Here’s How Small Businesses Use Evernote

Evernote Features, Plus 9 Pro Tips

On the surface, Evernote is a straightforward note-taking app with both free and paid versions. As you dig deeper, though, you’ll learn the tool’s nuances and in-depth features, discovering that it can be an all-in-one space for managing every bit of small business information you need to gather, store, search and share.

More Features

Evernote lets you capture, organize and find everything you need to run both the creative and managerial sides of your business. Here are the features that matter most to small businesses:

• Attach documents, images, clippings from around the web and voice memos to notes.
• Search everything you’ve saved to Evernote, including attachments, handwriting and images. Save your most common searches, too.
• Keep some notes private, and share the rest with your team.
• Use your Evernote email address to send emails, receipts and other messages from your inbox to the app.
• Access Evernote anywhere (desktop, tablet and phone), even offline.

As a small business owner, you can’t afford to be disorganized, misplace essential documents or show up for a client or customer conversation unprepared. A rich note-taking app is a one-stop-shop for organizing all of your business (and lifestyle) information.

9 Pro Evernote Tips for Small Businesses

Evernote is easy to start using even if you haven’t explored 90% of what the small business tool can do. When you’re ready, here are 9 pro-level tips for making the most out of Evernote.

1. Use Evernote for storing contacts. Create a master “Contacts” notebook, then give each contact or contact bundle (like everyone who works for a specific company) their own note. Add LinkedIn profile photos, too – it’s always helpful to put a face to a name.
2. Connect Evernote to Asana (via Zapier) to turn notes into projects. For example, jot down information about a potential client in Evernote. Once the contract is signed, send the note to Asana to set up the project and get to work.
3. For checklists that will be duplicated, create a master version with fill-in-the-blank sections and a reminder to copy it first. For example, if you have a checklist with daily admin tasks, you can put something like this at the top of it: ***DUPLICATE*** Daily Admin for [WEEKDAY, MONTH DATE, YEAR]
4. When it’s time to unplug from email and social media, you may still want to work while distractions are at a minimum. By saving things like key emails and Twitter posts to Evernote, you can refer to them even when you’re offline.
5. Do you use a paper planner to keep your days and weeks in order? At the end of each week, snap a photo and store it in Evernote. You’ll have a digital version of your planner to refer to in the future, even if you need to look something up a year from now.
6. Create a “Table of Contents” note in each notebook. To keep it pinned to the top for easy access, add an asterisk  (*Table of Contents). List each note that’s included in the notebook and add a hyperlink to the note names to link directly to them.
7. If you prefer to handwrite your notes, you don’t have to bother typing them into Evernote. Take a photo of the note, import it and tag it to find it later. With an upgraded plan, you can search your handwriting – just write semi-neatly so the text is searchable.
8. Go paper-free. Scan hard copy materials, like bills, business cards, magazine articles, manuals and receipts. This is especially useful for tax time – the ink on receipts will fade, but if they’re safe in Evernote, you can find them when calculating deductions and store them in case of an audit.
9. Save all sorts of web clippings with the Evernote Web Clipper browser extension. Immediately organize it in any of your notebooks without leaving the page you’re on.

What users are saying…

Fantastic product and fantastic service. My life would be different without Evernote. Is my favourite tool for work and private life. Allows me to save memories about any subject and find it very quickly. On the computer, on my iPad, on my phone, I always have access to my content, always easy to search. Pedro Caetano, TrustPilot

I describe Evernote as a platform where you can access the mind and build, learn and grow freely. It is a simple but powerful application which allows you to document, store and organize any type of data using notes to which you can attach tags to access and access from any machine, location and/or mobile device to use with internet access. Paulo S., TrustPilot

Excellent platform. Good for taking notes and storing written docs. David T., TrustPilot

This very useful software has been synching and unifying my notes between my laptop, phone and cloud during the last 3 months with no issues and making my life easier. Miguel, Trust Pilot

Final Thoughts

When you know how to use Evernote, you can gather everything in one place and structure it in whatever way makes sense for you. There’s a freemium plan with a lot of features included, but upgrading to Premium or Business will let you add collaborators, integrate with your other small business tools and carry out advanced searches. 

Does your small business have a website yet? If not, check out our ThemeForest article about website themes.