforms and tools. It will run “zaps” (automations) and will talk to other platforms and run their automation sequences without you having to touch anything. Its one of the tools that I recommend to anyone. There is a free plan, that you can use to get started and see if its something you can use in your small business.
- Later or Buffer: A social media scheduling tool, that may also have to ability to reuse your content on a later date. This will not replace more personalized content, like 1 on 1s, but having your social content post on its own, and have it repost at a much later day is something that you can use to your advantage. Meta does have its own native scheduler, but it does have its own limits. (There are some that say scheduled content doesn’t do as well. There isn’t any evidence to support that otherwise. It some of those things that you need to try and see for yourself.
- Wave: Bookkeeping and taxes are the bane of any small business owner. Keeping track of every receipt, and organizing your income at the end of the tax season is something that takes up so much time. Wave has free plans, and it has the ability to scan your receipts and keep them on their platform for a low dollar amount. Here’s a list of other accounting sites that you can look into.
One of my go-to automations is scheduling content on my social channels. I tell everyone that its going to change your life. Don’t over think the timing, just post the content. You can adjust the timing after you collect some insights into your engagement. When I left my kids’ school PTO, I told the person that was taking over my job that scheduling posts is going to serve you well. If you can get ahead far enough, you won’t have to worry about social posts for a while.
Its one of the first things I set up when I’m running my own business. I use that native Meta scheduler when I’m first getting started, but once I build up my content and want it to repeat, I can use another type of scheduler to help save my time.