I survived my first ever hurricane lol, and it was insane! We finally got our power and internet back on. The entire town (more like the entire state) was without electricity. Even WALMART was closed, so you know it was serious lol!
Now that I’m finally connected and getting back into the swing of things, I finished writing an epic post that I put together. It’s basically ALL of the tools that I use on my biz. I used to feel seriously LOST…how were people making all of these graphics and landing pages?? I’m not a designer! How are they getting so much stuff done?! There’s not enough time in the day! Dude, I got you. Over the past several years of owning my own biz, I’ve discovered so many cool tools to make my biz more efficient and take things to another level!!
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New here? Welcome! I’m Rachel and I’m here to help you get more leads and sales through Pinterest, blogging, and online courses.
I also have the following blogs to help you crush your Pinterest marketing strategy:
- The Secret to Using Keywords on Pinterest
- Pinterest Marketing Strategy: My Top Pinterest Hacks that Increased my Monthly Reach to 700,000 per Month
- The Ultimate Guide to Repurposing Content on Pinterest
- How to Share Instagram Pictures and Facebook Videos on Pinterest to Explode your Traffic on Social Media
- Pinterest Marketing Strategy: Tailwind Tribes
- The Ultimate Guide to Pinterest
- 6 Reasons Why You Should Use Pinterest for your Business (and How to Get Started)
- How to Create Pinterest Images that Convert: 4 Tips to Create Great Graphics for Pinterest (with Before/After Examples!)
- Exactly How I Earned $49,000 in 5 Days with my Online Course Launch
- 7 Essential Reasons Why You Need a Website (Even if Facebook is Free)
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Wondering how to get started here?
Step one: register for my free masterclass where I’ll share my top secret strategies to getting new leads and sales on autopilot with Pinterest!
Step two: Take those skills and apply them to your business
Step three: Start seeing new leads come in =)
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This post is SUPER comprehensive, so I suggest pinning it for later. Read through it now so you can decide on a few tools you want to implement today, and then you can have this as a guide when you need it!
Biz Apps:
Shoeboxed
It’s an app where you can take pictures of your receipts, and it will categorize it. Super helpful come tax time, and a bonus is that you don’t have to save a bunch of receipts!
Honestly, this one is priceless come April!!
Cost: Starts at $4.99/month
Every Dollar
Created by Total Money Makeover author, Dave Ramsey! This tool is great if you’re really trying to track your income and expenses.
Cost: free with paid upgrade options
Evernote
Evernote is my LIFE. Seriously though. If you have documents and papers all over the place, you need Evernote to help you stay organized.
I have folders for my business, but I even use it to organize important docs like my son’s medical info.
Cost: free with paid upgrade options
Paypal
If you don’t want to pay for the fancy websites to create invoices just yet, Paypal is a great option. They do take a small percentage of your earnings, but you don’t have to pay a monthly fee.
Cost: free with paid upgrade options
SignEasy
Sign documents from your phone without having to print and scan! #savetimelivebetter
Cost: free with paid upgrade options
Voxer
How did I live without Voxer?! It’s basically like a walkie talkie app!! I hate texting #truth so being able to send voice messages super easily is amazing.
Cost: free!
Zoom
Want to do video chats? Wonder how people can do a side by side live video on Facebook?! It’s with Zoom!!
Cost: free with paid upgrade options. The free version allows 30 min video calls with up to 25 participants. The live streaming feature is Zoom Webinar, which isn’t free.
Zapier
Zapier allows you to automate your work flow between apps. Basically, you can set up multiple jobs for it to do, like share your new blog post to Facebook and Twitter automatically.
Cost: free with paid upgrades
IFTTT
IFTTT (if this then that) is basically the same thing as Zapier. I’ve used IFTTT to do things like automatically save my Facebook posts to an Evernote document, so I literally have YEARS worth of social media content that I can pull from when I’m in a pinch.
Cost: free!
Mindset Apps:
An important part of being a biz owner is having a good mindset, so I’ve included some of my fave meditation and devotional apps! Every morning I either do Tony Robbins priming audio or a short meditation with Calm or Headspace.
Calm
Cost: free with paid upgrade options
Headspace
Cost: free with paid upgrade options
First 5 App
A devotional app from Proverbs 31 Ministries. Daily devos are great and there’s a video devo over the weekend!
Cost: free with paid upgrade options
Picture/Video Editing Apps:
WordSwag
I love WordSwag for the ability to make super easy picture quote images on my phone!
Cost: free with paid upgrade options
Layout
Put a few of your pics together to make a collage
Cost: free
VSCO
Make your Instagram feed super cohesive by editing your pics the same way. VSCO lets you edit your pics with a million different filter combinations, and you can save those combos so you can use them on all your pics.
Cost: free with paid upgrade options
Snapseed
Super similar to VSCO, Snapseed allows you to use several different filter combos to edit your pics.
Cost: free with paid upgrade options
Ripl
Rip allows you to create animated videos to help you stand out on social media. There’s quite a few cool things you can do with this app but I haven’t taken the time to play around with it much yet.
Cost: free with paid upgrade options
Planoly
Want you Instagram feed to look super cohesive? Plan it out before you post your content! Planoly allows you to upload your pics and actually place them in your grid before you post so you can see how it will look. It also let’s you schedule Instagram pics and post right from the app. #sweet
Cost: free with paid upgrade options
PicPlayPost
I use PicPlayPost for my workout videos! You can add music, put a video and an image together, or several videos in a sequence. It’s pretty cool!
