In the end, the ultimate key to productivity is setting up systems, so that your own involvement is less needed or even no longer needed at all. In other words, true productivity is all about taking yourself out of the equation, so that you can use that time and energy to move the needle in your biz forward instead. And there, my friend is where delegation and business automation come in.

Especially content creation is often the set of business tasks that tend to be delegated first since it’s so incredibly time-consuming. If you want to learn more about how to outsource your content in such a way that your contractor or employee sounds exactly like you, then click HERE to read my in-depth blog post about this exact topic.

In this blog post, however, I will dive deep into the art of automation and share how you can automate areas of your biz so you can save so much time.

Ready?

Let’s do this!

This post may include affiliate links. Please read my disclaimer page for more info.

Related Reads:

• An Exact Break-Down Of My Monthly CEO Day
• 12 mistakes you are probably making that are killing your productivity
• How To Organize Your Whole Business In One Single Notebook
• 6 Content Creation Mistakes You’re Probably Making
• 8 Mistakes You’re Probably Making That Are Holding You Back From A Streamlined and Simplified Business

Business automation tool #1: Email marketing

Recommended tool: Convertkit

One of the areas of your biz that I would say is the most important to automate is email marketing.

If you want to build an email list and sell on autopilot, an email marketing tool is an absolute must.

I personally LOVE using the email service provider Convertkit. They specialize in amazing open rates, which is amazing since they do everything to avoid your email lands in someone’s spam.

They allow you to set up, design, and embed beautiful opt-in forms with tons of premade templates, create lots of triggers and automation rules, and I absolutely love that they have so many native integrations with other tools and software so that you can set up a whole sales funnel that works seamlessly.

And the good part is that you can set it up once, and forget about it, allowing you to build an email list and sell on autopilot.

Business automation tool #2: Social Media Scheduling

Recommended tool: Meet Edgar

Another area of your biz that is easy to automate is social media marketing.

It can be quite exhausting and overwhelming to manually post your content on social media consistently, especially when you have various different platforms to manage.

That’s why social media scheduling tools such as MeetEdgar can be such bliss! It makes it super easy to batch create and schedule your social media posts across different platforms and manage it all from the same place.

Really recommend MeetEdgar if you want to plan a moment every month to just get all your social media content done for the whole month and have the peace of mind that is already taken care of.

Business automation tool #3: Pinterest Management

Recommended tool: Tailwind

As bloggers, we all know how essential Pinterest is to drive traffic to our websites.

However, Pinterest is a tool that is very “demanding” in the sense that it requires almost constant attention.

According to the best practices of Pinterest, you should be publishing new, fresh pins on a daily basis and repin during various moments throughout the day, in order to favor the Pinterest algorithm.

I don’t know about you, but I simply don’t have the time to be active on Pinterest almost 24/7.

That’s why Tailwind is such a lifesaver…

Tailwind calculates by taking your specific audience into account, what are the best time slots to publish your pins and create a “queue”, so that you can just batch schedule your pins once every month, week, or every couple of days (whatever is most convenient for you) so that you get it done and forget about it.

You also have the option to create new fresh pins directly from the Tailwind app. You just choose your brand colors, mention the name of your pin, and then it will create hundreds of gorgeous pin designs for you in just one click.

And personally, the best part about Tailwind is the Tailwind Tribes, which are basically tailwind communities with a specific theme (for example there are fashion tailwind tribes, personal development tailwind tribes, parenting,…).

In these tribes, you can not only find tons of relevant pins that you can repin, but you can also publish your own pins. And by doing that you give your pins such a boost since hundreds or even thousands of people in the same niche see your pin in the tailwind tribe and repin it so that it appears in the newsfeed of all of their followers as well.

So, honestly, Tailwind has saved me so much time and makes Pinterest actually doable and manageable.

Business Automation Tool #4: Artificial Intelligence Writing Assistant

Recommended tool: Rytr

Outsourcing your content is one thing, but just imagine having your own artificial intelligence writing assistant that creates really impressive content with just a few clicks.

Before trying Rytr I was kind of skeptical and I didn’t really believe that it was going to work.

I mean, I thought that writing blog posts and social media captions were just something that couldn’t be automated since it’s such a creative process and according to me, creativity was something that a computer isn’t capable of doing.

But because I was so curious about this tool and read soooo many amazing reviews, I couldn’t resist and decided to give it a try with honestly no expectations.

I couldn’t have been more wrong…

I am so impressed by how powerful Rytr actually is and how amazing the quality of the copy it writes.

You just explain in a few sentences the topic of what you want to write about, choose the format of your copy (do you want to write a testimonial, blog post outline, copywriting frameworks, social media caption outlines, bio’s) and the tone of voice you would like to use (for example convincing, funny, compassionate, inspirational, enthusiastic,…) and the amount of versions you would like for it to create and voila, it generates the copy in seconds.

It makes the writing process so much easier (and fun!) since it gives you such a strong foundation to start with.

Just tweaking a little bit, adding a bit more content here and there, and your writing job is done!

Couldn’t recommend Rytr more to be honest. It’s like having a copywriter on your team.

Business automation tool #5: Information Management Tool

Recommended tool: Evernote

I already talked a lot about Notion on my blog, but I find that Evernote is absolutely worth mentioning as well.

Evernote is an information management tool that has already existed for a very long time.

At first sight, Evernote doesn’t seem that special, it just looks like yet another tool where you can save information, but guys, don’t underestimate Evernote, it’s incredibly robust and powerful!

