As a small business owner, I’m constantly trying to find tools that make my life easier, since you know, I wear all the hats! Here are some of my favorites that make my life so so much more efficient!!
Dubsado
Dubsado is my client management system where all my leads and projects are organized. Through Dubsado I’m able to set up email templates, invoices, proposals, questionnaires, contracts, lead-capture forms, and a scheduler. Through all of these different elements, I’m able to set-up workflows that help to automate as much of my business as possible. This ensures that everything is going out on schedule and I’m organized and prepared when showing up to my session.
Here is a referral link for 20% off your first year or month. Referral code: gariann
Flodesk
Flodesk has been immensely helpful in stepping up my newsletter game. I made the switch from MailChimp to Flodesk and I won’t ever turn back! My favorite thing about the platform is how easy their gorgeous and simple newsletter templates are to design high converting emails that perfectly match my brand. It makes me so excited to put a newsletter together for my wonderful clients…also making it something that my clients want to open up and read.
Here is a referral link for 50% off your FloDesk subscription
Planoly
Scheduling out my social media for an entire month is something that I’ve started this past year and it has completely changed my life. It’s so freeing to know that it’s just being “done” everyday and I don’t have to worry about thinking about spending the 15 minutes each day it takes me to find the image and think about a caption off the top of my head. At the beginning of each month I’ll sit down for a couple hours and plan out and schedule my content for my two social media accounts. This helps me curate a cohesive feed as well as make sure to touch upon the different aspects of my brand. I currently use the free Planoly account which allows me to upload 30 images a month, which is more than I need since I plan to post 3 times a week.
Join Planoly to start upgrading your social media game!
Social Curator
I’ve been using Social Curator, a monthly social media subscription that comes with a social media guide, stock images, and a set of caption ideas. It has educated me over the last couple years on social media trends, branding, and how to speak to my audience. I use Jasmine Star’s guides in conjunction with Planoly to plan and schedule my social media each month.
FloThemes
FloThemes creates gorgeous WordPress Themes which make it an easy process to edit my website while keeping it looking sleek and professional–and keeping my branding on point. Their block based themes allow you to select and drop elements into the backend of your site, making it easy to create and edit custom to your own needs. With many simple but aesthetically pleasing designs, their website themes are great for photographers and other businesses that want an image forward site.
Blog Stomp
Blog Stomp has been essential when I’m building a blog post and selecting the images that I’m including to help visually support my message. The biggest reason to use Blog Stomp is that it resizes your images to help your website load speeds, all while keeping the integrity of the image. I’m also able to create collages, gathering images that are alike into one image in my blog post. Great for SEO, I’m able to export my photos with custom file names, alt text, and photo descriptions as well.
G-Suite
This one doesn’t need explaining. G-Suite runs my life. I use it for my email, calendar, and document storage! I couldn’t run my business without it.
