Empower Your Brand
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SociallyUP Toolbox & Shop
I founded SociallyUP in 2016 with one goal in mind: to help small business owners authentically market their brands. As an entrepreneur myself, I know there are many resource options out there, and the amount of information you encounter can be overwhelming.
Sometimes you just want someone you can ask your questions and get real advice from. The SociallyUP toolbox is filled with valuable and usable informationyou can reference on your journey to DIY your brand.
Client & Project Management
Client and project Management is one of the most important things you can do from the very start of your business.
Organizing your clients will enhance your client relationships, and help you establish pricing, invoicing, communication, and so much more.
Basically, you need to look professional and client management is one of the first steps you should take in your business to establish a professional start.
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01. 17HATS is one of our top choices for client & project management. You can organize and automate your small business fairly easily and create quotes and contracts without coding. You can check them out here and use referral code “pwkrtddhtv” for a 10% discount.
02. Paperbell helps you create coaching packages, and track the hours for each package, and your client can schedule appointments all on their own. It does have more of a healthcare focus but overall, is a versatile tool. We wrote a blog post you can read here.
03. Asana is a tool we have used on/off for the last couple of years. Asana is powerful and you can do many different things with it from task management to project management.
04. The Bouitque Lawyer is a great resource for all things legal. We like to customize templates to fit our needs and these are a great starting place to outline your business.
05.DUBSADO Is a close second for client & project mgmt. Overall this tool is very forward-thinking in how you can manage your clients. We also like how you can see all of the data you need right on the login screen. We did find the setup to be somewhat overwhelming and a custom look requires coding (as of 2022). Sign up and receive 20% off. here.
06. Monday.com is a great tool for tracking project status, tasks, and more. The setup is easy and the depth of use gives you room to grow. You can add custom labels to track project status and keep your whole team (or just yourself) on track.
07. ClickUP This tool is super powerful and we feel complex but don’t let that that stop you from trying it out. We like this tool for planning and tracking projects from content creation to site launches.
Content Creation & Mgmt.
Content is everything. We can talk about all the things we want to do but it all changes when content starts rolling out. Even more so when you’re consistently creating content.
Think of content as the road your business dreams are driving on. Do you feel inspired? We hope so!
Now it’s time to make some content. Here are some of the tools we use to create content for our brand and the clients of our agency.
01.PALLYY We’ve tried almost every scheduling tool available to individuals and agencies. Each one has something we love, like, or hate. Currently, Pallyy is our favorite. Sure, it has some features we’d like to see added but overall it has more clean and usable features combined with ease of use than many of the others we’ve tried.
03. PLANOLY Is another one of our favorite tools. We do feel PLANOLY is geared more towards lifestyle and fashion content with the tools to help monetize that type of content. Overall the platform is easy to use while not lacking the tools you need to grow your audience. You can check it out for free here.
05. Canva might be the most useful, cool, and multifunctional design tool anyone could ever use. We’ve been using it since we opened and it just keeps getting better and better. You’re going to want the Pro version so go ahead and try it out. linked here.
02. Later If we had to pick a close second for content scheduling, we’d select Later. We used Later for years until we felt the price was outweighing the ease of use and features. We still recommend Later as a great choice though to anyone needing to schedule across multiple platforms including stories.
04. PLANN has a heavy Instagram focus and it does it well. We used this tool briefly during a period of searching for the perfect scheduling tool. You can check it out for free here. We would have loved this tool for a solo brand and for a low-review team. For us, at an agency level, we needed more approval features.
06 FLODESK is our top choice for email communication. Ultimately, you’ll need to decide if the structure of Flodesk fits your brand ( you can check out an article we wrote here about how we use Flodesk for our client base). You can use this link to save 50% off a Flodesk subscription.
Design & Templates
We’re website designers and sometimes we like to support other designers. Sure, we could design a custom site every single time there is a need for a website but there are times when a template solution is the best fit. Also, when you’re in your own design space all of the time, it feels nice to see the design perspective of other creatives and entrepreneurs.
01. GoLive HQ is an excellent resource for well-designed and easy-to-use Squarespace Templates which, bonus points, come fully installed and ready for you to use. These are no assembly-required Squarespace templates.
02. Big Cat Creative is another excellent resource for great design and easy-to-set-up Squarespace Templates. Pro tip, setting up your Squarespace template is a great way to learn how to navigate the platform.
03. Creative Market is a marketplace of endless creative work (fonts, graphics, etc.) and is another resource I’ve used for website templates. Pro tip: Check seller reviews and look for a seller with a website. One issue we’ve encountered is outdated WordPress templates.
04. Etsy is another platform that is similar to Creative Market but with more categories beyond digital creatives. Use the same advice from Creative Market here.
