Essential Apps for Entrepreneurs
Essential Apps for Entrepreneurs
Table of Contents...................................................................................... 2
Introduction............................................................................................... 4
Productivity Apps...................................................................................... 5
Evernote............................................................................................... 5
MindNode.............................................................................................. 6
Dropbox................................................................................................ 7
Hill88 Pro for Asana............................................................................... 8
1Password............................................................................................ 9
Microsoft Word...................................................................................... 9
Budget and Finance Apps ........................................................................ 11
Mint .................................................................................................... 11
StockTouch ........................................................................................ 11
Yahoo Finance .................................................................................... 12
Social Media Apps .................................................................................. 14
HootSuite ............................................................................................ 14
Pinterest ............................................................................................. 15
Facebook Messenger .......................................................................... 15
Facebook Groups & Facebook Pages Manager ..................................... 16
Other Essential Apps .............................................................................. 17
Uber ................................................................................................... 17
Lyft ..................................................................................................... 17
Mailbox............................................................................................... 18
Conclusion.............................................................................................. 19
Resources.............................................................................................. 20
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Introduction
Every entrepreneur needs to fill their phone or tablet with apps that can help them save time, save money, get more done… but there are so many apps out there, it can be difficult to figure out which ones are helpful, which ones are useless, and which ones are absolutely essential.
With business apps sometimes costing $5, $15, $50, and even more, it’s especially important to be sure you’re choosing the right ones, because wasting money (especially in the startup phase) is every entrepreneurs worst nightmare.
In this report, we’re going to take a look at some of the most essential apps for entrepreneurs. We’ll look at some of their most important functions, as well as their pros and cons, so you can be sure you’re choosing the right app for your purposes.
Also, keep in mind that we will be featuring mostly apps that are available on iOS (iPhone and iPad), because these are the devices that are most popular among today’s entrepreneurs. However, many of the featured apps will also be on Android and other systems.
So let’s get started.
Productivity Apps
Productivity as an app category doesn’t just mean apps that will help you be more productive (such as time management and scheduling apps). It can also include apps like writing programs, art programs, cloud storage, and much more.
Evernote
Evernote is an extremely popular app that is available on pretty much every major platform you can imagine. This program will allow you to do a tremendous number of things that will help organize your business life, as well as your personal life.
Some of the things you can accomplish with Evernote include:
· Taking notes, including research and ideas
· Compiling articles, photos, links and more
· Cataloging your content so you can easily search and find it later
· Create notebooks to organize information by project
· Draft agendas and to-do lists
· Plan travel
· Annotate PDFs
· Create contacts from pictures of business cards
· And lots more
The Evernote app was listed by the New York Times as a “Top 10 Must- Have App”. It has won awards from TechCrunch, Mashable, a Webby award, and more.
You can use a free subscription, or pay for a premium subscription for advanced features for $4.99 per month or $44.99 per year.
If you’re looking for a well-rounded app to help you organize and plan, Evernote should be exactly what you’re looking for.
MindNode
MindNode is the top mind mapping app. At $9.99, it isn’t cheap. But if you use mind mapping often, you will love its clean interface, ease of use, and in-depth features.
If you’ve never used mind maps before, you could try out one of the myriad free mind mapping apps that are available first to get an idea of how they work.
Basically, mind mapping allows you to organize and plan visually. It uses charts to help you accomplish organization and planning, spreading information out where it is easy to see at a glance instead of keeping it in a longer format like a PDF.
MindNode was featured as an Apple “App Store Best”.
Dropbox
Dropbox is the most popular app for cloud storage, and with its recent storage upgrades at no additional monthly cost (for example, the 100 GB plan was increased to a whopping 1 TB of storage) it’s no wonder they have taken over their market.
The Dropbox app will allow you to access your photos, documents, videos and other files from your iPad, making it a useful tool for accessing and sharing files on the go.
Even if you don’t want to pay for storage, you get 2 GB of space for free, which is plenty if you only need to store a small number of files on the service.
Hill88 Pro for Asana
Hill88 Pro is an app that works with Asana to bring the popular task management system to your device.
Asana is a free platform that will allow you to organize projects and tasks like never before. It’s free for personal use, and you can add teams to your account for a reasonable fee.
Asana has its own app, but Hill88 has better overall reviews and a much more solid interface, allowing you to take advantage of more of Asana’s powerful features.
1Password
If you have trouble remembering your passwords, you can use 1Password on your computer and your mobile devices to keep all of them organized in one easy-to-use system that will allow you to safely “forget” your passwords, knowing that whenever you need to log in somewhere, 1Password will remember for you!
