A successful entrepreneur needs vision, passion, ambition, patience – and the list of attributes could go on and on.
But having the make-up and the mindset of a successful entrepreneur still isn’t enough. There is quite a long list of skills that are needed too – organizational skills, communication skills. And the list goes on.
Even if the start-up, company, brand, product, or service is not tech-related, the truth is that there are sets of tech skills that are indispensable to today’s entrepreneur. If you want to be your own boss and succeed, you’re going to have at least a good foundation or awareness of tech tools and the skills associated with them.
The most important tech skills an entrepreneur needs
The good news is that you don’t need to be born with any unique talent to acquire these skills. All these skills are learnable. And in most cases, it wouldn’t take you an exorbitant amount of time to acquire them.
In this short article, we’ll take a close look at the tech skills every entrepreneur needs to have, regardless of the industry or field they are in. We’ll look at why these skills are needed, and how they should be applied, and we’ll also look at some resources and tips as to how to go about acquiring these skills should you have any deficiency in a given area.
It’s worth keeping in mind that we are not suggesting you need to be a master in these domains we are going to speak about. But you should be familiar with the tools used, the terminology, and the best practices in order to do the work yourself or effectively work with a freelancer or employee in these fields.
Search Engine Optimization 
Search engine optimization – this means crafting the content you create – including your website, articles and blog posts, YouTube videos, and other content used to grow brand awareness – in such a way as to make it appear on the first page of various search results (preferably at or near the top of the page).
SEO skills needed by Tech Entrepreneurs
In order for a given webpage to rank high in search results, search engines use an algorithm that takes into account various factors:
- Content length (wordcount and file size)
- The number and frequency of keywords (this includes long-tail keywords)
- The number of sites that link to your content (factoring in the authority or amount of traffic the linking sites generate)
- Visitor retention (the average and mean amount of time a visitor to your site or content stays or engages with your content)
- Metadata
This is only a partial list of the more important factors that determine where your content will rank in a search engine’s search results.
Why is SEO important?
The truth of the matter is that people who search on the internet rarely go beyond the first page of the search results they’re given. More often than not, they will find what they are looking for within the first few results of their query. This is due in part to the fact that search engines are generally quite good at doing what they were designed to do.
Clicking through the various pages of a search result is more often than not unnecessary and few internauts take the time to do that. Usually, if they don’t find what they are looking for on the first page of the search results, they are more likely to refine their search rather than scroll through the other pages of their results.
For these reasons, it is extremely important that the content you create be optimized to meet the criteria set by search engines. You could have a great company with a great product or service – you could even have created excellent content to market your brand – but if your webpage or marketing content doesn’t make it on to the first page of search results, very few people will even know about your brand.
Resources to help you get familiar with SEO best practices
There are a few tools or platforms that nearly everyone who works in SEO uses to some extent or another. The good news is that these tools offer free tutorials – not only on how to use their software but also on how to develop and implement a good SEO strategy. Going through these free tutorials is the best place to start.
Surfer
Surfer is an indispensable tool for understanding what keywords you should target and how to build backlinks that get results. To get a better idea of how to develop and implement a successful SEO strategy, check out their free tutorials in Surfer Academy.
Ahrefs
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It is also a good way to get your content to rank high on search engine page results (assuming you imitate successful web pages). This is the philosophy behind Ahrefs.
SEO professionals use Ahrefs to evaluate and analyze websites in a similar niche as theirs and they try to find out why they are successful and then imitate them (or at least implement some of the techniques that led to their competitors’ success).
Ahrefs Academy offers a free 7-hour online course. In this course, you will learn how to analyze a website’s search engine rankings, what factors to look for that lead to a high search engine ranking, and how to use this information to improve the search engine ranking of your own web pages. The course is designed to give you a thorough understanding of the metrics search engines use to rank results – including what makes certain websites authoritative and thus good for any backlink strategy.
Customer Relationship Management
Today’s customer demands more than just the right product at the right price. They demand experience. This means both a buying experience and interaction with the brand.
It is important for a brand to engage with its customers – both current and prospective. And there have been a lot of platforms and software packages developed to help growing companies engage with their customers.
An entrepreneur who is familiar with CRM platforms and software is an entrepreneur who also understands the various ways to engage, gain leads, nurture leads, analyze data, and much more.
Resources available to get familiar with CRM tips and best practices
Many of the most popular developers of CRM software offer free online training courses as well as tutorials. The more people learn about CRM – all the various actions associated with it, how to use software to accomplish these actions – the more people will be interested in their product.
Sendinblue also has free courses centered around email marketing – deliverability, data protection, KPIs, A/B testing, etc.
Additionally, by learning how to use the software, you will learn about the ways brands engage with their customers and how they gain and nurture leads. You can sign up for free trials of CRM software and take their free courses on how to use their software. Some of the more popular options are:
- ActiveCampaign
- SharpSpring
- Pipedrive
Team Collaboration Software
No matter how talented and hard-working you are, if you want to succeed, you won’t be able to do it all on your own. It takes different people coming together around an idea, around common goals, and a common vision. These people need to communicate. And you need to know how to facilitate and manage this communication.
Team collaboration software facilitates communication in a team from instant messaging to video conferencing, setting up private chats, file sharing, setting reminders, and sending minutes and updates.
The technical skills required to manage team collaboration software are not too advanced. And they can be acquired by anyone who is willing to put in a little time.
Popular platforms and software packages with tutorials
You can try out these platforms and software packages for free. They also offer tutorials, courses, and webinars designed to help you learn the software as well as give you tips and advice on how to best facilitate and manage your company’s internal communications.
Slack
With hundreds of on-demand webinars – usually consisting of videos ranging from 1 to 4 hours long – Slack is an excellent jumping-off point for anyone looking to improve their skills in team collaboration and communication.
Webex
Like with Slack, the free webinars Webex offers to require one simple step: registration (which boils down to you giving them your email address). The subjects of the webinars they offer range from employee engagement ideas to learning how their software can help you deliver events and maximize your internal meetings.
Asana
The tutorials, webinars, and articles that are available at Asana Guide are designed to show you how to best use their software to facilitate and maximize communication in your team. Asana does offer a basic plan that is free as well as a premium plan and a business plan which cost $10.99 and $24.99 respectively.
The Bottom Line
Regardless of what product or service your company is centered around, you will need to communicate both internally and with current and prospective customers in a variety of digital formats. Additionally, you will need to efficiently collect and analyze data regarding both your business and your customers.
Some tech skills are needed to carry out these tasks. But these skills are not difficult to acquire – although they may require quite a bit of time. And the resources you need to acquire these skills are free and readily available. Any excuse for lacking these essential tech skills has been taken care of.
Even if you have skilled people working with you, to be a successful entrepreneur you should still have an understanding of these tools and have a working level of these important tech skills.
