Online Tools: What You Might Be Missing

“Online Tools; What You Might Be Missing & How They Can Help Your Business”
Presented by Tessa Miller, Business Examiner

[Some of this is duplicated from when I spoke at the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber a few weeks back... this is for a presentation to the Tacoma chapter of Executive Women International]

My name is Tessa Miller.... and I'm a tech junkie! Which is perfect for my role as a marketing consultant at the Business Examiner. I mainly help with marketing plans and help implement them throughout various channels. But I really like to help people. Sometimes that can be a little overwhelming... for the person I'm talking to :)

I love to learn, I am the geeky kid that loved to tour the crayon factory along with Mr Rogers and his neighborhood. With that in mind, I'm going to attempt to keep this simple... plan to have 2 new things on your to-do list... anything else can be tackled later.... All of the information that I share today will be available to you, so don't try and write down EVERYTHING I say. Just pick 2 things that you can implement to either help increase your chances of getting in front of the people that are already searching for your service. Or... something that you can use to make your life a little easier.

So, you run a business.... now what? As a business owner trying to do what you're already good at, and manage to do the other things needed but maybe not fully understanding what that entails... where do you start?

One of my favorites and a great starting point is Getlisted.org

If you do nothing else... you need to go to this website and run a search of your business. All you have to do is put in your company name and zip code and it will tell you what search engines you have claimed and which ones you haven't. Claiming your listing means putting in your logo, photos, hours, parking, website... everything that tells a potential client about you and what you have to offer them. You can still do pay per click if it's a good fit for your company... but don't forget the free stuff FIRST.

If you have a lot of free time on your hands, you can go online to each search engine and update your info... Get Listed is a portal created by a couple of businessmen in Portland with the goal of helping small business owners harness all that is the internet... and allowing you to do so all in one place. Making sure you're information is submitted to all these search engines will increase the chances of your company showing up in organic search results.

Get Listed also offers a pretty cool university if you are wanting to learn more and network with other business owners.

Do any of you accept credit cards? All of them? Do you want to? Then meet Square. Square is changing the way payments are accepted. For no monthly fee & no rental cost for a processing machine, anyone can accept credit card payments. Really... Anyone. Anywhere.

But there is a catch... You do have to have an itouch, iphone, ipad or android device for it to work. However there is no need to write the customer out a receipt, as they input their email address and it privately sends it to them, it also keeps track of all payments both credit, and cash that have been ran through their system. and of course, being part of a mobile device, it's completely mobile. Which means you can sell your widgets ANYWHERE.

So, Accept payments. Everywhere. 2.75% + $.15 when card is present. 3.5% + $.15 when card is not present. That's it! squareup.com

Want to send out a quarterly newsletter? Be sure it has great content, looks professional and follows the anti-spam laws. My suggestion is to avoid monthly if you can... it locks you into a commitment you might not be able to fulfill and sending too often can bore your audience, play around with it and see what your audience wants. madmimi.com


Up your RSVP's and control your events with Eventbrite.com, they even help promote it for you!

Share between co-workers, your own various computers and smart phones. Dropbox.com allows you to share a link to specific documents which is helpful for creating hyperlinks in your newsletter to allow readers to click to download an applications and other information.


Edit and fill forms on PDF's
pdfescape.com

Do you troubleshoot with clients or team members? Send them a screenshot of what you are seeing and add notes, highlights, and arrows to explain what you need.jingproject.com

Do a search for "business tools" online which will likely bring up a Mashable article that I have scoured before and found many useful tools. Mashable is one of my favorite tech sources... so much so, I follow them on Facebook for frequent updates and am always finding new stuff to try out. This particular article had over 270 tools for things like: accounting, invoicing, scheduling, presentation software, customer service management, marketing & publicity management, newsletters, and even payroll... Anything you want, is likely already available online.... for FREE or low cost... Doing things the old fashioned, brick and mortar way... leaves you paying for a store and sales people to fulfill and manage your services. When you find cool things like this... always bookmark it. Or better yet, email them to yourself so you can search for it later.

That brings me to email options... if you don't have a gmail account you are seriously missing out... their new priority inbox is making my life easier and I love the search options and filters, which is why I email stuff to myself for future reference. I recently started having all of my work emails to my gmail account and I can now search through all of those emails and I am not bogging down our server or the memory on my computer.

Looking to save time? Assuming you already have a cell phone that has at least basic funtionality... be sure you have unlimited texting and use it. You can update twitter, facebook, get directions and information and manage your calendar... all from a text message, internet and fancy phone not required. To use Google SMS, just text the word "help" to 466453 (GOOGLE). I have it saved in my phone and often have people call me for directions only for me to text for the information and forward the replies to them.

Struggling to manage your calls and voicemails? Google Voice gives you one number, and you choose which phones ring for which callers. You can even transfer between phones seamlessly. If someone leaves you a message, google transcribes the message for you to read, and those messages can be emailed to anyone you want... and they are saved until you delete them. Sometimes the transcriptions are rather humerous, but the actual sound is right on.

Share calendars with each other to make scheduling easier or "join" public calendars to keep up to date on what's going on. If you're looking for a calendar to add, let me be your first... I have a networking calendar that has area chamber and networking events. I'm happy to share.

Google docs - even without word, excel, etc can view manage documents.

Google reader, find stuff you're interested in... and read it on your time.

Create alerts in Google to find when someone mentions your business or a new article is available on your industry, the info can be sent to either your email or to your reader.

Google Reader

Google url shortenter

Need an 800#? Rates vary but about, $5/month & $.07 /minute
kall8.com

Track your miles and receipts, via text or online/app.
xpenser.com

photoshop, but free.
gimp.org

illustrator... for free.
inkscape.org

Be sure to claim your listing on geo-location check-in sites. Offer a "prize for checking in on certain days or certain times or for number of check ins" This can help you spread awareness of your company, on Foursquare it will say offer nearby when someone checks in at another local business.
Foursquare.com
Gowalla.com
Scvngr.com
Where.com

Twitter [be funny, vulnerable, informative] Make sure you have a photo, and fully complete the profile info. If someone follows you.... unless they are a robot you should follow them back, can always create lists to manage if you want to only view certain feeds

Facebook [be social, don't overpost, be informative, be relevant, reach out and tag others in your status updates] Do not go to random fan pages and post your "ad" - if I'm friends with you and like the page your on posting on... it spams me and is uber annoying. Especially when you copy and paste to several pages within minutes. Default your page to the view your info, some fancy page or your wall: but tell it --> posts by me & others

Share events, url's, contact info... creat your own QR Code...
QR Code Generator http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/

If all else fails go forth and google. Google is my friend.... they have room for one more.