• You have a custom Evernote e-mail address so that you can quickly email yourself notes or documents and it will automatically save these in an Evernote notebook

• You can tag information so that with the super robust search function you can find everything in a few seconds

• Evernote integrates with tons of other tools, such as todoist (which I will talk about in a sec), and with automation tools such as IFTTT and Zapier, which allows you to do crazy stuff! For example, by creating an IFTTT applet or Zapier zap between Evernote and Gmail, you are able to automatically save all invoices you receive in your mailbox into a certain Evernote Notebook, which will make things so much easier when you’re doing your taxes! Another example is connecting your phone to Evernote, so that voicemails get automatically transcribed with a link to the original audio.

• There is also an Evernote web clipper which makes it super easy to bookmark websites, screenshot them, add notes, and remarks, tag them,… and all of this just via the web clipper function.

Business automation tool #6: Project & Task Management Tools

Recommended tool: Todoist

For everyone that is into productivity, Todoist is such a dream. It allows you to collect all your to-do’s, projects, groceries, and errands on the same platform, and organize them however you want with colors, tags, projects, priorities, sections, and subtasks.

So, whatever structure works best for your task and project management, rest assured that you can create that into Todoist.

Whenever there pops up something that you can’t forget or a to-do in your mind, wherever you are, you can quickly jot it down with the Todoist App on your phone, desktop app, the chrome extension, or even by using Google Assistant Voice Commands.

And that’s so important so you can just get it out of your head and save everything in one single space.

Todoist also integrates natively with Gmail and Slack, so that with a single click you can add certain emails or Slack messages as a task in Todoist. Or you can even automate it so that automatically starred emails in gmails are added as a task in Todoist.

And this is only the beginning, I could write a whole blog post about the impressive range of apps and tools it integrates with and all the ways that Todoist can save you so much time.

Business automation tool #7: Course platforms

Recommended tools: New Zenler & Teachable

An amazing way to automate your biz and create a passive income stream is by packaging your knowledge and turning it into a digital course.

You create it once, set up the whole funnel, and then it will allow you to gain income on autopilot (of course you might need to answer some support emails, promote your course, and open and close the doors if it isn’t evergreen, but still it is as passive as it gets).

And of course, to be able to sell a course, you will need a place to house all the video training, workbooks, and documents,… and that is where the course platform comes in.

Two tools that I totally recommend are New Zenler and Teachable.

Teachable is known for its beautiful interface, it is super user-friendly, it integrates with literarily everything. And for the ones of you who are coaches, Teachable has a special coach function, which allows you to set milestones, share assignments, house any videos that are included in the video program, … etc.

New Zenler is a platform that does it all, comparable with Kajabi but for half the price. It’s really impressive how versatile and flexible it is.

With the Pro version, you can create up to 3 different sites (!) with your own custom domain if you have one, whereas with Kajabi you only have 1 site.

So with only one paid plan you could, for example, create a website that houses all your course (unlimited amount of courses!), one membership platform, and one shop where you sell digital or physical products.

To give you an idea of all the features New Zenler has, here are a few:

• Email marketing (so you can send out automated emails and newsletters)
• They collaborate with Zoom so you can create webinars and coaching calls within the New Zenler platform
• They have a communities feature that allows you to have discussions with your clients/students within the platform
• Such a powerful and flexible sales page builder with tons of premade templates
• In your course, you can house video training, audio files, quizzes, surveys, assignments (with the ability to correct and give feedback on these assignments), custom HTML, downloads, and embed PDFs, the options are literarily endless.

What convinced me to take the leap and try out New Zenler is the fact that they don’t charge any fees once you have the pro plan, so all the money you earn is just for you.

New Zenler is currently still in Beta (they extended their beta due to corona so that more people can profit from these amazing discounts) and if you join as the founding members, you lock in that crazy discount forever…

Business automation tool #8: Accounting and Finance tools

Recommended tools: Quickbooks

I don’t know about you, but everything accounting, taxes, and finance give me instant stress and anxiety. It’s so complicated and takes up so much time which I would honestly rather spend on activities I enjoy more😅. And especially, for a small business, hiring an accountant can be quite expensive.

That’s why I absolutely love Quickbooks, on one side, it isn’t as expensive as hiring an accountant, but it makes accounting so much more simple, manageable, and organized.

You’re able to store all your accounting information in one place and automate a lot so it requires minimal effort from your side.

Some of Quickbooks’ amazing features:

• QuickBooks also helps with automatically generating invoices by just filling out a few things.

• You can also use custom reminders and tracking features, to make sure everyone pays on time

• You can generate financial reports and payroll statements (if you have any employees)

• You can generate refund receipts

• You can connect your business bank accounts so that it automatically gives you an overview of all your transactions, so you can match these transactions with the right categories.

• Manage your stock in case you have any physical products

• … etc.

Whoo, that was quite a lot, right? 🙂

Here’s a recap of the business automation tools I mentioned in this blog post:

• Email Marketing: Convertkit

• Social Media Scheduling Tool: MeetEdgar

• Pinterest Marketing Tool: Tailwind

• Artificial Intelligence Writing Assistant: Rytr

• Information Management Software: Evernote

• Project & Task Management: Todoist

• Course Platforms: Teachable & New Zenler

• Accounting & Finances Tool: Quickbooks

Related Reads:

• An Exact Break-Down Of My Monthly CEO Day
• 12 mistakes you are probably making that are killing your productivity
• How To Organize Your Whole Business In One Single Notebook
• 6 Content Creation Mistakes You’re Probably Making
• 8 Mistakes You’re Probably Making That Are Holding You Back From A Streamlined and Simplified Business

Let’s Chat!

What automation tools do you use in your biz?