The mega checklist of free instruments and assets to develop your corporation

Whether or not you simply made the leap into entrepreneurship otherwise you’ve been working your personal enterprise(s) for some time now, it by no means hurts to maintain an inventory of free instruments and assets to develop your corporation at hand. Value-savings are all the time a plus, proper?

Working with small companies over time, I’ve been uncovered to a whole lot upon a whole lot of on-line platforms and instruments, and I’ve turn into considerably of a software program junky. these people who hoard reveals and flicks of their Netflix queues? That’s like me however with software program trials and lifelong offers. So, I figured I might share the wealth and offer you an inventory of instruments to develop your corporation on a price range.

Checklist of free instruments and assets to develop your corporation

Leap proper to a class that pursuits you or learn on for a variety of free instruments and assets that will help you hold shifting ahead.

Associated: Free e-mail templates for lead outreach

Free instruments and assets for content material creation

Many entrepreneurs imagine that content material is simply written phrases like a e-book or a weblog publish. In actuality, there are three varieties of content material you’ll wish to embody in your advertising program:

1. Textual content / written copy. For instance, you may use headlines to seize your viewers’s consideration or bullet factors to hit residence in your product’s options and advantages.
2. Visuals / photographs. These may embody pictures you may take along with your smartphone or photographs designed on platforms like Canva or Photoshop.
3. Video. You may report a video in your cellphone or webcam, or you could choose to create slideshows to music that you simply publish on websites like YouTube or Vimeo.

Utilizing the right combination of promoting content material may help you to draw, educate, have interaction, and convert your prospects.

Finally, the varieties of content material you publish will rely in your purchaser persona.

Generally, although, it may be complicated or overwhelming attempting to determine what content material you need to create in your model. In reality, our staff simply launched a free content creation service to assist those that could have a little bit of “writers’ block” however know they should publish one thing to remain linked with their prospects.

Learn on so as to add to your checklist of free instruments and assets to develop your corporation by means of content material advertising.

Free instruments and assets for written content material

Microsoft Phrase and PowerPoint on the internet

Microsoft provides a free online version of its standard Workplace suite, together with a fundamental model of Phrase and PowerPoint. You should use Phrase to draft newsletters for your corporation, and craft paperwork whereas inviting others to evaluate and coauthor in real-time. And PowerPoint is a go-to for creating compelling displays — particularly whenever you embody pictures and movies to inform your story.

Google Docs

Google Docs is a free app for anybody with a Google account. It lets you entry, edit and share your paperwork from actually anyplace on this planet so long as you could have an web connection. Use Google Docs to stipulate and write your weblog posts, brainstorm topic traces or e-mail advertising content material, and arrange your ideas when outlining a brand new video script.

Professional tip: Do you know you should utilize Google Docs to create Gmail emails along with your staff in actual time?

Hemingway App

Writing in your viewers is essential as a result of your message wants to attach with them and persuade them to purchase. Hemingway is a free on-line editor that helps you establish lengthy, complicated sentences and customary spelling and grammatical errors. The app highlights your sentences based mostly on their readability rating for simple enhancing.

Webfx Readability Software

Just like Hemingway, this Readability Test Tool will calculate the readability rating of your content material. You’ll be able to check all or a part of a webpage or weblog publish, or you possibly can copy and paste textual content and the device will examine your content material towards a number of readability frameworks that will help you higher perceive how simple it’s in your potential prospects to learn, soak up and act upon your work.

Portent Content material Thought Generator

Portent’s Content Idea Generator comes up with catchy titles in your weblog posts, YouTube movies, podcast episodes or e-mail e-newsletter topic traces. Simply enter your topic, and the Thought Generator will spin up a inventive title and recommendation to take it to the following degree.

Medium.com

Should you don’t but have an internet site, however you’d like to start sharing your thought management, Medium is a superb place to begin. Create a free account and add textual content, graphics and video hyperlinks to make your content material stand out.

Writing content material is nice, however to pack a extra highly effective prosaic punch and stand out out of your rivals on Google, you’ll wish to incorporate key phrases into your textual content. The next checklist of free instruments and assets will assist you capitalize on accessible key phrases for your corporation.

Google Traits

Google Trends is a free key phrase analysis device that tells you what’s trending, what’s standard and provides you concepts on how one can get into the dialog with new keyword-rich content material. Listed below are a couple of examples:

• Should you run a pizza store and are contemplating including a brand new menu merchandise, you may use Google Traits to get a really feel for what’s extra standard: “deep dish” or “gluten-free.”
• For hospitality and tourism companies, you should utilize Google Traits to visualise an uptick in searches for particular phrases like “summer season trip concepts” or “winter vacation getaways.”
• Actual property brokers may use Google Traits to find out well timed subjects of curiosity to their potential purchasers, like “mortgage charges” or “residence inspection errors.”

