My Top 20 Powerful Tools for Authors and Small Business Owners

Read time: 5 minutes

If you follow @Adm1nAngelsUK on Twitter, you might have noticed that I was busy helping out with #SelfPubCon last weekend.

The Self-Publishing Advice Conference is a twice-annual event run by the fantastic Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi). It’s a 24-hour conference for indie authors and writers, packed full of advice, support, workshops and talks from 24 top industry speakers.

Sadly, the free SelfPubCon period has now ended, but you can get yourself a pass by visiting the website, which also gives you access to all previous conferences.
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This time around, the conference was all about the Top 100 Tools for Indie Authors, and I was asked to provide three of my favourite tools. 

Here’s what I went with: 

.@adm1nangelsuk nominates @Trello for #SelfPubConTop100 because, if you're a visual planner, Trello is a great way to organise your writing. You can create different boards for each of your books or writing projects and then use lists and cards to keep you on track. #SelfPubCon

— Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) (@IndieAuthorALLI) October 14, 2020

.@adm1nangelsuk nominates @canva for #SelfPubConTop100 because it makes it so easy to create beautiful, eye-catching graphics for social media or blog marketing. #SelfPubCon

— Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) (@IndieAuthorALLI) October 14, 2020

.@adm1nangelsuk nominates Grammarly for #SelfPubConTop100 because, while it won't replace a professional proofreader, it does a great job of highlighting obvious errors and gives advice to help you become a better writer. #SelfPubCon

— Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) (@IndieAuthorALLI) October 14, 2020

​But it was so difficult to choose just three tools when, in fact, I use so many tools every day for all of my clients and in my business.

Which is why I decided to compile My Top 20 Powerful Tools for Authors and Small Business Owners to help make your life as simple and as productive as possible.
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Marketing & Design

• Recurpost - I only recently discovered this social media scheduling tool, but it's quickly become a favourite because of its ability to create evergreen social media content (Twitter aside). It's simple to learn, with a small learning curve, and makes bulk-scheduling social content effortless. 
• Hootsuite - An oldie, but a goodie. I've been using Hootsuite since 2013 when I first founded Admin Angels UK, and I haven't yet found a reason to go elsewhere. Scheduling social content to multiple platforms is simple with their post-preview tool. Plus, their free plan fits perfectly with my £99 monthly social media plan. 
• Buffer - Another great social media scheduling tool that I've found some clients prefer over Hootsuite. I love the Buffer queue, which allows you to set time-slots for posts to go out automatically, without needing to manually schedule every post. It also makes customising posts for each platform a much simpler task than Hootsuite. The only downside is that the free plan is much more limiting, in terms of the number of posts you can schedule, compared to Hootsuite's free plan. 
• Tweetdeck - Tweetdeck is great if you're focusing specifically on Twitter. It allows you to easily schedule tweets and monitor conversations and mentions by showing you multiple timelines in one window. Hosting a Twitter chat is also much easier as Tweetdeck allows you to curate a collection of tweets that can be easily embedded into blog posts. 
• Weebly - Is my website editor. I built the Admin Angels UK website using Weebly back in 2013, and I've held a soft spot for it ever since. The designer can be a little 'clunky' but it's simple to use for people who aren't well-versed in HTML and CSS, and very cost-effective. 
• Best-Hashtags.com - This is a great tool for social media, especially when posting to Instagram. Enter a hashtag and you'll see a list of similar hashtags that you can add to your posts to help increase your reach. 
• Pixabay & Unsplash ​- Two very similar free image providers. I couldn't mention one without the other as I use both equally to create graphics for clients and for Admin Angels UK, like the one above. 

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​Planning & Productivity

• Asana - My favourite productivity app! I love Asana so much, I've been recommending it for years. If you thrive off having an actionable to-do list, Asana checks all the boxes. It's great for keeping me accountable, ensuring I meet deadlines, communicating with others, splitting larger tasks into smaller ones, and it even integrates with my timer so I can track the time spent on each task. 
• Windows Focus Assist - Before discovering WFA, emails, notifications and alerts constantly distracted me. Now, if I need to concentrate exclusively on something, I can turn on my Focus Assist and mute everything I don't need. Just remember to turn it back on when you're done so you don't miss anything important! 

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Communication & Teamwork

• Toggl - My time tracker of choice. Toggl Track allows me to record the time I spend on each task, and view reports of how much time my team and I have spent per day, week, task, project or client.
• Zendesk - I've used Zendesk when running the helpdesk for a few of my clients. It's a fantastic, innovative tool that keeps communication with customers clear and efficient, speeding up the process using macros and a knowledge base (optional), with prices to suit a range of budgets. 
• Zoom - I'm sure that, since the lockdown at least, most people are now familiar with Zoom and its video conference functionality. What I love about Zoom is that it's so straightforward to use and yet so powerful, with the ability to host a simple one-to-one chat or a webinar with multiple attendees. 
• MailChimp - I've used MailChimp for years, for myself and for clients to send newsletters, welcome emails, marketing comms and even simple blog post automations. It's easy to use with a user-friendly drag-and-drop designer and has a free plan to suit most startup/small businesses. 
• ConvertKit - For those who need a mail service that offers a little more functionality, ConvertKit is the next step. It offers intuitive rules and automations, and the use of landing pages, while allowing you to segment your list; a feature that's useful if you have multiple audiences. However, the price jumps significantly when you move away from their free plan. 

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Writing & Editing

• 4K Video Downloader - Have you ever needed to grab a video from YouTube or Facebook so you can re-purpose it or transcribe it? 4K Video Downloader does all of this in a matter of minutes, all you need to do is paste in the link. Obviously, there are legal implications with the use of this tool, so my advice would be to get permission before downloading any content that doesn't belong to you. 
• Descript - A tool I use for one of my clients to produce podcast transcriptions. It's not perfect, if it was, I wouldn't have the job, but it makes transcribing long audio, particularly audio with multiple speakers, much easier than running with a blank word document (ah, the good old days - not!)
• Headline Studio (formerly Headline Analyzer) - A great tool to help improve your headlines, like the one above, which started out as 'Favourite Tools for Indie Authors and Small Business'. Headline Studio analyses your headline and gives tips and advice on how to improve it for readability, search engines and competition. 

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Miscellaneous

• Wave - A fantastic free invoicing solution, allowing you to send custom, personalised invoices complete with your branding, track payments, and manage your accounts. It also includes the ability to accept card payments. 
• GDrive & Dropbox - I couldn't include one of these file-sharing tools without the other as I use both daily to share files with clients and colleagues. They both offer free plans and paid plans, but Google provides more plan options depending on your budget and storage use. 
• Skitch - A brilliant tool for taking screenshots. It allows you to quickly grab the part of the screen you need and has a bunch of tools that allow you to blur sensitive information and highlight key areas. 

I'm sure I could keep going, but I'll stop there for now. 
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What about you? Do you use any tools that aren’t on the list? Let me know what you love about them in the comments below. 

.@ornaross nominates virtual assistants as her Number One in the #SelfPubConTop100 saying, “I know, not a tool but undoubtedly the #indieauthors best friend! Big shoutout of thanks for the wonderful @adm1nangelsuk and Virtual Miss Begley who assisted in the creation of this list!

— Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) (@IndieAuthorALLI) October 16, 2020