Microsoft Word
If you have an Office 365 membership, you can take advantage of the Microsoft Word app to create and edit documents on the go. The most recent version will even integrate with Dropbox, so if you have documents stored on the service, you’ll be able to edit them from any location.
Budget and Finance Apps
Managing money is another essential function for any entrepreneur or even an individual. There are plenty of apps to choose from that can help, but these few apps are the best-of-the-best.
Mint
Mint is a personal finance app that is also great for entrepreneurs who are running their startups on their own. Mint will allow you to keep track of your spending and all of your bills and bank accounts in one central location.
StockTouch
Many entrepreneurs are also investors, and it can be incredibly difficult to keep track of stocks on the go. StockTouch will also you to do this and much more, including real-time quotes and stock prices, historical information that makes it easier than ever to choose the right investments, and much more.
The data for the free app is updated every 5 minutes, or you can get a subscription for $1.99 per month or $14.99 per year that will give you faster updates and more information.
Yahoo Finance
Another very popular app for tracking stocks and other information is the Yahoo Finance app. This app will let you follow the stocks you personally care about, as well as getting personalized news in the financial world and alerts that are relevant to you.
Some features include:
· Adding stocks to your watch list for real-time quotes
· Personalized news based on your watch list
· Track currencies, commodities and more
It’s also got an attractive and easy-to-navigate interface that makes it easy to find the information you need at a glance.
Social Media Apps
As an entrepreneur in the new age, social media is not just a bonus. It’s absolutely essential. You need to use social media to perform marketing tasks as well as staying in touch with colleagues, clients, etc.
The trouble is, when you’re always on the go, it’s not easy to stay on top of your social media accounts. Apps make it much easier to do this.
Obviously, you can just download and use each app individually, as most social networks do have their own app available. However, using a single app to manage multiple accounts will save you time and frustration.
HootSuite
HootSuite is an amazing app that makes it easy to post to multiple social media accounts at once. Rather than having to log into each individual account to post a single update, just create your post and tell HootSuite to deliver it to any of the social media accounts you’ve added to the app.
You can even use a built-in ow.ly link to track the click-throughs from your posts, making it easy to see which of your posts and which of your accounts is most effective at generating traffic.
HootSuite is free for up to 3 social media accounts!
Pinterest is an invaluable tool for many entrepreneurs, not just for marketing purposes, but also for research. Pinterest will allow you to seek out new trends and get ideas for products based on things people are currently pinning in your market.
Facebook Messenger
If you have associates you would rather not have your personal telephone number but would still like to stay in touch with, Facebook messenger can help you do this.
It basically works like text messaging, but it uses your Facebook account as the method of contact. By using the messenger, you don’t have to use the clunky Facebook interface to chat. Instead, you’ll use a more familiar texting type layout.
Facebook Groups & Facebook Pages Manager
If you run a Facebook group or page, you know there is no effective way to manage them from within the Facebook mobile app. However, using the Facebook Groups app or the Facebook Pages Manager app, you can easily manage your groups and pages on the go!
Other Essential Apps
Uber
How many times have you needed a taxi and been unable to find one? If you live in a major city, as many entrepreneurs do in order to be close to their suppliers, funding, etc., you’ve probably experienced this more times than you care to think about.
Uber will let you find a taxi quickly and easily, and it is available in many major cities around the world. You can even link a credit card or PayPal account to Uber so you never have to worry about not having cash for your ride.
Lyft
Lyft is an alternative to Uber for those who disagree with some of Uber’s business practices. (Some people feel Uber is not fair to drivers and charge them too much to drive, making drivers less money.)
Lyft may also be available in areas where Uber is not, so if you try Uber and discover it’s not available where you live, you can give Lyft a try.
Mailbox
Mailbox is an incredibly powerful email client app that will allow you to manage your email faster and more efficiently than ever before. There are bulk actions that make tasks such as archiving and deleting a breeze, and it works with almost any type of email system.
Conclusion
With so many apps out there that target professionals and entrepreneurs, it can be tricky to navigate the waters in order to find those that will work best for you. Hopefully this guide has been useful in helping you identify those that will be most useful to you.
You may find some of these apps aren’t really essential for you specifically, and that’s fine. Each entrepreneur has different tasks he must manage, and these apps focus on a wide variety of different segments.
However, you will probably find that a large number of them will be extremely useful in your day-to-day activities, helping you increase productivity and save you time and money.
The beauty of most of these apps is that they have a free version that will allow you to test out the basic functions without spending money upfront. This will let you get a feel for how useful they might be and how well the interface works for you before you make a commitment to a particular app.
So start downloading and test out some of these apps today!
Resources
If you’re looking for some extremely powerful apps that will make running your business a breeze, check out:
Monkey Web Apps will let you accomplish a wide variety of functions quickly and easily while on the go!
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