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a user-friendly, freemium device that permits you to seek for key phrases or phrases that relate to your corporation and shows their estimated competitors scores for Google Advertisements and Google’s natural search outcomes.

Google Key phrase Planner

Opposite to standard perception, you would not have to take a position a single cent in Google Advertisements in an effort to reap the benefits of the Google Keyword Planner. Meant for customers of Google’s paid promoting platform, Key phrase Planner helps you uncover new key phrases associated to your services. You’ll be able to kind an inventory of related phrases and phrases into the search field or paste your web site URL, and Key phrase Planner will do the be just right for you.

Upon getting your checklist of key phrases helpful, you possibly can incorporate them into your written content material for an opportunity to glean further search engine optimisation advantages.

Free instruments and assets for visible content material

Visible content material can come within the type of pictures, graphic design photographs, infographics and animated gifs (leaving video as its personal medium). An MIT study discovered that people can course of and retain visuals quicker than the written phrase, which is why you wish to think about these free instruments and assets that will help you add visible content material to your advertising combine.

GoDaddy Studio

With GoDaddy Studio, you possibly can simply create content material that elevates your model all over the place, out of your web site to social posts and promoting. Seize your model’s distinctive fashion with ready-to-edit templates. Swap colours, fonts and add textual content to photographs with just some clicks to match your model fashion. Should you actually wish to step up your model picture, you possibly can even create your personal brand in GoDaddy Studio and publish a Hyperlink in Bio web page to characteristic all of your websites and social media profiles.

Royalty-free inventory photograph websites

I all the time suggest that our small enterprise purchasers use their very own cameras to take pictures as a result of it gives a way of authenticity of their advertising. That mentioned, in case your trade doesn’t lend itself to pictures (IT providers or tech startups, as an example) then think about the next royalty-free photograph websites.

The fantastic thing about these websites is that the photographer or designer appreciates attribution (that means you point out them in your advertising) however doesn’t require it in an effort to use their work.

Essential notice: Sure, Google Photographs are there for all of the world to see. By no means use them in your advertising. It may appear simple and quick, however simply since you discover the photographs in a search doesn’t imply you could have the rights to make use of them in a industrial capability (that means you’d generate profits off others’ work.) As an alternative, think about royalty-free inventory photograph websites like these above.

Free instruments and assets for video content material

Written content material and visuals are good, however including some video to the combination can actually boost your advertising and assist you enhance gross sales in your small enterprise.

Your cellphone, pill or pc

Lengthy gone are the times whenever you wanted to rent knowledgeable videographer and movie crew to make a Hollywood manufacturing in your small enterprise. At the moment, anybody with a smartphone, pill or webcam-equipped pc can seize video. These units aren’t essentially “free” however I’ll assume you probably have one, if not all, of them in your possession already.

Associated: The best way to create a beneficial video replace in your prospects

Video enhancing apps

Relying in your pc or gadget, there are a wealth of video enhancing apps accessible. Every app has its personal consumer interface and idiosyncrasies, so I counsel testing a couple of earlier than you land in your go-to video editor.

As a Macbook consumer, iMovie is my go-to video editor for fast tasks. It comes pre-installed free on Apple computer systems or units and may be very user-friendly.

For on-line video enhancing, our staff has began utilizing Canva Video Suite as a result of it permits us so as to add video clips, animations, textual content overlays and background music in a single fell swoop. Right here’s an instance of how actual property agent Dakota Riley transformed a selfie video from Fb right into a YouTube clip with the assistance of Canva.

As a notice, in my analysis, I got here throughout a number of video enhancing platforms for Home windows-based computer systems, however I couldn’t discover a safe obtain web page for these instruments, so they aren’t shared above. A easy Google seek for “Free Video Editor for Home windows” will present you lists of top-rated enhancing apps for the PC. Simply be sure the positioning is safe earlier than shifting ahead with a obtain.

Video internet hosting websites

In fact, YouTube is the megalodon of video internet hosting, and I extremely suggest you begin a YouTube channel due to the search engine optimisation worth it brings to your advertising. Generally, you could wish to merely share a video with others or showcase it in your web site with out promoting or urged movies after your clip ends. In that case, you’ll wish to think about the next free video internet hosting choices.

