Do you find yourself repeatedly replying to your customer online with the same text and content? Or copy and paste the same text snippets like your business information (i.e. how to place an order? how to contact us? ) If you're tired of doing this repetitive task, it's time to create your own keyboard shortcut to speed up your typing by 10X or more!
Working as a solo-preneur, 24 hours is just not enough.
I think many of us wish we could squeeze out all the time if we could. Well, WE ACTUALLY CAN.
Start with utilising productivity tools and TAKE YOUR TIME BACK, focus on what matters the most to you, whether time spend with your family over the weekends or doing planning to grow your business 😉
There are some really good productivity tools out there that saves our precious time by automating the REPEATING;BORING tasks; this includes TYPING! And most importantly, you can get it FOR FREE!
What is Text Expanding Tool?
Text Expanding App is a productivity tool that allows you to create your own shortcuts to type longer chunk of text blocks with your own defined shortcuts. It also works well if you want to type your favourite emoji using keys on keyboard.
In fact, one of the text expander, TextExpander, starts to make their own text expanding tool for their team, to improve customer communication with accurate and prompt customer support.
How Text Expander Works?
Swipe right to see the tool in action!
Text Expander converts your customized “shortcuts” or abbreviations into the chunk of text. For instance, in the GIF above, I typed “/thx” and it automatically generated a chunk of text which I have store into my text expanding tool.
If you’re curious how the storing works, you may take a look on the screenshot below (Tool I used here is TextBlaze, it’s free to download)
This tool allows quick replies to the commonly asked questions, avoiding typos and inaccurate messaging.
It can save you hours of time, makes your typing faster, and reply to your customer as fast as you can!
Some Ideas on Where to Use this Tool
- Email Signature
- Your Favourite Emoji
- Replies to Common Questions from Prospect Customers
- Thank You Text and Customer Survey After Purchase
- Common Links to Product or Documentation or Manual
- Hashtags to be used on Social Media (i.e. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook)
- Youtube Video Description
- Steps by Steps Guidance to Sign Up Your Course
- Your Business Contacts Info
My Favourite
To be very honest, I’ve only used 1 text expanding tool, which is Text Blaze.
This tool is available as a Chrome add-on extension. It’s free but it does comes with limitations, whereby you can only use it on Chrome and you can only create 20 snippets max with free version.
I’ve did some research on some of the free text expanding tools available in the market - such as Beeftext, Espanso, and karabiner element (mac) . Some of them work on multiple plaforms but some only works in Windows, Linux or MacOS.
I’d love to give a comparison of which works the best, unfortunately I wouldn’t be able to do it currently due to the time constraint.
I’d definitely write an article to compare all of these tools one day! Stay tune :)