There are a lot of costs associated with running a business. Whether you are a solo entrepreneur or building a small business, there are so many great tools and resources you can take advantage of at no cost! Having a few free tools and resources on hand can help you get by until that first paycheck, or help you cut costs while you’re first starting up your business. Here are some of the best free tools and resources for small business owners.
Free Stock Photo Websites
As a business owner, you may have come across the need for photos more than a few times by now. Whether you’re creating featured images for your blog posts, creating pins on Pinterest, or just creating content to share on social media, having a few stock photo sites ready to go will make preparing your content that much easier.
You don’t need to hire a photographer or buy your stock photos in order to have high-quality images on your website. The selection is going to be pretty limited with free stock photo websites, but many of them have a wide selection to choose from until you can afford something more. When looking for a good stock photo site, you want to find ones that don’t require attribution to use the photo.
Here are some of the sites we recommend for free stock photos:
If you are looking for a free social media scheduler, Hootsuite is one of my favorites! You can schedule up to 30 messages in advance for free! A note about Hootsuite is that you do get what you pay for. If you are trying to schedule an Instagram post, this could mean having to login from your phone to physically publish the post. If you are looking for a free tool to put your social media scheduling on autopilot, this is not the one for that. However, the ability to schedule all your social media through one app is pretty cool.
Here are the social media platforms you can schedule with Hootsuite for free:
Twitter
Facebook (including pages, groups, and profiles)
Google+
Linkedin
WordPress
Instagram
YouTube
Pinterest
While Hootsuite has way more options that you can do in terms of scheduling, Buffer’s free version will still let you schedule your content and be done with it. You can have up to eight accounts connected, but you can only schedule out a few days at a time. You can only schedule content for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram with the free version, but you can use Buffer for 7 days to schedule your Pinterest account.
The best part about Buffer isn’t the ability to schedule your content without needing to directly interact with the post. The best part is the ability to schedule retweets! This means you don’t have to sit on the computer each day and manually retweet ever again! All you have to do is install the plugin to your browser, and you can schedule your retweets just like any other post!
If you (like most people) don’t want to pay $100 per year to use Microsoft Office for business, LibreOffice will allow you do anything you need for free! LibreOffice is a free office suite that allows you to use applications such as Writer for word processing, Calc for spreadsheets, and Impress for presentations to create documents for your business and your customers. LibreOffice is compatible with a variety of different document formats, including the most common Microsoft Office formats. When in doubt, you can always export to a PDF!
If you like to-do lists and accountability, then Asana is a great tool to use in your business! Our business is a mere two-person team, but we use Asana for assigning tasks and making sure we are staying on top of our deadlines. Asana allows you to set up tasks for yourself or for team members, and descriptions, sub-tasks, and even documents to your task. This has been revolutionary in our business and has allowed us to see exactly what we need to get done each day, and all the details for each task.
If you are just getting started with SEO, I highly recommend taking a look at a keyword finder to help you identify the best keyword for your business pages and blog posts. SEMrush is an amazing tool to use to audit your web pages and so much more in their paid version. However, their free version allows you to do a few keyword searches each day at no cost! This can give you a great starting point when looking for keywords and allow you to find a keyword to use without having to spend any money.
KWFinder functions the same way SEMrush does in that you can search for a limited number of keywords in their free version. Normally, I wouldn’t put in a resource that only has a free trial, but this one is so worth it! Not only will KWFinder help you choose the right keyword for your needs, but they will also suggest keywords that are similar to what you’re looking for. They will also provide you with the search volume and the difficulty of the keyword for free during the free trial period.
It doesn’t matter how much content you have on your webpage. If you have a website, you need to have Google Analytics linked to your site. Google Analytics will provide you with detailed information about your audience, which can be crucial when you are looking to analyze your demographics, clicks, and when your audience is most active. You may be surprised to find which pages are most popular and where people are visiting.
Canva is great for all of the design aspects of your business. Canva has excellent templates available to help you create pins for your blog posts, media kits for your clients, and even a logo for your business! Canva is free to use, but there are a few restrictions to having the free versus paid version. The free account lets you create without too many restrictions unless you are looking for a custom font they don’t have or a team account.
If you are looking for a free way to build your email list, Mailchimp is a great place to start. You can build funnels, send emails to your subscribers, and even create newsletters to send to your team members and audience. There is a cap at how many free subscribers you can have on your list, so at some point, you will have to switch to a paid account, but this can be a great option for people with a smaller following.
Google Account
If you are looking to share documents, pictures, and other tasks, I highly recommend using Google’s web based services to help with your business. Google Drive, Sheets, Docs, and Gmail are great for handling all of your business needs and can provide you with everything you need even when you’re not on a computer. Google Drive allows you to have 15 GB of free storage, so you can store work documents and other important items on your Google Drive to avoid paper clutter.
There are so many great resources and tools out there that don’t cost a single penny for your business! While many of these are great and have chosen not to upgrade many of these. If you are just starting out, use some of these tools to help you get things done without sacrificing quality in your business.