Introduction

Automation is a buzzword. It’s thrown around by marketers and tech experts as the next big thing, but it isn’t always clear what it means or how to use it in your business. So here we are: We’ll help you understand exactly what automation is and how you can use it to make your day-to-day work less stressful, more productive and ultimately more profitable.

Customer Support

You’re a startup, and you have limited resources. The last thing you want to do is spend a lot of time doing menial work that could be automated. It’s bad enough that you have to pick up your own dry cleaning, but if the other founders at your company take turns picking up their own dry cleaning as well then it might be time to consider automating something else in the organization.

Here are some tasks that can be automated inside your startup:

  • Using a chatbot instead of having someone answer customer questions on email or phone calls (Zendesk)
  • Managing customer support through software (Intercom)
  • Tracking financial transactions without having to manually log them into Excel or QuickBooks (Xero)
  • Managing cash flow between bank accounts – especially useful for startups who operate with multiple bank accounts in different countries (Bench).

Accounting

Automating your accounting is a must. The less time you spend on accounting, the more time you can spend on building your business. And if you’re anything like me, there are a lot of other tasks that should take priority over accounting. Automating your accounting means that when tax season rolls around, all of your numbers are in order and no one has to work late filling out forms or crunching numbers from scratch—you’ll have it all ready to go.

Automating your accounting also saves money by allowing companies to get creative with their systems: instead of buying expensive software packages or hiring an employee to process transactions manually, they can invest in customizing an existing system (like QuickBooks) so it works exactly how they want it to work—for example by creating automated processes for billing clients or getting data into the system quickly and easily.

Graphic Design

If you aren’t a designer, it might seem like hiring one for your business is out of the question. But there are plenty of tools and resources available that can help you create great looking graphics without the cost of hiring someone on staff.

One option is Canva—a free online graphic design tool that makes it simple to create social media images and website banners with minimal technical knowledge. If you don’t want to rely entirely on this tool, consider building some basic design skills yourself by taking a class or watching tutorials online (there are many YouTube videos that teach basic design principles). In addition to learning how to use these tools, take time each week or month to reflect on what kind of message comes across in your company brand materials and make adjustments as needed so they align with your overall goals.

If you have additional funds available but still don’t feel like investing in full-time designers would be worth it (or if designers are simply not within your budget), consider hiring freelance contractors for smaller projects when necessary or outsourcing work through platforms like Upwork (formerly known as Elance). Freelancers can also provide valuable insight into various trends happening within the industry which could help guide future decisions such as whether it makes sense for us both now but probably won’t down road so maybe we should wait until then instead.

however, they may not be as invested in your company’s success as a full-time employee would be. By outsourcing work, you also run the risk of having a poor outcome due to lack of communication between parties; however, this can also be mitigated by working with several different freelancers or through an agency that handles multiple projects at once.

Marketing

The marketing department is the heart of a startup. With so much going on, it can be difficult to keep track of everything that needs to be done. Fortunately, there are tools that allow you to automate your marketing tasks so you can focus on more important things: like being on vacation! The following are some examples of how automation can help with your startup’s marketing efforts.

  • Content automation: For example, a tool like Hootsuite allows you to schedule posts across multiple social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. You can also create templates for common messages or schedules them ahead of time if you have a busy month ahead of you (or want to take some time off). This will save time since all those updates will just go out automatically according to whatever schedule or template is in place for that post or campaign!

Email automation: There are many different tools that can help you automate your email marketing efforts. For example, Mailchimp allows you to create signup forms that are automatically sent out whenever someone visits your website or reads one of your blog posts. This way, you don’t have to spend time creating those signup forms over and over again!

Online Advertising

Tools like AdEspresso, which allows you to set up an automated campaign and run it on autopilot, can help out a lot here. Just plug in your goals and budget and let the software do the rest. You can set up a campaign to run daily, weekly or monthly—or even better yet: on autopilot!

Startups don’t have time for full-time social media managers these days; this is especially true if yours only has one employee (you!). But Buffer makes it easy for you to schedule posts ahead of time, so that all you have to do is click “publish”. You can even set up automatic posting across multiple accounts at once with no need for manual intervention from anyone.

Blog Writing

If you’re looking for a way to automate some of the most time-consuming tasks in your startup, blogging is a great place to start.

I know what you’re thinking: “Automating blog writing? But why?” There are actually several reasons why this could be beneficial for your business. Blogging is one of the best ways to drive traffic back to your site, build trust with potential customers and establish yourself as an authority in your niche. It’s also an excellent way to share news about new developments at the company or promote products or services that you offer (and maybe even get some free advertising).

But how do you find time for all this writing?

Enter Quuu – an online tool that helps bloggers find relevant content on niche websites so they can share it on their own blogs by just clicking a button. The platform also makes it easy to schedule posts in advance, so they go live at exactly when they’re supposed to go live (i.e., while people are actually reading them). Finally, Quuu helps identify influencers within a particular industry who might be interested in sharing said content with their followers – which means more eyeballs on your page!

Social Media Publishing

To automate your social media publishing, you’ll need to use a tool like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck.

Once you’ve set up the automation app, though, it’s important to make sure that everything looks okay. Check for typos and grammar mistakes before you send out any messages!

It’s also important to remember that you’re not actually doing anything illegal by using these tools—it just means that someone else is doing some of the work for me!

Automation can help you reduce your overall workload while helping you grow your startup.

When you think of automation, you probably imagine a world where robots are taking over our jobs. But it’s more than that: automation can help you reduce your overall workload while helping you grow your startup. Here are a few areas where automation can help:

  • Scale and grow faster. Automation can help your business scale much faster. For example, when automating tasks such as customer service or email marketing, the repetitive nature of these tasks allows them to get done much faster and with fewer resources than if they were completed manually. This means that not only will you be able to do more work with less resources (more employees), but also that those employees will have more time to focus on strategic projects like growth hacking or product development.
  • Reduce costs by eliminating manual processes altogether or reducing reliance on contractors/freelancers who charge high rates for “extras” like training new team members how they should run these processes themselves, instead of relying solely on outside sources who may not know much about your industry or market niche at all!

Reduce costs by eliminating manual processes altogether or reducing reliance on contractors/freelancers who charge high rates for “extras” like training new team members how they should run these processes themselves, instead of relying solely on outside sources who may not know much about your industry or market niche at all!

Conclusion

There you have it. Eight tasks that you can automate inside your startup. Automation is a great way to simplify your work and let technology work for you so that you can focus on what’s most important: growing your business and making money!