Online tools to help the business mum get more done

Today I am sharing a selection of my favourite online tools that help me to be a really effective business mum. When you run your own business, it’s essential to have smart tools that help you to be more effective so that you work smarter not harder and get more done. Read my previous post on this topic here when I discussed TomatoTimer, Evernote, TimeTrade, Audacity and Hootsuite.

In this post, I share my thoughts on Soundcloud, Pamela for Skype, Trello, Webinarcore and Zoom.

Soundcloud

Soundcloud is a social sound platform where anyone can create sounds and share them everywhere, whether you are creating music, podcast episodes or audio files for your friends, clients or potential clients. When you record and upload sounds to SoundCloud, you can then share easily with your friends privately or publicly to blogs, sites and social networks e.g. Facebook and Twitter.

You can start with a free plan and upgrade as and when you need more space. They offer a 30-day trial and money-back guarantee on all their plans if you have signed up for the first time. You can add a cover to your sound, tag it, add a description and view simple statistics.

Pamela

Pamela for Skype is a free tool to use Skype audio and video recording software. It allows you to record Skype calls – I find this invaluable when working with clients, particularly when we are working on Purpose or Vision. I record the session and play back to prepare a summary for my client, and also to give to my clients to listen back. I also use to record interviews. You can upgrade to a Pro or Business version for additional features and functionality.

Trello

Trello is an online application that provides a visual way to manage and organise your projects. I must admit, I didn’t like Trello when I first experimented with it a few weeks ago. I was confused by the terminology and couldn’t understand the difference between boards, cards and lists. I admit, I didn’t do any reading up on how to use the application. (That’s my technology background telling me, it’s so easy, I’ll work it out). Since using Trello, I have thrown away all my paper To Do lists that were lying around.

Now that I understand that each board is a visual list of lists filled with cards, it makes sense and in fact I love the application.

One of my boards is a Key which displays the colour codes I use to label the tasks on separate cards, thus giving me an instant visual status update. Each card can have more commentary, and more detail. You can share boards and cards with other team members. I have a board for each major project or focus. You can email items to the boards – this is great for storing ideas when I’m on the train because I can simply email a note to my Trello board. I send all emails to my To Do board, and when I have more time, I move the cards (or tasks) to the appropriate board.

Webinarcore

I LOVE this piece of software. I think Webinarcore is a brilliant online application (and it’s free) that allows me to connect my GoToWebinar webinars with InfusionSoft. When I ran my online conference last year, WHAT a pain it was to upload the conference participants into InfusionSoft so that they received the regular updates and reminders. Now Webinarcore integrates the two and it’s SO easy to use. I love it! And the best explanation of how to make the two work is written by the Social Marketing Queen, Veronica Pullen. Her concise explanation is here.

Zoom

My final tool for you is Zoom. This is an alternative video conferencing and web conferencing service. The good news is that it works out more cost effective than the industry leader GoToWebinar. I plan to switch over very soon. Like all online applications, there are a range of plans to select from. It’s free offering is a good start, depending on how many participants you expect to attend your online meeting, and your anticipated duration. It’s free for up to 50 participants however you are limited to 40 minutes on the basic plan.

What are your favourite tools for the business mum?

I have shared some of my favourite online tools for the busy business mum, Soundcloud, Pamela for Skype, Trello, Webinarcore and Zoom, I’d love to hear from you – what are your favourite online tools to help the busy business mum get more done? Do share in a comment below – I’m always keen to discover new ones and share these with my clients too.

 

(p.s. all information correct at the time of publishing this post on 17-Feb-2016)