Cost: free with paid upgrade options
iMovie
I use iMovie to edit all of my YouTube videos. It’s pretty easy to use (once you watch a few tutorials lol)
Cost: free with paid upgrade options
A+ Signature
Add your watermark to your pics before you post them with this one!
Cost: free with paid upgrade options
Graphics:
Ever wonder how you can get a picture of your product placed into an iPhone or iPad for a pretty graphic? With placeit.net!!
Here’s an example of one that I did:
Cost: Free, but if you want the high-quality images, it’s $8/image
Canva
Canva is everything lol! I use it every single day to make professional looking graphics for my website or social media. I even use it to make my PDFs for my Pin with Purpose program.
Cost: Free, with options to buy stock images and upgrade to use the branding part of the site (which is amazeballs).
Plugins for the Blog:
Yoast SEO
SEO is so important to get your content seen! If you’re not using SEO, there’s a good chance your stuff will never show up in search engines.
Cost: free with paid upgrade options
Divi (theme)
This is the theme that I used on my first WordPress site. It’s SO easy to customize. It’s basically drag and drop, it’s mobile responsive, and has pre-made layouts (like sales pages!). I literally put rachelngom.com together in a day!
Cost: $89/year or $249 for lifetime access
Social Media Tools:
Tailwind is life!!! I LOVE the company (and even have a bonus with one of the higher-ups in Pin with Purpose). Tailwind is a Pinterest scheduling app, but it does SO MUCH for my account and is the BEST thing ever (in my opinion)
Cost: Free, with upgrades (I pay for all the tribes upgrades)
Buffer App
I’ve been using Buffer for YEARS and I love it!!! It’s how I pre-schedule all of my social media content. You can download the chrome extension and schedule posts from any site, plus you can schedule the same post to go in multiple places (like your fan page and a group). It’s amazing and saves me SO much time!
Cost: $10/month (but really priceless lol, it’s one of my fave tools!)
Live Leap
Live Leap automatically shares your Facebook live videos to multiple pages and groups. Basically, you start your live stream, and the soft share shares it any place you set it up to go. It’s pretty cool!
Use bit.ly to shorten links. It’s way easier to send people to than it is https://rachelngom.lpages.co/pinterest-fremium-copy/ right?!
Cost: free!
Email Apps:
Google Streak
Google Streak is a CRM that allows you to create pipelines for your contacts. You can move people through the pipeline (basically wherever they are in the sales process), so people don’t fall through the cracks. You can also set up follow up reminders, take notes, and all other kinds of awesomeness.
Cost: Free up to 200 tracked emails/month, then it starts at $39/month
Gmail Canned Responses
Hate having to write the exact same thing over and over again? Save it in a canned response! That way you can literally pull up the canned response, hit send, and boom! That’s it!
Cost: free!
Google apps
Google apps is a way for you to have a professional looking email address (mine is [email protected]) rather than _____@gmail.com for your biz email OR using a hosted email service.
Cost: free!
Other:
Calendly
Calendly is an online scheduling site. Just send your team members or clients the link to schedule an appointment with you! Easy peasy!
Cost: free with paid upgrade options
LeadPages
LeadPages is my jam!!! If you are building your email list (you should be!!) you need LeadPages! It’s a landing page builder that you can use for opt-ins, thank you pages, sales pages, pop ups, and more!
Cost: starts at $29/month
Aweber
You’re building your email list…right?? So you need an email marketing system to set up auto responders, follow up emails, send out blog broadcasts, etc. There are a bunch of different ones out there (Mail Chimp, Constant Contact, Infusion Soft…) but I started with Aweber several years back.
Cost: Starts at $19/month, as your email list grows, the cost will increase. I pay $149/month.
ScreenFlow
ScreenFlow allows you to record and edit screen sharing videos. Super helpful when creating online courses!
Cost: Free trial, then $99
iPhone tripod
Lumee
Want to take lighted selfies? Lumee is a phone case that has lighting built in!!
Cost: Depends on where you get them, this one on Amazon is $23.53
Beats by Dre
I’m obsessed with music! Your ENERGY is going to be a huge factor in how productive you are! Music helps me stay focused and energized, I literally am listening to music all the time while I work. They help me stay in the zone!!
Cost: Depends on where you get them, this one on Amazon is $179.99
upwork.com
THIS ONE can really be a game changer for you. I hired my virtual assistant over two years ago and he has been AMAZING. He does so much for me! Behind the scenes tech stuff, stuff that anyone can do, he does. You are only one person! Do what only YOU can do (like creating content) and outsource as much as you can! My guy is in the Philippines and I pay him $6.70/hour.
Creative Market
Creative Market is actually where I bought my brand fonts. Did you know you can upload fonts into Canva? Pretty cool! With Creative Market, you can buy and sell design content like vector patterns, icons, fonts, and more!
Cost: Depends on what you get!
fiverr.com
If you’re not quite ready for a virtual assistant yet, start with fiverr.com! You can outsource a project at a time for as little as $5! I literally have someone making me a video intro for my youtube channel right now for $12! #score
Cost: Starts at $5, can pay more depending on what you get/how fast you want it
BombBomb
BombBomb allows you to send custom videos via email! You can download a chrome extension, click record and boom! Literally takes a minute and makes your email way more personal.
Cost: $39/month
Phew!!! That’s a LOT of resources, right?! Start with a few today and let me know how you like them!!
Talk to us! What’s your fave biz tool? Have you used any of these?
