Apr 30

Top 10 Affordable Tools for Small Business Owners #1 (drum roll, please) – Buffer

Social Media Marketing is an absolute necessity for small businesses that want to compete in today’s marketplace, and it’s not enough just to blog or post on Facebook.  The most successful marketing campaigns are multi-faceted, utilizing various social media outlets to get your message to your potential patrons.  To accomplish this, using the built-in “publicize” options of your blogging program is a good place to start, but what if you have something to say or share outside of your blog, or if you want your campaign to be more multi-dimensional? Don’t forget, your blog program doesn’t add hash tags and @ signs to help your Tweets stand out and get seen.  That’s where a social media dashboard – my pick is Buffer – can come in handy.

With Buffer, you can…

  • Spend just 1 hour a week building entire campaigns that you can schedule to be published over the course of that week
  • Get suggested content that’s easy to “adopt” when you’re stuck for ideas of what to write
  • Learn which posts performed best & had the greatest engagement

Perhaps best of all, they offer a pretty robust FREE account to get you started. You can connect 1 type of social account per network on this plan (i.e., 1 Facebook account, 1 Google+ account, 1 Instagram account, 1 LinkedIn account, and 1 Twitter account) and you can have up to 10 posts queued up for each of those accounts at any given time. Note that Pinterest is not available on the free plan. (I’m actually on the Awesome plan at $10/mo because I wanted the Pinterest features and to add multiple Facebook groups that I admin.)

Buffer has been a huge time (and sanity) saver for me and I recommend it often. One final comment, since this is one of the things I’m asked about most when I recommend Buffer to my clients: it lets you specify which of your Facebook pages you want to connect to your Buffer account (so you’re not posting to your personal Profile page unless you want to). So head on over to Buffer, set up your FREE account and make your social media tasks practically post themselves!

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Apr 20

Top 10 Affordable Tools for Small Business Owners #2 – Square

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PayPal is great for accepting credit cards online, but if you’ve always wanted to accept credit cards in-person and thought it was too expensive or didn’t want to mess with cumbersome equipment, then this app/gadget is for you!  Square is totally free (you don’t even pay shipping for the card reader that plugs into your smart phone) and super easy to get set up. You pay only 2.75% per swipe – NO monthly fee – and your funds get automatically deposited to your designated bank account. Funds are usually available the next business day.

This is a great tool for most small businesses, but especially for those in direct sales who would like to accept credit cards at home shows, trade shows and special events. If you want to accept credit cards over the phone, you also have the option of entering transactions manually. The fee for this method is just 3.5% + 15 cents per transaction. So what are you waiting for? Grab your Droid or iPhone and start accepting Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover today!!

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Apr 18

Top 10 Affordable Tools for Small Business Owners – #3 Evernote

evernote_logo_340pxWhere do I begin to sing the praises of this indispensable tool?!?  It’s not just great for small business owners, it’s a fantastic little tool for anyone who keeps any kind of lists, notes, memos, etc. Using Evernote is like having a portable, digital bulletin board with you everywhere you go. Jot a text note to yourself, keep a digital checklist, clip a Web page, take a picture of a fabulous bottle of wine you have at dinner, then sync it all across your PC, smartphone, tablet and the Web.

In addition to the twenty or so other things I use it for, I love using Evernote to keep track of my blog ideas. I don’t know about you, but I get GREAT ideas for my blog when I’m out and about, going about my business, etc…but I rarely have any ideas magically pop into my head during the time in my day that I designate for blogging. That’s when I turn to the treasure trove of ideas that I’ve collected on Evernote! Voila!! It’s the next best thing to your blog writing itself!!

Oh, and did I mention?…it’s FREE!!!!

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Apr 13

Top 10 Affordable Tools for Small Business Owners – #4 Vertical Response

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All small businesses should have a contact management method in place.  Tossing the cards you collect at various events into a shoebox doesn’t count! To build your business and keep it going, you need to be able to actually reach out to those potential clients/customers as well as keep in touch with your existing client base.  If you have let this go for too long and are now feeling so overwhelmed by the task that you can’t bring yourself to begin, this is an excellent opportunity to take a Virtual Assistant for a test drive. Contracting with a VA to set you up or catch you up with a contact management system will give you both a chance to decide if you’re a good fit for each other AND finally get this daunting task off of your plate so you can concentrate on more important things.

There is a wide range of online systems available for email marketing, and Vertical Response is just one of them.  Used to its greatest potential, Vertical Response can be a very powerful tool.  You can import and export lists using Excel, filter contacts, include contacts on multiple lists (but only enter them once), build opt-in forms to place on your website, send out fabulous marketing emails and more.  What sets Vertical Response apart from the pack is that they offer a pay-as-you-go plan, something I did not find with any other provider that I researched.  So, while you’re building your list, you’re not going to be paying a monthly fee to do small, infrequent mailings.  One more “plus”: non-profits get their email marketing for free!

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Apr 11

Top 10 Affordable Tools for Small Business Owners – #5 LogMeIn

We begin the top half of my list with LogMeIn, a free website application that lets you access your remote desktop from any computer with an internet connection, anywhere in the world.  Who hasn’t been in an important meeting or with a potential client and forgot an important document or wished they could share a particular email?  LogMeIn is like sitting in front of your own PC without actually having to sit in front of your PC (or Mac). I love using it to work on my office PC while sitting in my living room, using my laptop.  It eliminates the need to have an installation of things like QuickBooks on two machines and then having to sync the data files, etc. LogMeIn Free gives you basic remote access to your PC or Mac over the web. “Stay connected no matter where you are for free”.

The Pro version ($9.99/month or $69.95/annually) lets you print from your remote computer to a local printer as well as hear sounds from your remote PC. You can even share files with Pro as if your remote PC/Mac were a server! To top all this off, there are even apps for your iPhone (free) or Android ($29.99) – I’m not sure of the reason for the huge pricing gap here, but even so…the 30 bucks is a small investment for the powerful tool you get. Check it out today and Happy Remoting!!

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