Everyone is online these days. Even your granny probably has her very own email account now! And seeing as so many people have an online presence, it is becoming increasingly more important for companies also to be online.
If your business is new to the internet, there are a few different online tools that you can use to help increase its productivity. Even if you have already had an online business for a few years, these tools can also help you out greatly. So if you want to make sure you are using your online presence to its max, make sure you are properly utilizing the following online tools.
Social Media
Social media is a big deal these days. Almost a bigger deal than the Internet itself. Almost every business has a public account on Facebook and Twitter, and yours needs them as well. One of the benefits of these types of accounts is that it gives you another form of marketing to use. Social media marketing can help increase your business’s reach if done correctly. It also gives you a great way of interacting directly with your customers and clients. If someone negatively comments about your company on social media, you will now be able to deal effectively with the criticism. Just make sure you do so in a professional manner. Here’s one hot tip for social media. Start a company blog and post each blog post onto your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Encourage your followers to share and you will increase the audience for each post!
Online Storage
Now that you are online, you don’t need to just save all your important documents and contracts onto your computers’ hard drives. There is nothing wrong with saving information and data onto hard drives, but if something were to happen, you could lose everything. For example, if a computer breaks, you might end up losing all the data that was saved onto it. Thankfully, there is a way you can save all your data and documents online. There are now many companies who offer online storage space. Your business can rent or buy a virtual data room. In this online room, you can store everything your business needs. One of the main benefits of saving documents online is that everything can be accessed from any computer. The user just needs to know the login details to access everything in the virtual data room.
Online Security
There is only one downside of increasing your business’s online presence. And that is that you will be increasing your risk of online security threats. However, there is plenty that you can do to protect your company and employees. You just need to make sure that you have the latest anti-virus software and other software to prevent your data and information from hackers. As soon as you buy a new computer, you will need to add on the correct security and protection. If you don’t, and become a victim of an online threat, you could lose a lot of sensitive documents. Not only that, though, as your computers and devices could end up broken or unusable. If you have an IT department within your business, make sure at least one employee knows what to do in case of an online security threat. But if you have all the latest online security products, you shouldn’t be in this position.
Newsletters
More and more companies are cottoning on to just how useful newsletters are for business. When someone buys your products or uses your services, take their email address so you can add them to the mailing list. Every month, be sure to send out a newsletter to everyone on the list. It’s a great way to let people know about any new products or services that you start to offer. You should also include links to any recent blog posts as well as any relevant news about your company. Newsletters are a useful marketing tool as they are an easy way of spreading good news about your business. Recipients can also forward them to others, which is a fantastic way to spread that name of your company.
PayPal
PayPal makes online payments easy and stress-free. Every business needs an account with the company. You’ll be able to pay people and receive payments securely and very cheaply. PayPal is a company that is widely trusted by many online shoppers. So if you have an online shop or take orders online, you should enable PayPal payments on your website. Lots of shoppers will then be able to trust your online shop and can pay safely in the knowledge that their money isn’t at risk. PayPal is also extremely easy for companies to use to manage their money. Thanks to the online currency services, it also makes it possible to handle payments in different currencies. So if you are planning on taking your company to an international market, PayPal will come in extremely useful.
Online Calendars
Getting sick of employees forgetting about important meetings and conference calls? Make sure no one ever forgets any appointments by using online calendars such as Google Calendar. If all your employees can log in to these kinds of online calendars, then they will be able to see how has booked into each meeting room at certain times. They will also be able to create their own calendars online to efficiently arrange their own time. Any important company-wide events will show up on everyone’s personal calendar. As well as their very own appointments and meetings. One of the best things about using these online calendars is that employees will be able to log into them from wherever they may be. They aren’t just accessible from your office computers.
Once you start using all of these excellent online tools, you will start to wonder how your company managed before! Most of these are free, so your company’s budget won’t be damaged too much by going online. And all your employees will certainly appreciate how efficient it makes their day to day work.