Vimeo

As soon as referred to as a video add website, Vimeo has morphed right into a platform that permits enterprise homeowners to make, handle and share movies. Vimeo provides free and paid plans, and your add occasions and storage capability will rely in your subscription degree.

Professional tip: If you’re embedding movies in your web site or utilizing a video as an interactive background in your website, think about using Vimeo to keep away from displaying commercials and urged movies which will take viewers to a competitor’s content material.

Google Drive

Google Drive is out there without spending a dime with each Google account, and it permits you to add video information into the cloud. Should you report a fast demonstration of your services or products, as an example, you possibly can merely add the video into Google Drive and share the hyperlink. If in case you have a tough draft of a brand new video, and also you’d like suggestions, simply drag and drop it into Drive, and you’ll select particular folks with whom you’d prefer to share entry.

Free assist and training assets to develop your corporation

We’ve lined fairly a little bit of useful instruments and assets to enhance your advertising content material, however I wished to finish with some helpful assist and training assets to information you whenever you want a serving to hand.

GoDaddy Guides

GoDaddy Guides provides a useful resource library of how-to content material and programs led by educated advertising specialists. With GoDaddy Guides, you possibly can study internet growth and design, ecommerce suggestions, advertising fundamentals and extra.

SCORE Mentors

I’ve had the pleasure of co-hosting free advertising courses with the fantastic people of SCORE over time, and I’ve seen how devoted they’re to serving to small enterprise homeowners succeed.

SCORE enterprise mentors may help you begin, develop, or transition your corporation all without spending a dime.

Go to SCORE.org in an internet browser, enter your ZIP code, and click on “Get Free Recommendation.” The system will discover mentors inside your space.

Greater Higher Biz Advertising and marketing Neighborhood

My staff began the Bigger Better Biz Marketing Community in 2020 on the onset of the pandemic. Attendees of my advertising courses have been sending emails and messages to get recommendation on what they need to do to develop their enterprise in such unsure occasions. What began as particular person e-mail replies morphed right into a e-newsletter, then the YouTube channel, and now a devoted small enterprise group the place we share suggestions, instruments and assets without spending a dime.

Ted Talks

It’s fairly regular to really feel such as you’re “on an island” otherwise you’re not making any ahead progress on the helm of your corporation. I discover Ted Talks to be encouraging and inspirational as a result of they supply so many alternative views.

As an illustration, Dorie Clark just lately shared how to overcome feeling so busy whereas Marcos Aguiar covers how to build more trust with consumers. Go to the positioning and click on round, however be sure you have a while to sit down and soak up all of those superb insights.

Being a presenter for Develop with Google during the last 5 years, I’ve come throughout many useful instruments that small enterprise homeowners may not find out about. The next checklist of instruments may help in numerous elements of your corporation and are undoubtedly price a glance.

• Test My Site measures the load pace of your web site and provides strategies on how one can make it load even quicker, so you possibly can win extra prospects.
• Google Analytics is a free, web-based device that measures the efficiency and consumer journey in your web site. That is key if you wish to consider how efficient your advertising campaigns are.
• Google Forms permits you to create fast suggestions types or extra in-depth shopper analysis types like this Buyer Persona Quiz we made for the Greater Higher Biz group.
• Google Alerts permit you to arrange e-mail alerts when sure key phrases or search phrases are recognized by Google. That is actually useful in holding observe of your model mentions across the internet.
• Google Scholar permits you to discover articles and case regulation assets and add them to your private library.
• Google Ads Grant affords verified 501(c)3 nonprofits with a Google Textual content Advertisements price range of as much as $10,000 monthly. It is a nice solution to drive eyes to your group and appeal to new donors and volunteers.
• Google Calendar comes free with any Google account and gives you with an easy-to-use planning and scheduling device. You’ll be able to set private reminders or put together for conferences by attaching documents to your calendar invites.
• Grow with Google is an initiative that helps folks put together for work, discover jobs, and develop their enterprise. The location is chock stuffed with useful assets, instruments and occasions.

Associated: The best way to promote on Google Procuring — a whole information

Placing all of it collectively

The above checklist of free instruments and assets to develop your corporation is the tip of the very high of the iceberg. In fact, there are a lot of extra accessible to small enterprise homeowners and nonprofit organizations that will help you proceed to develop.

Put aside a while to discover the assets above, make notes of those that appear like they’ll drive essentially the most worth to your corporation, and all the time hold your eyes peeled for brand spanking new expertise as a result of new instruments are launched each single day. Right here’s to your success!