The source of the following article is originally written and run by a resourceful entrepreneur, Tomas Laurinavicius, from Lithuania.
Digital skills are rather mainstreamed between the entrepreneurship’s world; but the real challenge today is to polish them and make them effective for the business.
There are 10 main skills needed to master an high level of “entrepreneurship”.
1. The first and the most important is to be fully literate in “Communication” skills. Especially during the pitches with potential investors or customers it is essential to be inspiring, clear in transferring information and to understand cultural differences and people, in order to developing respect and team building competencies. Interesting related tools are:
Asana – Project management and communication within your company or department.
Trello – Personal project management or smaller team-based project management.
Dropbox – Trustworthy cloud storage for personal and business files.
Prezi – A powerful cloud-based storytelling tool for creating engaging presentations.
Skype – Free software for instant messaging and video/audio calls.
2.The second key element is the good knowledge in “Finance”. Just a concept: cash flow. Learning how to manage your own money is the bedrock of entrepreneurship. Also investing in self-training and studying basics in accounting.
Xero – Professional accounting software with friendly interface.
Wave Apps – Free small business software including accounting, invoicing, payments, payroll, and receipts.
You Need A Budget – Simple personal budget and finance software.
3. Keeping on, there is “Branding”. The way you are is your introduction, is your brand and it is getting more and more important to build up a personal image, by creating a blog, becoming a social media manager and knowing about the right platforms.
MailChimp – Email marketing software suitable for smaller projects
Google Alerts – Monitor the web for interesting new content.
Medium – Beautifully designed online publishing platform.
4. Forth element is “Marketing”. To sell whatever is your core business you need the proper tools and strategies to gain a good result (cost-effective approach and result-oriented). Some new items come from the digital marketing, such as search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, pay-per-click (PPC), conversion optimization, content marketing and email marketing. This allows to identify the correct target audience.
Adwords – Promote your business on Google through advertising.
Kickstarter – Kickstarter is the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects.
SumoMe – Online software for growing your website’s traffic and subscribers.
5. Then we have “Networking”, it is intended to ensure a social basis within you start to be proactive, sharing ideas and opinions
CoFoundersLab – Online matchmaking service that connects entrepreneurs with compatible co-founders looking to join a startup.
Meetup – Social network for offline group meetings around the world.
6. “Automation” is connected to the action of maximizing your workflow efficiency, including automate tasks.
Buffer – For scheduling your social media updates.
7. Then, “the Design” aims to prototyping. Learn to quickly prototype your ideas and bring it in front of potential users to get feedback.
Canva – Online design editor for creating graphics for social media, blog posts and more.
8. Therefore, “Analytics”, to analyze everything, big data, economics, behavioral psychology, and statistics.
Google Trends – Real-time trends of public search results.
9. Towards the end, the “Technical”: it is time to learn to be familiar with coding and so on.
WordPress – Blogging platform that powers over 25% of the internet.
Shopify – Build functional eCommerce stores.
Themeforest – The biggest template and themes marketplace.
10. The last, but not the least, is “Learning”, to improve of the above-mentioned skills.
Coursera – Online courses to expand your knowledge and train your team.
Skillshare – Global learning community to create, connect, and collaborate.
Coming up with an idea for a business it’s not the hardest part, execution is (Tomas Laurinavicius)
Article realized for the Vocational Skills Week