Bantter BlogBy Carl Fisher
Companies that allow remote work experience a 25% lower employee turnover than those that don’t.
Not to mention that 77% of remote workers report that they’re more productive when working from home.
Also, it’s estimated that businesses would save an average of $11,000 per year for every half-time remote employee. That’s because the lack of physical office space cuts down on costs significantly.
That said, although it’s been difficult in the beginning, most of us adapted well to working remotely. And remote work is only expected to grow in the future.
If you’re planning to start a remote business, now is the right time to do so.
But note that you can’t manage a business with just an email account. You’ll need to have a set of tools dedicated to each one of your business’s needs.
To cut you some slack, we’ve come up with some of the best.
1. Communication
Although remote work gives employees more independence, it doesn’t mean people no longer have to work together—quite the contrary.
Collaboration is the key to running a business successfully. So you and your team will still have to round up once in a while.
That’s where Zoom comes in.
The free version allows you to hold 40-minute-long meetings with up to 100 participants. If you’d like to get rid of the limit, you could opt for one of their paid plans, which start at $149.90/year.
2. Project Management
Remote businesses are not as in touch with their employees as physical ones. This can often cause some problems.
After all, you’ll still need to maintain a schedule, manage deadlines, review results, etc.
With Gantter, you can do just that.
This project management solution helps you and your team save, access, and share project-related documents.
Furthermore, Gantter allows you to keep track of your workload, task deadlines, and costs, enabling you to manage your budget.
Also, this solution supports integration with Google applications, like Drive, Calendar, and Hangouts.
Pricing starts at $5/month, with a 30-day free trial available.
3. Web Hosting
What would happen if your remote business suddenly experienced rapid growth? Is your website powerful enough to withhold the surge in the number of website visitors, new customers, and added features?
Many online businesses claim that they’ve found a great partner with Kinsta, which helped them make impressive improvements in terms of key website factors, such as site load time.
When compared to other website hosting providers (like HostGator and Bluehost), Kinsta does come at a bit higher price point, but if you take into account their exceptional customer service and unparalleled hosting plans, they really are the right solution for growing your remote business to the next level.
4. Leadership
If you’re a soon-to-be business owner, having your leadership skills on-point is crucial.
After all, to ensure a healthy workflow, you’ll need to know how to talk to your employees, earn their trust, empathize with them and make them feel comfortable when working.
Learning all of this by yourself can be a costly and challenging task.
That’s why you should consider Know Your Team.
This is a platform that aims to hone your leadership skills. It comes with a wide variety of guides covering specific topics, like managing teams, building trust, one-on-one meetings, etc.
What’s more, Know Your Team provides you with tools, like agenda templates, where you can schedule and prepare for one-on-one meetings, for example.
And last, this platform has a community of over 1,000 managers where people share their knowledge and experiences for others to learn from.
Pricing starts at $30/month, with a 21-day free trial available.
5. Marketing
A remote business can’t work without a website. After all, that’s where potential customers will find out about you and decide whether to work with you or not.
For improved visibility, you’ll have to increase your search engine rankings. We’ve talked with some of the best search engine optimization consultants, and we saw that most of them used Ahrefs for performing site audits.
This SEO software provides tools for rank tracking, site audits, competitor analysis, keyword research, and link building. In short, everything you need in terms of SEO.
Pricing starts at $99/month with a $7 7-day trial available.
But, before you climb the rankings, make sure that your website is top-notch. As we said, that’s where you’ll conduct most of your business.
Sure, there are website builders that can get the job done in a few hours, but you’ll need to appear professional. Otherwise, you may lose some customers.
That said, consider working with a custom web development company to make sure that your website is tailored to your business’s needs.
In terms of social media, consider Buffer. This tool allows you to manage multiple social media accounts, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, using a simple dashboard.
Here you can craft and schedule posts, analyze social media performance and engage with your followers.
Note that Buffer offers two products. For publishing, the basic plan is free of charge. For analytics, pricing starts at $35/month.
6. Invoicing, Payments and Accounting
Freshbooks is considered the ultimate cloud time-tracking, expense tracking, payment acceptance, invoicing, and accounting all-in-one tool for business owners.
It is especially useful if you run a freelancing or service-based business because it makes keeping track of what you’re owed and getting paid as stress-free as possible. Who likes keeping tabs on every single invoice from clients?
Besides crucial features that include client hub, payments, invoicing, expense management, and accounting, Freshbooks also has an invaluable reports feature. Users can access dashboards and reports of various metrics, such as accounts aging, sales tax, profit and loss, etc. You can access these reports quickly and filter them by date or clients.
If you decide to test it, you have a free trial of 30 days.
Final Words
Although remote working and managing a remote business seemed scary not too long ago, we’ve already grown accustomed to it.
Not only that, but the tools we’ve talked about aim to bring the remote working experience closer to the one of an office. Consequently, they increase efficiency and mitigate the drawbacks of lacking a physical office.
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