No business is too small to have a
digital cooptation. One of the mistakes small and medium business enterprises make is that they are not utilizing the power of
digital products.
Read more about Business
The truth is in this present age and time, the use of digital tools cannot be overemphasized. Adoption of digital tools comes with a whole new experience for big, medium and small businesses as the merits are far-reaching.
The advantages of digital tools include customer satisfaction and growth, optimization of time and money, availability of information, quick and effective communication between users and businesses.
In this article, I’m going to take us through digital tools, the top ten digital tools to use in your business and how they function.
What Are Digital Tools?
Digital tools are online platforms or software applications leveraged by companies or individuals to perform fast, streamlined functions that typically take forever to achieve without.
To further understand digital tools, we must know the platform providers of these digital tools. The providers of these digital tools are known as GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft). Otherwise known as the Big Five, these platform providers are major initiators of several digital tools, from cloud storage, collaboration, security, to communication tools, for businesses.
There are a plethora of digital tools, however, not all digital tools are accessible to Nigerians due to several reasons such as geographical coverage, social issues like digital fraud and the personal idiosyncrasies of providers.
-
Selar
Selar is the best platform to sell your ebooks both downloadable and non-downloadable in any format. It’s a payment and recipient platform for both sellers and buyers. Aside from digital products, you can also trade your services such as classes and webinars and non-digital products.
-
Whatsapp Business
For businesses whose main audience is social media, WhatsApp Business is a digital tool they must coopt due to its features such as business profile, catalogue for displaying products and services, QR codes for inviting new customers, auto messaging and so on. This app helps business owners to personalise their business processes.
-
Zoom Video Communications
Zoom, a digital conferencing cum meeting app, is very important for business owners because it helps bring together coworkers, buyers and sellers, and is best used for remote working, and distance education. The app became popular during the COVID-19 period. Eduprenuers can use this platform to provide education for students.
-
Google Workspace
This digital tool is the most used due to its simplicity, easily navigable user interface and experience. The tool is a combination of other digital tools, known as a collaborative suite, which include Gmail, Calendar, Google Docs, Drive, My Tasks, Slides, which business owners can use for transferring files, holding conferences meetings, sending files, preparing worksheets etc.
Sign up to the Connect Nigeria daily newsletter
-
Instagram
Many businesses utilize Instagram due to its amazing features of displaying images of products. This app, for so many business owners, serves as a primary platform for product and service display and quite serve as their major business site. With over 800 million users, small businesses meet customers directly on this site by creating a body of followers who are potential customers. The app gives the opportunity to build or have a large audience using Instagram feeds. The best way to use this app is to keep customers abreast with the latest happenings in your business. Being entertaining is the best way to gain all that the apps have to offer.
-
WordPress
WordPress is probably the most used content management system. Over 4 million websites are hosted on WordPress. Building a website for your business is vital as it gets to tell the world what your business is all about through the use of pictorial display, contents, and even open the operations of your business to customers. The site is used to manage content which can be used for great SEO ranking.
-
Google Marketing Platform
This tool is for B2B and B2Cs looking to gain visibility and traction. The tool specializes in offering solutions such as Analytics of reporting, optimization and testing of your apps or web products, and surveys for quick and reliable opinions from customers.
-
Google Data Studio
This tool’s user interface and experience are simple to navigate. Its function is for converting data into customized and visualised dashboards and informative reports. Its features are accessed through Data Connector, which includes Google Sheets, Google Ads, Data Transformation, which transforms raw data into simplified information.
-
PayFit
This tool is for the optimization of your business payroll. It’s a payroll management tool that takes away the trouble of manually preparing and processing payments of employees and commissions for Human Resources managers. The tool automates the process using various features such as employee portal, onboarding, exports and reporting.
-
MailChimp
This is an email marketing tool that updates and keeps audiences and customers abreast with information about your business, the latest arrivals, news, and so on. MailChimp features include Audience Management for Segmentation and Targeting, Creative Tools for Content Creation, Marketing Automation, and Insights and Analytics to enable faster and smoother interaction with customers and integration with other digital tools.
Featured Image Source: Inside Small Business
Got a suggestion? Contact us: editor@connectnigeria.com
