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Ken!
10 Essential Small Business Productivity Tools
by John Jantsch
There are a handful of tools and
software utilities that I couldn't imagine doing without. Here's my
list of productivity tools that every small business should embrace.
I'll list them by category and then give my favorite.
Spam Blocking
Spam, buckets and buckets of it, can choke your inbox, disgust you
and allow bugs to creep in and take over your computer. Spam
filtering and blocking has become an essential small business tool.
I use an online service called
Spam Arrest. Once you get it set-up and trained it works very
well. You can upload your Outlook contact list to allow those folks
to send you email. The system does a great job of blocking the robot
spam because senders must verify that they are real before they can
send to you.
Virus Protection
Viruses come in many shape and forms and can range from annoying to
system draining to security risk to fatal. I use the original and
still the best in my opinion -
Norton. They call these programs Anti-Virus but they have become
full security programs with firewall, system monitoring and adware
fighting.
Feed Reading
Reading Blogs and RSS feeds is a fact of life - or should be - for
small business owners. Get all of your reading done in one place
with a feed reader. I use an online version known as
Bloglines - free and very popular
PDF Creation
PDF files are the standard protocol for sending and receiving
business documents. Adobe Acrobat is a great program for creating
PDF files but does much more and cost a bunch.
Pdf 995 is a free utility that allows you to create and save
files in the popular PDF format.
Project Management
Online project management is a great way to stay organized and an
even better way to offer a powerful collaboration tool to your
clients, vendors and teams.
Basecamp is my tool of choice. It gives me everything I need to
store messages, communicate, share files and collect input with and
from my clients. It is like having a client portal instantly created
with every new client.
CRM tool
CRM stands for customer relationship management but for the small
business the software and services in this category are really about
tracking sales opportunities and looking for ways to convert more
sales and do more business with existing clients. For this I like
ACT 2006. This program, once set-up and mastered will allow you
to automate many of your marketing contact activity and make sure
that every prospect gets planned attention. There is an army of ACT
consultants out there that can help you customize the program for
your business and I suggest that you look into that option.
List Management
Capturing data from online visitors and beginning to educate them
with newsletters and white papers is a proven marketing strategy. I
use a service called
AWeber to manage my online mailing and email marketing efforts.
I'm also experimenting with a service called
Swiftpage that integrates with ACT
File Sending
Sending big files can be difficult or even impossible through email
channels. I use a service called
DropSend to upload very large files. The service then notifies
my recipient that they have a file to download.
Keyword Selection
Choosing the most popular keywords and search phases can be an
essential tool to help web surfers find your web site. It's also a
good tool to employ as you write article headlines and blog post
titles. By knowing what words and phrases your prospects search for
most often when looking for your type of business you can begin to
strategically lace your writing with those terms. I use a free
utility called
Good Keywords to get a picture of what terms people are
searching.
Spelling and Grammar
Sometimes you need a more powerful way to say something or maybe
just the right way to spell a word. I use a free utility called
WordWeb. The thing I like most about WordWeb is that it doesn't
matter what program I am using, I can still access it. Even surfing
the web I can highlight a word and get the word's meaning and other
useful information.
~ ~ ~
John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and
author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small
Business Marketing Guide published by Thomas Nelson - due out
in the fall of 2006
He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business
marketing system. You can find more information by visiting
http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/