How Google Can Help Manage Your Business

Google is a massive billion-dollar company with fancy algorithms and metrics, but aside from scouring the Internet, what else can Google help you do? Well, from a business standpoint, it can help you collaborate and share documents, manage your schedules, and measure your web traffic. These are only a few examples. There are many more benefits you could be taking advantage of, so let me tell you how Google can be your personal assistant in managing your business.

Google Drive

Google developed a one-stop-shop for your business – Google Drive. The drive is essentially a cloud-based office suite that holds all your documents, spreadsheets, slide presentation, and much more. It allows you to manage your files from anywhere there is internet access and you can organize everything into folders by subject. Like Gmail, as long as you can connect to the internet, you can access and organize your drive and even share folders amongst other collaborators but keep them in one centralized location while you maintain control of them. According to thebalancesmb.com, “Over two million organizations are running Google Apps, ranging from the City of Los Angeles to billion-dollar-giant Avago Technologies with over 4,100 users on their system.”

Google Docs/Sheets/etc.

Much like Microsoft Office, Google created Docs, Sheets, Slides, and other applications to help you create anything you could create in Office but without the price. These apps come free with your Gmail account and you can easily download and share them as various Office files, i.e. a Google Doc would download as a Microsoft Word file, with people who don’t have the apps. These applications also allow for easy collaboration as multiple users can be granted access to documents in varying capacities such as owners with full editing permissions who can work on them remotely. If you simply want to give someone the ability to edit but not give them admin permissions or only provide a “view only” file, those can be done as well.

Google Hangouts

Hangouts are text and video/audio messages and calls which can be used across the board to allow everyone to meet in one place and discuss daily activities and goals.

Analytics

Google Analytics allows you to view the traffic your site has received, whether you’ve received new or returning users, what their activity was, any much more. Analytics is a tremendous tool that helps you determine if your marketing/ad campaigns have resulted in new customers and sales. With tools that allow you to track page views, clicks, and conversions, analytics enables you to set benchmarks and adjust your marketing campaigns based on real data.

Google Ads

Google’s networks reach across multiple platforms and services and Google knows just how valuable that is. Ads gives you the opportunity to work with Google by displaying your ads across their platforms, bringing your content and business in front of potentially hundreds of thousands of viewers. Turning itself into Google’s primary source of revenue, Ads uses a “pay-per-click” model that is meant to drive traffic to a website, giving you another source of potential leads for your business.

Take Advantage of These Resources

Now that we’ve walked through a number of ways in which Google can help manage your business, the next step is the most important – go sign up for them! Utilize the tremendous resources Google has for business owners to take their companies to the next level.