10

Apps and Hacks for
Personal Brand Building

MacGyver succeeded because of his brains, but also because of the tools he had. This is the best time to be an entrepreneur who is intent on building a personal brand. Because of the Internet and the advancement of social media there is a myriad of tools, apps, and services. Many of these tools that help us save time, be more productive, and showcase our brands are built on top of the Internet.

Think about it.

To start your business, you can go online and be incorporated in minutes. You can build your website in about thirty minutes. Later that afternoon, you could be doing a live video broadcast. You can start collecting email addresses and reaching out to people directly.

There’s a number of services you can use to have a virtual phone system for you and your team, and manage it all from your phone.

Your phone! Wow! You can run your entire business from your phone. Pay bills, send invoices, manage your team’s tasks, see key performance indicators in a dashboard—the possibilities seem endless. There is an app and online software for everything you need to successfully start and grow your business.

This is a list of tools I have personally used and recommend to help you get started:

Image editing and image creation for social platforms and more: Canva is used to edit photos and images. PicLab is a great smartphone app to create more engaging images.

Video editing: Magisto, Animoto, Rippl (all mobile video editing apps); Adobe Premier Elements (a video editing software for your PC).

Task management: Asana

Event management: Eventbrite

Website building: Wix, Squarespace, WordPress

Blog building: Medium and WordPress

Email marketing: Constant Contact, Mailchimp, Emma

Marketing automation and CRM: Zoho CRM, Salesforce, ClickFunnels, ConvertKit, Infusionsoft, HubSpot

Social media management: Buffer and CoSchedule

Audio hosting for podcasts: SoundCloud

Collecting email addresses for your website: AddThis and SumoMe

Landing pages: LeadPages

Online forms: TypeForm and Google Forms

Conference calls and podcast recording: FreeConferenceCall.com

Testimonial management: Boast.io

Over the years I’ve found that with the combination of the right tools, my day became more productive, and I’m able to get more done in less time overall. The right tool can be the difference between spending thirty minutes on something or eight hours on something. It can be the difference between maximizing your digital presence or suffocating it. Also, don’t be focused on “free.” I hear so many business owners expressing their happiness that the tools they’re using are free. Often when you pay for a product you get so much more out of it.